SHAFAQNA- Recent studies indicate that approximately 735 million individuals are currently experiencing hunger, whereas the number was 613 million in 2019.
According to a new report by five United Nations agencies, the number of people going hungry in the world has increased by over 122 million since 2019. This is because of the pandemic, bad weather, and conflicts like the war in Ukraine, Reliefweb reported .
If things continue the way they are, we won’t be able to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030. The FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WHO, and WFP are all saying this.
The 2023 report shows that in 2022, somewhere between 691 and 783 million people experienced hunger. The average number of people facing hunger was around 735 million. This means that there are 122 million more people than there were in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of people going hungry worldwide has stayed the same between 2021 and 2022, but there are many areas around the world experiencing worsening food shortages. In 2022, hunger decreased in Asia and Latin America, but it increased in Western Asia, the Caribbean, and all areas of Africa. Africa is the region that is most affected by hunger. One in every five people in Africa doesn’t have enough food to eat, which is more than twice the average of the whole world.
Some areas are doing well in reaching their goals for nutrition by 2030, so there is hope for improvement. But overall, we need a strong and urgent worldwide effort to save the Sustainable Development Goals. The UN’s Secretary-General, António Guterres, said that we need to become stronger and better prepared to handle the problems that cause food shortage. These problems can range from warfare to changes in the climate. He said this in a recorded video message that was played during the presentation of the report at the UN’s Headquarters in New York.
The leaders of five UN’s organizations, including the heads of FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO, are QU Dongyu, Alvaro Lario, Catherine Russell, Cindy McCain, and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the beginning of the report that it will be very difficult to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030. It is estimated that about 600 million people will still not have enough food to eat in 2030. The main reasons for not having enough food and being malnourished are now the usual situation, and we have no choice but to make even more efforts to change the way we produce and distribute food to achieve the goals of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) .
You can read the full text of this statement here.
Source: Reliefweb
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