Food Insecurity

The latest food security report on Haiti - out this week - shows that a record 5.7 million people - more than half of all Haitians - are expected to experience acute hunger between now and June 2025, driven by relentless gang violence and ongoing economic collapse. Rising armed violence has also fueled massive displacement as armed gangs seek to expand their control, forcing more than one million people from their homes.

The United Nations and its partner agencies in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Wednesday launched this year's humanitarian response plans to assist 2.2 million people in need, seeking a total of US$306 million. The three countries continue to face violence, food insecurity, extreme weather events and mixed movements of refugees and migrants, with more than 4.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid in 2025.

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), 25.6 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, DR Congo) continue to face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity. In a joint statement on Thursday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that armed violence, ongoing conflict and soaring food prices are fueling acute food insecurity among displaced people and returnees.

Nearly 55 million people in West and Central Africa will struggle to feed themselves during the lean season between June and August 2024, according to a March 2023 food security analysis. In a joint statement on Friday, UN humanitarian agencies warned that the number of people who are food insecure in the Sahel and beyond has increased by four million compared to the November 2023 forecast and has quadrupled in the last five years.

The world is at risk of yet another year of record hunger as the global food crisis continues to drive yet more people into worsening levels of acute food insecurity, warns the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).  In a statement this week, to mark today’s World Food Day, the UN agency called for urgent action to address the root causes of the hunger crisis.

Leading United Nations agencies, including the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), warn that millions of people in the greater Horn of Africa are trapped in an emergency hunger and health crisis driven by overlapping disasters, including climate change and conflict. WHO’s Greater Horn of Africa region includes the seven affected countries of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.

More than 40 million people in West Africa - predominantly in the Sahel - and parts of Central Africa are struggling to feed themselves in the 2024 post-harvest season. This number of acutely food insecure people is expected to rise to 52.7 million by mid-2025, including 3.4 million people facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4), according to a recent analysis by Cadre Harmonisé. In a joint statement on Friday, UN agencies called for scaled-up humanitarian action and durable solutions to hunger.

Hunger has reached unprecedented levels in Haiti amid a deepening security crisis. Nearly five million people - almost half of the country's population - are now facing acute food insecurity, including more than 1.6 million people at the emergency level, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released Friday.  Meanwhile, gangs have extended their control and influence to more than 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The ongoing political instability and armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo, DRC) have devastated food production and distribution systems, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday. Meanwhile, the non-governmental organization Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned today that extreme levels of violence, hunger, and displacement receive “scant funding, media apathy, and neglect”, as recent months have brought a dramatic deterioration in the situation in the eastern part of the country.

The Russian government’s decision to suspend participation in an agreement that allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped through the Black Sea will significantly harm efforts to provide food to millions of people around the world facing food insecurity, activist groups warned on Monday.  The agreement has ensured the safe passage of over 32 million metric tons of food commodities from Ukrainian ports.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned Wednesday about a “looming hunger catastrophe” in Sudan, where months of conflict, high food prices and lower crop yields have left an increasing number of people at emergency levels of hunger. According to latest IPC food security analysis released Tuesday, some 17.7 million people across Sudan face high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) or worse between October 2023 and February 2024.

United Nations agencies warn that South Sudan continues to face a severe food and nutrition crisis which threatens to worsen unless urgent humanitarian action is mounted. According to the latest food security report, over half of South Sudan's population — around 7.56 million people — will experience crisis-level or worse hunger during the lean season from April to July 2026 while, in the coming months, tens of thousands are at risk of famine.

United States national Cindy McCain took over Wednesday as the new head of the World Food Programme (WFP). The new Executive Director said in her first statement that her priorities for the United Nations agency were increasing its resources, improving its effectiveness and scaling up partnerships and innovation.