By Abdi Ali
Published July 12, 2022
United Nations Organization (UN) warns that the world is backtracking from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 as the number of the hungry continue to grow.
UN, in its 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, shows tha the number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.
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The report that has been published Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), UN World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO) shows that:
- the proportion of people affected by hunger jumped in 2020 and continued to rise in 2021, to 9.8 percent of the world population. This compares with 8 percent in 2019 and 9.3 percent in 2020
- around 2.3 billion people in the world (29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 – 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic
- nearly 924 million people (11.7 percent of the global population) faced food insecurity at severe levels, an increase of 207 million in two years
- the gender gap in food insecurity continued to rise in 2021 – 31.9 percent of women in the world were moderately or severely food insecure, compared to 27.6 percent of men – a gap of more than 4 percentage points, compared with 3 percentage points in 2020
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- almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020, up 112 million from 2019, reflecting the effects of inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain it
- an estimated 45 million children under the age of five were suffering from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times. Furthermore, 149 million children under the age of five had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets, while 39 million were overweight
- progress is being made on exclusive breastfeeding, with nearly 44 percent of infants under six months of age being exclusively breastfed worldwide in 2020. This is still short of the 50 percent target by 2030. Of great concern, two in three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential
- projections are that nearly 670 million people (8 percent of the world population) will still be facing hunger in 2030 – Even if a global economic recovery is taken into consideration. This is a similar number to 2015, when the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by the end of this decade was launched under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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The report says that if governments would reduce trade barriers for nutritious foods, such as fruits, vegetables and pulses, and repurpose the resources they are using to incentivize the production, supply and consumption of nutritious foods, they would contribute to making healthy diets less costly, more affordable and equitably for all.