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 13 had insufficient data to allow for calculation of a 2025 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 2023, 2024, and 2025 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 two countries provisionally designated as alarming—Burundi and Yemen—it is possible that with complete data, one or both of them would fall into the extremely alarming category. Similarly, DPR Korea, Lesotho, and Sudan might fall from serious to alarming, and Lao PDR 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.