One in nine people globally went hungry last year, UN study shows
Nearly one in nine people in the world went hungry in 2019, with the coronavirus pandemic set to lead to an additional 130 million people facing chronic hunger by the end of this year, according to a United Nations report.
Economic slowdowns and climate-related shocks are pushing more people into hunger, while nutritious foods remain too expensive for many, contributing not only to undernourishment, but to growing rates of obesity in adults and children, the report warns.
The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report produced by five UN bodies estimated that almost 690million people went hungry in 2019 - up by 10 million from 2018 and nearly 60 million in five years.
Asia has the largest number of hungry people (381million) closely followed by Africa (250m) and Latin America and the Caribbean (48m). However, Africa is the hardest hit by hunger with 19.1 per cent of its population going hungry compared to 8.3 per cent in Asia.
The overall percentage of hungry people has not changed much in recent years, with 8.9 per cent of the global population going hungry this year.
"After decades of long decline, the number of people suffering from hunger has been slowly increasing since 2014," read The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World annual report.
Beyond ensuring enough food, food must be nutritious, the study underlined, citing costly "health and environmental consequences" of poor diets.
The report urges a transformation of food systems to reduce the cost of nutritious foods and increase the affordability of healthy diets.
This call is in line with a landmark report from the Lancet last year which called for a “great food transformation” to heal the world’s faulty food system, which sees nearly one billion people go hungry, almost two billion eat too much of the wrong type of food, and which puts unsustainable pressure on the planet.
Last year, the UN report estimated over 820 million go hungry, but estimates were recalculated following revised data from China for previous years.
In previous years climate change and conflict have fuelled hunger but this year the Covid-19 pandemic and unprecedented locust swarms that have devastated crops in Africa and Asia are likely to see the number of people going hungry rise even further.
The pandemic has affected the food system in many ways. It has disrupted the supply chain, worldwide lockdowns have affected people’s ability to go out and buy food and restrictions on workers’ movements have also impacted areas that are dependent on seasonal or migrant labour.
The report warns: “A pandemic-induced global economic crisis is likely to generate new pockets of food insecurity even in countries that did not require interventions previously.”
Rashmi Mistry, head of Oxfam’s Grow Campaign, said: “This UN report is highly alarming. It shows our global food system is unravelling at the seams. Billions of people are paying the price for decades of political failure and Covid-19 is now adding to this toxic mix.
“Governments must fully fund the UN’s Covid-19 appeal and cancel the debts of low-income countries to release the resources needed to tackle the surge in hunger linked to the pandemic," she said.
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