Hunger

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

Much has been said and written of late about the linkages between conflict and hunger. There is good reason for this: 65% of the world’s acutely food-insecure people live in conflict-affected countries. Typically, two claims are made about the conflict-hunger linkage. First, that conflict breeds hunger. This claim is supported by so much evidence that in 2018 the United Nations adopted Resolution 2417 recognizing the direct impacts of armed conflict on food insecurity and strongly condemning the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of warfare in conflict situations.

As the world edges closer to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal deadline, progress on achieving Zero Hunger has stalled, according to the FAO’s 2024 flagship report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

As many as 757 million people may have experienced hunger in 2023, while 2.33 billion experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. In 2022, as many as 2.8 billion were not able to afford a nutritious diet. The situation is particularly dire in low-income countries, especially for rural populations, women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples.

The world’s food security challenges are becoming increasingly complex. In many countries, populations now face a double burden of malnutrition: both undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies and overweight/obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These burdens are being further exacerbated by the strain placed by climate change on food supplies and nutritional content.

Is it too late to save Gaza’s population from famine? The latest assessment of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) global partnership suggests this is imminent for at least half the population of 2.2 million.