Little progress has been made on reducing hunger since 2016, and the prospects for achieving Zero Hunger by the target date of 2030 are grim, with 42 countries still experiencing alarming or serious hunger.
The 2024 Global Hunger Index score for the world is 18.3, considered moderate, down only slightly from the 2016 score of 18.8.
The 2024 GHI results reflect a barrage of successive and overlapping challenges that have hit the world’s poorest countries and people hardest, amplifying structural inequalities.
These challenges include large-scale armed conflicts, increasingly severe climate change impacts, high domestic food prices, market disruptions, high debt burdens among low- and middle-income countries, income inequality, and economic downturns.
Conflicts have raised the specter of famine.
The wars in Gaza and Sudan have led to exceptional food crises. Conflict and civil strife are also generating food crises elsewhere, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Mali, and Syria.
The right to food is largely unrealized and unenforced.
Despite the international community’s repeated emphasis on the importance of the right to adequate food, there remains a troubling disparity between the standards established and the reality that in many parts of the world the right to food is being blatantly disregarded.