The latest United Nations report on hunger and nutrition reveals that the total number of people experiencing hunger in the world fell in 2024. But progress is uneven, with some regions seeing food insecurity rates growing and disparities are worsening.
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, released annually by five U.N. agencies, estimates that 8.2 percent of the population, representing between 638-720 million people, faced hunger last year—down from 8.5 percent in 2023 and 8.7 percent in 2022.
These improvements can be attributed to strides being made in South-eastern and Southern Asia as well as South America. Brazil, for example, invested in farmers and food access to lift 40 million people out of hunger in two years.
But in Western Asia, hunger is on the rise. The same is true in most sub-regions of Africa, where an affordable healthy diet is also increasingly out of reach. In the last five years, the number of eaters who cannot afford a nutritious diet on the African continent rose from 864 million to over 1 billion.
The figures in the report “are not just numbers. They represent lives, futures, and communities at risk,” says Bob Rae, President of the U.N. Economic and Social Council.
Women and rural communities continue to bear the brunt of this crisis. Food insecurity is still more prevalent among adult women than men in every region of the world. Although the gap seemed to be closing in 2022 and 2023, the latest data suggests that it is worsening once again. Hunger rates also remain higher in rural areas than urban ones for another year.
“The world is veering dangerously off track, leaving the poorest and more vulnerable behind,” says Emily Farr, Oxfam’s Food and Economic Security Lead.
Read more about the latest findings on food and nutrition security and the solutions that can lift all communities out of hunger in a new piece on Forbes by clicking HERE.
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