Nearly 400 million Asians affected by hunger: FAO

Jul 25, 2024

Asia continues to be home to more than half of the globe’s hungry people though its population affected by hunger remained stagnant at 8.1 percent in 2023, says a report.

Some 384.5 million people face hunger in Asia, according to the report titled State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 released on July 24 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

“While hunger is still on the rise in Africa, it has remained relatively unchanged in Asia, and there is notable progress in Latin America,” the FAO added.

Overall, it is “estimated that between 713 and 757 million people, corresponding to 8.9 and 9.4 percent of the global population, respectively, may have faced hunger in 2023,” the report added.

It said that from 2022 to 2023, “hunger increased in Western Asia, the Caribbean, and in most subregions of Africa.”

Asia leads the tally with the largest estimated number of people facing hunger. But Africa took the top spot for the largest estimated proportion of the population facing hunger at 20.4 percent.

Asia had 8.1 percent of its population facing hunger followed by Oceania (7.3 percent) and Latin America and the Caribbean (6.2 percent).

Hunger affected 298.4 million people in Africa, over 40 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and more than 3 million in Oceania in 2023.

The FAO pointed out that the trend in hunger in Asia “mirrored that at the global level,” characterized by a sharp increase from 2019 to 2021, followed by two years of virtually no change.

The report also analyzed the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) in Asia and other regions.

In Central Asia, following an increase from 2.6 percent in 2019 to 3.2 percent in 2020, the PoU decreased slightly in subsequent years to 3.0 percent in 2023.

Whereas in South-eastern Asia, the PoU increased slowly from 5.5 percent in 2019 to 6.1 percent in 2022 and remained unchanged in 2023.

In Southern Asia, encouraging progress was seen for two years in a row, the FAO said.

Following a sharp rise from 2019 to 2021, the PoU decreased from 14.5 percent in 2021 to 13.9 percent in 2023 – the equivalent of 7.7 million fewer people facing hunger.

In contrast, the situation continued to deteriorate in Western Asia, where hunger has been on the rise since 2015, reaching 12.4 percent in 2023.

The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity remained virtually unchanged in Africa, Asia, Northern America, and Europe from 2022 to 2023, and it worsened in Oceania. In contrast, notable progress occurred in Latin America, the FAO noted.

“The different trajectories are evident, demonstrating that practically all progress in the fight against hunger is expected to be made in Asia, with a strong recovery in the second half of the decade,” it said.

The “number of undernourished is projected to fall from the current 385 million to 229 million people by 2030, nearly halving the prevalence of undernourishment (4.8 percent by 2030).”

“Latin America and the Caribbean will reduce chronic hunger at a slower pace, by 8 million people, and will bring the prevalence of undernourishment below 5 percent by 2030,” the FAO further added.

In contrast, Africa was projected to have 10 million more people (18 percent of the population) facing chronic hunger by 2030, the FAO warned.

“Without accelerated efforts and increased resource mobilization, under current prospects, the continent [Africa] will only manage to stabilize the situation at the high level of hunger inherited from the last few years,” the FAO said.

The report also analyzed the levels of food insecurity in the region.

In Asia, 24.8 percent of the population (1.18 billion people) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2023, and 9.8 percent (467.3 million) faced severe food insecurity.

The majority live in Southern Asia, where 41.1 percent of the population, or 833.4 million people, faced moderate or severe food insecurity, close to half of whom were severely food insecure (387.7 million people, or 19.1 percent of the population in that subregion).--ucanews.com