‘Zero Hunger’ by 2030: a goal becomes a mirage

The number of people affected by hunger and undernourishment around the world is expected to remain high even up to 2030, largely due to the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Despite hopes that the world would emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and food security would begin to improve, the level of world hunger rose further last year.

After remaining relatively unchanged since 2015, the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) jumped from 8% in 2019 to 9,3% in 2020, and then to 9,8% in 2021. It is estimated that between 702 million and 828 million people were affected by hunger last year. That number has grown by around 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (103 million more people between 2019 and 2020, and 46 million more in 2021).

The further increase in global hunger in 2021 reflects exacerbated inequalities across and within countries due to an unequal pattern of economic recovery, and the unrecovered income losses among those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, hunger affected 278 million people (20,2% of the population) in Africa, 425 million (9,1%) in Asia, and 56,5 million (8,6%) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While most of the world’s undernourished people live in Asia, Africa is the region where the prevalence is highest. After increasing between 2019 and 2020 in most of Africa, Asia and LAC, hunger continued to rise in most subregions in 2021, but at a slower pace. Compared with 2019, the largest increase was observed in Africa, both in terms of percentage and number of people.

It is estimated that nearly 670 million people, or 8% of the world’s population, will still be undernourished in 2030, which is the same percentage as that in 2015 when the UN’s 2030 Agenda was launched.