Conflict

Hunger and food crisis have reached catastrophic levels in multiple places around the world, according to the Global Report on Food Crises Mid-Year Update. Famine has been confirmed in the Gaza Strip and the Sudan, with parts of South Sudan at risk of famine and Yemen, Haiti, and Mali experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger.

In all, 1.4 million people faced IPC Level 5 (Catastrophe) food insecurity and hunger as of August 2025.

The chance to prevent widespread famine in the Gaza Strip has passed, according to the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC). The prolonged food crisis in Gaza reached an unprecedented and devastating level in July and August, with the FRC confirming famine in Gaza Governate and projecting famine thresholds to be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governates in the coming weeks. This latest update places more than half a million people at risk of starvation.

With the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) deadline of 2030 fast approaching, the clock is ticking for the world to meet its goal of eradicating hunger and food insecurity. Some progress was made toward this milestone in 2024; however, hunger levels remain above their pre-pandemic levels, according to the 2025 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report.

The population of the Gaza Strip is facing unprecedented crisis, according to the latest IPC alert released yesterday. Calling the situation the “worst-case scenario,” the alert reports famine-level food consumption throughout most of the territory and acute malnutrition in Gaza City.

The world faced a stark inflection point in 2024, as the continued rise in the number of people facing crisis-to-catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity meets sharp reductions in funding for humanitarian assistance. The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), released today, reports that 295.3 million people across 53 countries/territories faced acute food insecurity in 2024. This represents a tripling of the number of people facing acute hunger since 2016 and a doubling since 2020 (Figure 1).

Figure 1