Hunger and food crisis: UN analysis: Three quarters of a billion people are starving

The United Nations actually wanted to end hunger in the world by 2030. Corona and the consequences of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine mean that the goal is now a long way off. According to the latest figures, almost three quarters of a billion people around the world suffer from hunger or malnutrition. This emerges from a report published by several UN organizations in Rome: In 2022, an average of 735 million children and adults were affected by various forms of hunger.

That was almost as many as in 2021 with 739 million – and significantly more than before the pandemic began: in 2019, 613 million people suffered from hunger. The trend is sobering, according to the latest report on food safety and nutrition, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023”. The report is produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund Unicef, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“A world without hunger is possible”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for “intensive and immediate efforts worldwide”. However, an imminent end to hunger remains an illusion. In the foreword of the report, the heads of the five UN organizations now write that 600 million starving people are expected in 2030 – 600 million instead of zero! In spring, the FAO, WFP and European Union had already shown in another study that a good quarter of a billion people are starving, some of them dramatically. The world population is currently around eight billion people.

“A world without hunger is possible,” said IFAD President Alvaro Lario. “What we lack is investment and the political will to implement solutions at scale. We can eradicate hunger if we make it a global priority.”

Causes and appeal to fight hunger

Since the beginning of the millennium, the number of starving people has fallen for a few years – but recently it has risen again significantly. The reasons for this are conflicts such as in Syria or Yemen, the sometimes dramatic consequences of climate change on agriculture, the corona uncertainties and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine with its consequences for grain supplies in poorer countries.

“This is the ‘new normal’, in which climate change, conflict and economic instability push those on the fringes of society even further from security,” said FAO chief Qu Dongyu. He warns: “We cannot simply carry on as before.”

The statistics are dramatic: 2.4 billion people, almost 30 percent of the world’s population, had no regular access to food in 2022. The analysis also reports that 3.1 billion people (42 percent of the world’s population) could not afford a healthy diet in 2021. There are no figures for 2022 yet. As is so often the case, Africa has been hit the hardest. About every fifth person there is faced with hunger. For comparison: Worldwide it is only about one in ten.

As humanitarian organizations, “we face the greatest challenge we have ever faced,” said WFP director Cindy McCain. “The global community must act quickly, wisely and compassionately to change course and end hunger.”

Delayed growth in children

Children are also among the greatest victims. In 2022, 148 million girls and boys under the age of five suffered from stunted growth. 45 million were severely malnourished, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus classifies as “unacceptably high”. After all, the numbers have declined slightly in recent years.

At the same time, the WHO sees “no progress” in the fight against obesity in children: in other regions of the world, 37 million children were overweight last year.