Key Messages

The fight against hunger is dangerously off track.

The 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI) points to a dire hunger situation fueled by a toxic cocktail of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasingly severe and protracted violent conflicts. Progress toward Zero Hunger by 2030, already far too slow, is showing signs of stagnating or even being reversed.

Have a look at the 2021 GHI Ranking »

Food security is under assault on multiple fronts.

Increasingly severe and protracted violent conflicts, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences are all driving hunger and exacerbating existing inequalities and cracks in the food system. After decades of decline, the global prevalence of undernourishment—one of the four indicators used to calculate GHI scores—is increasing. This shift may be a harbinger of reversals in other measures of hunger.

Explore global, regional, and national hunger trends »

Violent Conflict Drives Hunger, Resilient Food Systems Contribute to Peace

Violent conflict is destructive to every aspect of food systems, from production, harvesting, processing, and transport to input supply, financing, marketing, and consumption. At the same time, heightened food insecurity can contribute to violent conflict. Without resolving food insecurity, it will be difficult to build sustainable peace, and without peace the likelihood of ending global hunger is minimal.

Read the Guest Essay by Dan Smith and Caroline Delgado, SIPRI »

Linking Peace-Building and Resilient Food Systems Can Advance Both Food and Nutrition Security and Peace

It is possible to begin to break the destructive links between conflict and hunger and to start building resilience even in situations of conflict and extreme vulnerability. Integrating a peace-building lens into the creation of resilient food systems, as well as a food security lens into peace building requires:

1. well-grounded knowledge of the context and sensitivity to the realities of ongoing conflicts,
2. locally led action that reflects local concerns and aspirations while working through partnerships that bring together diverse actors and their respective knowledge,
3. flexible, need-based, cross-sectoral, and multiyear planning and financing,
4. conflict resolution on a political level and prosecution of the use of starvation as a weapon of war,
5. governments that lead the way to fundamentally change of our food systems.

Find out what we recommend to achieve Zero Hunger, fulfil the Right to Food and Leave No One Behind »