On Tuesday, September 16, 2014, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP) published a new report on global hunger issues, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World” (SOFI 2014), that presents new estimates on the number and proportion of chronically undernourished people in the world. The report also tracks progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger reduction targets. SOFI can be used by policymakers, international organizations, academic institutions, and the general public to more deeply understand what hunger looks like and how it is changing in the 21st century.
According to the report, the number of hungry people in the world has declined by more than 100 million over the last decade and by more than 200 million since 1990-92. Additionally, since the early 1990s, 63 countries have reached the hunger target of the MDG. Despite this progress, nearly a billion people continue to be chronically undernourished.
The report examines seven case studies—Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi, and Yemen—that showcase how these countries, policymakers, and aid organizations have created an enabling environment for alleviating hunger and malnutrition. However, several regions and sub-regions continue to lag behind, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where 526 million people suffer from hunger. The report says that “sustained political commitment at the highest level, with food security and nutrition as top priorities, is a prerequisite for hunger eradication”
The report stands as “proof that we can win the war against hunger and should inspire countries to shove forward with the assistance of the international community as needed,” according to José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of FAO; Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD; and Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of WFP.
