Conflict

Three consecutive years of progress in reducing global hunger demonstrate that hunger is not inevitable, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, said Tuesday at the launch of the 2026 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report.According to the SOFI report, an estimated 645 million people (7.8 percent of the global population) faced hunger in 2025. This represents nearly 14 million fewer people than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than at the 2022 peak.Food insecurity also improved substantially.

The Gaza Strip has seen some gains in food security and nutrition security since the October 2025 ceasefire was declared, thanks mostly to scaled-up humanitarian efforts. However, aid levels have fallen again since February, and the number of people in acute food insecurity is on the rise again, according to a new IPC alert.   Since October 2025, in-kind food aid and cash assistance have reached millions of people throughout the Gaza Strip. In addition, commercial imports have resumed, although they remain below the levels seen before the conflict broke out.

Key takeaways The Iran conflict is disrupting Afghanistan’s supplies of food and other key items, sharply increasing import risks and price pressures.The country’s extreme import dependence magnifies shocks, leaving households highly vulnerable to trade and fuel disruptions.Climate stress and rising returnee demand compound risks, worsening an already severe food security crisis.Now in its ninth week, the Iran war has sparked rising energy prices, heightened shipping and insurance risks, and disruptions along key trade corridors, increasing pressure on global supply chains.

Over the past 10 years, food and nutrition crises have shifted from one-off emergencies to protracted conditions in many regions around the world, according to the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) released today. Since 2016, the global share of people facing acute food insecurity has nearly doubled. In 2025, 266 million people across 47 countries/territories experienced acute food insecurity; what’s more, 33 of those countries have appeared in every GRFC edition released since the report’s inception in 2016.

A new alert from IPC reports that over 5.83 million Haitians—more than half the country’s population—will experience acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) by June 2026. That includes almost 1.9 million people in emergency levels of food insecurity. While these numbers show evidence of slight improvement from IPC estimates published in September 2025, the latest alert emphasizes that these improvements are highly localized.