A new analysis of the state of global hunger finds that escalating conflict, climate change and economic shocks are driving more people into acute hunger, threatening gains made in recent years toward the goal of ending hunger by 2030. The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2024, released Wednesday, finds that 281.6 million people in 59 crisis countries and territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023 - a global increase of 24 million from the previous year.
The findings of the report, a joint effort by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), show that food crises worsened alarmingly in conflict hotspots in 2023, particularly in Gaza and Sudan, with further massive deterioration in 2024.
The number of people experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity and in need of urgent food and livelihood assistance increased for the fifth consecutive year. More than one in five people will face acute food insecurity in 2023, compared to about one in 10 in 48 countries in 2016.
“When we talk about acute food insecurity, we are talking about hunger so severe that it poses an immediate threat to people’s livelihoods and lives,” said Dominique Burgeon, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Geneva.
“This is hunger that threatens to slide into famine and cause widespread death,” he said. “The report also tells us that 60 percent of children experiencing acute malnutrition live in the 10 countries facing the highest levels of acute food insecurity.”
Children and women are at the forefront of these hunger crises, with more than 36 million children under the age of five acutely malnourished in 32 countries, according to the report. Acute malnutrition worsened in 2023, particularly among people displaced by conflict and disasters.
According to the report, intensifying conflict and insecurity, the impact of economic shocks, and the effects of extreme weather events continue to drive acute food insecurity.
Conflict remained the main driver, affecting 20 countries with nearly 135 million acutely food insecure people - almost half of the global total. Sudan experienced the largest deterioration due to conflict, with 8.6 million more people facing high levels of acute food insecurity compared to 2022.
Extreme weather events - linked to the climate crisis - were the main driver in 18 countries where more than 77 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity, up from 12 countries with 57 million people in 2022.
In 2023, the world experienced its hottest year on record, and climate-related shocks affected communities with episodes of severe floods, storms, droughts, wildfires, and pest and disease outbreaks.
Economic shocks primarily affected 21 countries, where some 75 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity due to high dependence on imported food and agricultural inputs, persistent macroeconomic challenges including currency depreciation, high prices and high debt levels.
The reported rise in hunger in 2023 was due to increased coverage of food crisis contexts, as well as a sharp deterioration in food security, particularly in Gaza and Sudan.
The Global Network Against Food Crises, which supports the report, urges a transformative approach that integrates peace, prevention and development work alongside large-scale emergency efforts to break the cycle of acute hunger, which remains at unacceptably high levels.
"This crisis demands an urgent response. Using the data in this report to transform food systems and address the underlying causes of food insecurity and malnutrition will be vital," said UN Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres.
Thirty-six countries have been consistently included in the annual analyses since 2016, reflecting years of persistent acute hunger and currently accounting for 80 percent of the world's most hungry people.
According to the report, there has been an increase of 1 million people facing emergency levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 4) in 39 countries and territories, with the largest increase in Sudan.
“One step before famine affected over 26 million people,” said Burgeon.
Comparing the number of people facing catastrophic conditions in 2023 with the situation eight years ago, he said that “the total population in catastrophe was more than four times higher” than in 2016.
In 2023, more than 705,000 people were at catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 5) and at risk of starvation - the highest number in the history of the GRFC. The current situation in Gaza accounts for 80 percent of those facing imminent famine, along with South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali.
And by 2024, the situation will be much worse. According to the 2024 Outlook, about 1.1 million people in Gaza and 79,000 people in South Sudan are projected to be in catastrophe (phase 5) by July 2024, bringing the total number of people projected to be in this phase to nearly 1.3 million.
Conflict and insecurity - particularly in Gaza, Sudan and Haiti - will continue to be the main drivers of acute food insecurity throughout 2024, according to the report.
At the end of the year, the Gaza Strip became the site of the most severe food crisis in the history of these global classifications and hunger reports, as blocked aid trucks lined up at the border.
“The situation in Gaza is extremely worrying. We all know that we are getting closer by the day to a famine situation,” said Gian Carlo Cirri, World Food Programme director in Geneva.
“Malnutrition among children is spreading. We estimate 30 percent of children below the age of two are acutely malnourished or wasted [underweight for height] and 70 percent of the population in the North is facing catastrophic hunger.”
There was reasonable evidence that all three famine thresholds — food insecurity, malnutrition, and mortality — would be passed in the next six weeks, he said, noting that people in Gaza could not meet their most basic food needs, having exhausted all coping strategies and largely reduced to selling belongings to buy food.
“They are most of the time destitute and clearly some of them are dying of hunger,” he said, adding that “when we declare a famine, it is too late. We have already lost a huge number of people.”
Meanwhile, the FAO official said Sudan is facing a hunger crisis and requires immediate action to stop the rapid deterioration of the food security situation in the country.
“We have about 18 million people who are in acute food insecurity ... and we have about 5 million people who are in IPC 4 one step away from famine, and nine out of 10 of these people [...] are in the current hotspots of Darfur, Kordofan, Al Jazirah, and Khartoum.”
As the planting season draws near, the report emphasizes the urgent need for humanitarian aid to be swiftly deployed for Sudan, both within the country and across its borders.
“What is very concerning for us is that the bulk of those people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods,” Burgeon said.
“We are a couple of weeks away from the planting season; it is absolutely critical that wherever it will be possible to access people, we provide them with agriculture input on time so they can plant their fields.”
If those people failed to plant their field, it meant “we have to be prepared for massive, food assistance requirement until the next harvest next year,” Burgeon added.
Stefano Fedele, Global Nutrition Cluster Coordinator at UNICEF Geneva, noted that 36.4 million children under 5 in 32 crisis countries are acutely malnourished, and 9.8 million are severely acutely malnourished and in urgent need of treatment.
“These children are at increased risk of dying,” he said. “And even if they recover from malnutrition, they are likely to not meet their full cognitive or developmental potential, which obviously has a critical impact on the individual level, but also in terms of potential development of a country.”
The report recommends ways to break the cycle of food crises. Tackling persistent hunger requires urgent long-term national and international investment to transform food systems and promote agricultural and rural development, as well as better crisis preparedness and critical life-saving assistance at scale where people need it most.
Peace and prevention must also become an integral part of the longer-term transformation of food systems. Without this, people will continue to face a lifetime of hunger and the most vulnerable will starve, the report says.
Since 2023, needs have outstripped available resources. Humanitarian operations are now desperately overstretched, with many forced to scale back and further cut support to the most vulnerable.
“This is truly a global challenge,” said Courtney Blake, Senior Humanitarian Advisor for the US Mission in Geneva, who also spoke at the report launch.
“There are far too many people waking up in the morning not knowing where their next meal will come from, not knowing how to feed their children, and having to make really truly impossible decisions throughout the course of their day to ensure that their most fundamental needs are being met,” Blake said.
The Global Report on Food Crises is an annual report published by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) and supported by the Global Network against Food Crises (GNAFC). Since 2017, the GRFC is a key document for global, regional and country-level acute food insecurity, The report is the result of a collaborative work among 16 partners to achieve an assessment of acute food insecurity in countries with food crises, and aims to inform humanitarian and development actors.
IPC stands for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a multi-partner initiative for improving food security and decision-making. The IPC acute food insecurity scale consists of five classifications: (1) minimal/none, (2) stressed, (3) crisis, (4) emergency, and (5) catastrophe/famine.
Further information
Full text: Global Report on Food Crises 2024, report, Food Security Information Network (FSIN), published April 24, 2024
https://www.fsinplatform.org/report/global-report-food-crises-2024/