Saturday 07 / September / 2024
New York: United Nations agencies has announced that conflicts, economic turmoil, and climate contributed to disrupting efforts to reduce hunger last year (2023), affecting about nine percent of the world's population.
The United Nations agencies (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated, in a joint report, that about 733 million people faced hunger in 2023.
This is a level that has remained stable for three years after a sharp rise in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, noting that hunger affected one in every five people in Africa, compared to a global average of one in every 11 people in 2022, while Latin America and the Caribbean made progress in this area, but Asia faltered in achieving the goal of eliminating undernutrition and ensuring regular access to adequate food for all in that period.
The report pointed out that moderate or severe food insecurity affected about 2.33 billion people last year (2023), or approximately 29 percent of the world's population, warning that the world is still very far from achieving the UN goal of eliminating hunger by 2030.
It also noted that conflicts, climate chaos and economic downturn were the main drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition, as these underlying factors combine with persistent inequality, the inability to afford healthy diets and unhealthy food environments, more frequently and more severely, to increase the risks of food expansion. Circle of global hunger and food insecurity.
It is noteworthy that among the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets are eliminating hunger by 2030, and improving food security and sustainable agriculture.
