Last year was the third year in a row that food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide has risen, the United Nations says in a new report.
After decades of decline, food insecurity began to increase in 2015 and reversing the trend is one of the 2030 targets of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
UN world hunger and malnutrition report
World hunger trends, measured by a prevalence of undernourishment, showed progress from 2005 until 2015, but then reverted and have since risen over the last three years, according to the new “2019 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” report.
Millions of children are not getting the nutrition they need. The UN says the pace of progress in halving child stunting and reducing the number of low birthweight babies is too slow, which jeopardises the chances of achieving another of the sustainable development goals.
More than 821 million people were hungry in 2018, placing the Sustainable Development Goal of “zero hunger” far out of reach by 2030. In 2015, there were 785.4 million people suffering from hunger. Since then, food insecurity has been on the rise globally but has increased the most in Africa and Latin America. And most of the world’s hungry now live in middle-income countries.
Malnutrition remains widespread in Africa, where around 20 percent of the population is affected, and in Asia where more than 12 of people experience it. In Latin America and the Caribbean, seven percent of people are affected.
Adding the number of people suffering from famine to those hit by food insecurity gives a total of more than two billion.
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