About
- The report has been released jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and EU. This year’s report highlights the plight of millions of people who must fight every day against acute hunger and malnutrition.
Key Findings
- More than 113 million people across 53 countries have experienced acute hunger requiring urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance.
- Yemen, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Syrian Arab Republic, Sudan, South Sudan and Northern Nigeria, these eight countries accounted for two thirds of total number of people facing acute food insecurity – amounting to nearly 72 million people.
- The figure of 113 million people represents a slight improvement over the number for 2017 presented in last year’s report, in which an estimated 124 million people in 51 countries faced acute hunger.
- Over the past three years, the report has consistently shown that, year on year, more than 100 million people have faced periods of acute hunger.
- A number of highly exposed countries did not experience the intensity of climate-related shocks and stressors that they had experienced in 2017 when they variously faced severe drought, flooding, erratic rains and temperature rises brought on by the El Niño of 2015-16.
- An additional 143 million people in a subset of 42 countries were found to be living in Stressed conditions on the cusp of acute hunger.
- High levels of acute and chronic malnutrition in children living in emergency conditions remains a grave concern.
- African Nations were disproportionally affected as close to 72 million people on the continent suffered acute hunger.
