The message is not new, but the figures are now up-to-date again: Global hunger remains scandalously high and there has been hardly any progress over the past years. Hunger levels are serious or alarming in 42 countries across the global. In total, 733 million people lack access to sufficient calories. In some countries, more than half of the population is undernourished. Africa South of the Sahara and South Asia are the regions where the situation is most severe. These are some of the main messages of the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) published on October 10th by Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency, and the German non-government organisation Welthungerhilfe. “That hunger persists on such a scale with all the resources in the modern world is deeply troubling. That progress being made in addressing hunger has stalled due to the man-made impact of conflict and climate change should be alarming,” said David Regan, Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide. “How can we ignore over 2.8 billion people who cannot afford a healthy diet?’ Apart from armed conflict and the impacts of climate changes, hunger is also driven by high domestic food prices, market disruptions, high debt burdens among low- and middle-income countries, income inequality, and economic downturns, among other structural inequalities. Achieving Zero Hunger by the target date of 2030 as the international community had envisaged appears highly unlikely. In 22 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2024 GHI scores, hunger has actually increased since 2016. The world’s poorest countries and people are hit hardest. Women and girls are particularly affected by food insecurity and malnutrition. They also suffer disproportionately from the effects of weather extremes and climate emergencies, says the GHI.

The report is published each year by the two organisations. For this year’s edition, data was assessed for 136 countries. The GHI scores are based on the values of four component indicators: the share of undernourished people in the population (insufficient caloric intake), the share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition (stunting), the share of children under five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition (wasting) and child mortality in this age group. Based on the values of the four indicators, a GHI score is calculated on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best and 100 being the worst score. The scale encompasses low, moderate, serious, alarming and extremely alarming hunger levels. There was sufficient data to calculate 2024 GHI scores for 127 countries. For 9 countries, individual scores could not be calculated and ranks could not be determined owing to lack of data. However, for three of these countries (Burundi, South Sudan and Lesotho) provisional designations of the severity of hunger were determined based on several known factors such as past GHI scores or other data sources.

According to the report, hunger remains serious or alarming in 42 countries. Six countries have alarming levels of hunger: Burundi, Chad, Madagascar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. The GHI finds that Somalia and Chad both are facing the compounding effects of conflict, climate change, and economic downturns. Yemen is particularly affected by conflict and climate extremes, and Madagascar is facing extraordinary challenges posed by climate change. Somalia leads the ranking in this year’s report with a score of 44.1. The country is facing a protracted hunger crisis, while the state only has limited capacity to carry out basic government functions. Over half the population (51.3%) were undernourished in the period 2021-2023, meaning that they lack sufficient calories and are consistently unable to meet minimum dietary energy needs. With this score, Somalia has the second-highest value for this indicator, being hard on the heels of Democratic Republic of the Congo that ranks first with 53,5% of the population being undernourished. In another 36 countries, hunger is designated as serious. In this group, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Niger are at the forefront. In 37 countries, the index indicates moderate hunger levels. The countries with the worst scores in this group are Gambia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Namibia. They are close to falling into the category of serious hunger. In a further 51 countries, the hunger scores are “low”.

The sad news is that the situation is hardly improving in many places. In 20 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2024 hunger levels, progress has largely stalled and their 2024 GHI scores have declined by less than 5% from their 2016 GHI scores. However, there is also some glimmer of hope: A small number of countries, such as Bangladesh, Mozambique, Nepal, Somalia, and Togo, have made significant improvements in their GHI scores although hunger remains a serious problem. The average score for the whole world is 18.3, which is considered moderate and is only slightly below the 2016 score of 18.8. However, this global average score obscures wide regional variations in hunger. The situation is most severe in Africa South of the Sahara where the regional score is 41.7. This high regional aggregate is driven by the highest undernourishment and child mortality rates of any region by far. In South Asia, serious hunger (a score of 37.6) reflects rising undernourishment and persistently high child undernutrition. “Achieving Zero Hunger by the target date of 2030 appears unreachable. Globally, 733 million people – significantly more than a decade ago – lack access to sufficient calories, and 2.8 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. Acute food insecurity and the risk of famine are on the rise, and starvation is proliferating as a weapon of war,” Mathias Mogge, Secretary General of the Welthungerhilfe (WHH), and David Regan, Chief Executive Officer of Concern Worldwide, write in the foreword to the report. If progress remains at the pace observed since 2016, the world will not reach even low hunger until 2160 – more than 130 years from now.

This year’s report focuses on the linkages between gender inequality, food and nutrition insecurity and climate change. In a guest essay, Nitya Rao (University of East Anglia), Siera Vercillo (Wageningen University), and Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey (University of Ghana) criticise that “despite decades of galvanizing rhetoric about the need to ensure equal rights and opportunities for men and women, severe gender inequality persists.” The effects of the gender gap do not only have an impact on women’s lives but also have stark implications for the world’s food security, nutrition, and resilience to a changing climate. “Among the undernourished, women consistently remain the most food insecure,” the three scientists write. The gap in food security between men and women can be as high as 19 percentage points in some countries. The situation for women is especially severe in countries affected by conflict. “Women who are poor, rural, migrants, refugees, or engaged in informal employment are even more vulnerable. Even in peacetime, women and girls around the world sometimes eat last and least, given the inequalities prevalent in cultures, communities, and households,” the authors write. However, food systems in general also discriminate against women. Agrifood policy approaches and finance policies often do not respond to the underlying power relations between men and women, such as discriminatory norms, labour burdens, and land inheritance regimes, even though they rely on women’s unpaid farm labour and caregiving to sustain an unjust food system. The authors lament that even in countries where women’s land rights are enshrined in law, sociocultural norms and practices constrain their land access and ownership.

The three authors of the guest chapter point to the fact that gender justice – i.e. equity between people in all spheres of life – is critical to a just world and to achieving climate and food justice. It consists of three interconnected dimensions: recognition, redistribution, and representation. The report elaborates in more detail on what this actually means, what the implications are for government action and programme planning and which reforms are needed to incorporate gender justice at all scales and levels, ranging from individuals to entire systems and from formal mechanisms to informal social and cultural norms. Rao, Vercillo and Torvikey argue that “while enabling access to resources for women is essential, structural inequalities – including class dynamics, rising income inequality, corporate control over production systems, and lack of high-quality basic services – must be addressed for real systemic and social change to happen.” Mathias Mogge also highlights the importance of gender equality and reform: “Addressing gender inequality has the potential to lift millions out of hunger, improve child nutrition, and boost overall well-being. Governments must urgently use public investments in care, education, health, and rural development to address discriminatory norms and promote equitable distribution of labour,” he said. (ab)