UN agencies reveal over 122 million more people pushed into hunger since 2019
By Vera Fon
Over 122 million people are said to be facing hunger in the world since 2019 due to the COVID 19 pandemic, repeated weather shocks, conflicts including the war in Ukraine.
These statistics were revealed by the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, SOFI, published jointly by five United Nations specialized agencies.
The 2023 edition of the report revealed that between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, with a mid-range of 735 milliom. This according to them represents an increase of 122 million people compared to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
They state that Africa remains the worst-affected region with one in five people facing hunger on the continent, more than twice the global average.
To them, a progress in hunger reduction was observed in Asia and Latin America, but hunger was still on a rise in Western Asia, the Caribbean and throughout all subregions of Africa in 2022.
“There are rays of hope, some regions are on track to achieve some 2030 nutrition targets. But overall, we need an intense and immediate global effort to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said through a video message during the launch of the report at the UN Headquarters in New York.
He further stated that; “we must build resilience against the crisis and shocks that drive food insecurity from conflict to climate,”.
The report revealed that approximately 29.6 percent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, did not have access to food, as measured by the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Among them, 900 million individuals faced severe food insecurity.
Millions of children under five continue to suffer from malnutrition: in 2022, 148 million children under five years of age (22.3 percent) were stunted, 45 million (6.8 percent) were wasted and 37 million (5.6 percent) were overweight.
The Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICAF, the World Health Organization, WHO, and the World Food Programme, WFP, have warned that if trend remains as they are, the Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030 will not be reached.
