Hunger soars amid conflict, extreme weather, and aid cuts, UN says

More than 295 million people faced acute food insecurity around the world last year, an alarming high driven by escalating conflict, economic shocks, and extreme weather — and worsened by funding cuts to humanitarian aid. It’s the sixth consecutive annual increase in the number of people facing starvation, and the outlook for 2025 is “bleak” as well, according to a report released Friday by a consortium of international organizations and NGOs. The 2025 Global Report on Food Crises found that nearly a quarter of the populations of 53 countries it analyzed faced acute food insecurity, or 13.7 million more than in 2023, despite this year’s report covering fewer countries than last year’s. Deteriorating food insecurity in 19 countries — driven mainly by Nigeria, Sudan, and Myanmar — outweighed improvements in 15 others, including Afghanistan, Kenya, and Ukraine. Further, some 1.9 million people were estimated to be facing famine last year, with over half of them in the Gaza Strip, followed by Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali. That was more than double the amount facing famine a year prior, and the highest level since monitoring for the global report began in 2016. A formal declaration of famine in Sudan’s Zamzam camp in North Darfur represented the first time since 2020 that a famine had been confirmed anywhere. In a separate report on Monday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, the United Nations-backed body that measures hunger crises, warned that Gaza’s entire population of 2.1 million is at risk of famine in the coming months due to Israel’s blockade, with 1 in 5 people already facing starvation. Friday’s report came with a sobering message: The world is losing the fight against hunger — and the infrastructure built up over decades to respond to these crises is quickly unraveling as Western donors, particularly the United States, make massive cuts to official development assistance. “The message is stark. Hunger and malnutrition are spreading faster than our ability to respond, yet globally, a third of all food produced is lost or wasted,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in the report’s foreword. “Long-standing crises are now being compounded by another, more recent one: the dramatic reduction in lifesaving humanitarian funding to respond to these needs.” Experts from the U.N. and other international agencies warned Friday that the prospect of trade wars, which can pose barriers for commodities and food aid that need to cross borders, threatens to make hunger even worse. “Higher tariffs and a weakening US dollar may drive up global commodity prices and disrupt supply chains with potential impacts on food availability and affordability,” the report said. This year’s report measured nutrition security for the first time, finding that 37.7 million children under 5 years old faced acute malnutrition in 26 countries and territories. The most severe nutrition crises could be found in Sudan, Yemen, Mali, and the Gaza Strip. “Quite simply, the system is underfunded, overstretched, and being challenged like never before, and every agency has been hit hard.” --— Cindy McCain, executive director, World Food Programme Meanwhile, 10.2 million children in 26 countries faced severe acute malnutrition — the most life-threatening form — and 27.4 million faced moderate acute malnutrition. Children are among the most vulnerable to malnutrition, and aid groups tend to focus on the first 1,000 days from conception to a child’s second birthday. Funding cuts could interrupt nutrition services for some 14 million children, leaving them at risk of death from severe malnutrition. The reasons for hunger crises in each place are complex and interlinked. Conflict and violence were the leading causes, driving hunger in 20 countries and territories where nearly 140 million people faced acute food insecurity. Extreme weather was the primary driver in 18 countries, with the report noting that global average temperatures reached historic highs last year, bolstered by the El Niño weather phenomenon that fueled heat waves and drought, particularly in southern Africa. Economic shocks such as inflation and currency devaluation helped push 59.4 million people into food crises in 15 countries, nearly double the levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report drew links between hunger crises and internal displacement. The number of people displaced within their own country borders has more than doubled since 2018 to 83.4 million people at the end of last year, according to latest figures. Globally, 95% of internally displaced people and 70% of refugees and asylum-seekers live in places with food crises. At a report launch event Friday, heads of U.N. agencies sounded the alarm about Western donors’ recent funding cuts, which the report projects will drop by 45%, forcing organizations to slash or terminate aid programs. The cuts will further increase the severity of food crises and lead to worse health and nutrition overall, they said, and will also make it harder to collect data to monitor hunger crises and make policy and resource decisions based on needs. Humanitarian operations have already been disrupted in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen as a result of the aid cuts, the report noted. “Yet even as needs are surging, the humanitarian sector is having to navigate a new and unprecedented financial and political landscape,” said Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme. “Quite simply, the system is underfunded, overstretched, and being challenged like never before, and every agency has been hit hard.” WFP, for its part, has already cut off aid to millions of people, and millions more will lose their rations in the coming months. The agency plans to cut 30% of its workforce by next year amid an unprecedented shortfall. WFP’s Humanitarian Air Service — a fleet of more than 130 aircraft delivering lifesaving assistance in places where no other transportation options are available because they’re too remote or besieged by conflict — faced a massive $206 million funding shortfall as of February. “As things stand, I don’t know if we will be able to keep our planes in the sky for 2025,” McCain said on Friday. The annual report is produced by the Food Security Information Network, a collaboration of regional intergovernmental organizations, donors, technical bodies, and U.N. agencies. The agencies concluded that much more investment — not less — is needed to address global hunger. In particular, they called for investment in local food systems. In a statement, Oxfam on Friday said the report’s findings point to “a world veering off course” where there is “starvation by design.” “Hunger is no longer just a tragic byproduct of conflict — it is increasingly being wielded as its very weapon,” said Oxfam Global Food and Economic Security Lead Emily Farr, pointing to Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza, which have "engineered the conditions for famine,” along with the stockpiles of food at Sudan’s borders, unable to reach people inside. “This is not a resource crisis — it’s a political and moral one,” she continued. “And it can be undone. Donor governments must restore life-saving aid, and all States must unequivocally hold those using starvation as a weapon to account. International Humanitarian Law is not optional. This is a test of global leadership and collective conscience.” Guterres himself seemed to echo that position. “This is more than a failure of systems — it is a failure of humanity,” he wrote in the report. “Hunger in the 21st century is indefensible. We cannot respond to empty stomachs with empty hands and turned backs.”