Three-quarters of a billion people are starving Bestselling author Milan Kundera has died at the age of 94

The United Nations actually wanted to end world hunger by 2030. Due to corona and the consequences of the Russian offensive war in Ukraine, the target is now far away. According to the latest figures, nearly three-quarters of a billion people worldwide are hungry or malnourished. This is evident from a report that various UN organizations published in Rome on Wednesday: In 2022, an average of 735 million children and adults were affected by various forms of hunger.

That was almost the same number as in 2021 with 739 million – and significantly more than before the pandemic started: 613 million people were hungry in 2019. According to the latest food security and nutrition report, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023,” the trend is sobering. The report was prepared by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) .

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for “intense and immediate global efforts”. However, an imminent end to hunger remains an illusion. In the foreword to the report, the heads of the five UN agencies now write that 600 million people are expected to go hungry by 2030 – 600 million instead of zero! In the spring, the FAO, WFP and the European Union had already shown in another study that more than a quarter of a billion people are starving, some of them dramatically. The world’s population is currently about eight billion people.

“A world without hunger is possible,” said IFAD President Alvaro Lario. “What we lack is investment and the political will to implement solutions at scale. We can end hunger if we make it a global priority.”

Since the turn of the millennium, the number of people suffering from hunger has declined for a few years, but has recently risen again significantly. The reasons for this are conflicts such as in Syria or Yemen, the sometimes dramatic consequences of climate change on agriculture, the corona uncertainties and the Russian offensive war against Ukraine with consequences for the grain supply in poorer countries.

“This is the ‘new normal’, where climate change, conflict and economic instability are driving those on the margins even further from safety,” FAO chief Qu Dongyu said. He warns, “We can’t just keep going.”

The statistics are dramatic: 2.4 billion people, almost 30 percent of the world’s population, did not have regular access to food by 2022. The analysis also reports that 3.1 billion people (42 percent of the world’s population) will not be able to afford a healthy diet by 2021. Figures for 2022 are not yet available. As so often, Africa has been hit hardest. About every fifth person there faces hunger. By way of comparison: Worldwide, this is only one in ten.

As humanitarian organizations, “we face the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain. “The global community must act swiftly, wisely and compassionately to change course and end hunger.”

Children are also among the biggest victims. In 2022, 148 million girls and boys under the age of five were stunted. 45 million were severely malnourished, which WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus classifies as “unacceptably high”. The numbers have fallen slightly in recent years.

At the same time, the WHO sees “no progress” in the fight against childhood obesity: in other parts of the world, 37 million children were overweight last year. (aeg/sda/dpa)