Provisional Severity Designations for Countries with Incomplete Data

In this year’s GHI report, 136 countries met the criteria for inclusion in the GHI, but 14 had insufficient data to allow for calculation of a 2026 GHI score. To address this gap and give a preliminary picture of hunger in the countries with missing data, provisional designations of the severity of hunger were determined based on several known factors (Table A.3):

• those GHI indicator values that are available;

• the country’s last known GHI severity designation;

• the country’s last known prevalence of undernourishment,

• the prevalence of undernourishment for the subregion in which the country is located, and/or

• assessment of the relevant findings of the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions of the Global Report on Food Crises (FSIN and GNAFC 2023, 2024, 2025).

For some countries, data are missing because of violent conflict or political unrest (FAO et al. 2017; Martin-Shields and Stojetz 2019), which are strong predictors of hunger and undernutrition. The countries with missing data may often be those facing the greatest hunger burdens. Of the four countries provisionally designated as alarming—Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen—it is possible that with complete data, one or more of them would fall into the extremely alarming category.

Similarly, DPR Korea and Lesotho might fall from serious to alarming, and Nicaragua from moderate to serious. However, without sufficient information to confirm that this is the case, we have conservatively categorized these countries as alarming, serious, or moderate. In some cases even a provisional severity designation could not be determined, such as if the country had never previously had a prevalence of undernourishment value, GHI score, or GHI designation since the first GHI report was published in 2006.