Overview
- The Welthunger-Index released Wednesday shows a reversal in progress since 2018, with the index rising from 17.6 to 18.1 and marking the first deterioration in the series that begins in 2000.
- The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported about 645 million people were chronically undernourished in 2025, a figure based on long‑term food intake rather than acute crisis counts.
- An international crisis analysis found roughly 266 million people faced high acute food insecurity in 2025 across 47 countries, with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan together accounting for about 82.9 million of those cases.
- Humanitarian funding for nutrition in crisis settings fell by about 59 percent between 2022 and 2025, forcing program closures, the reduction of feeding centres and weaker data collection that limits response planning.
- Aid agencies point to overlapping drivers — the Ukraine and Sudan wars, recent Middle East tensions, climate extremes and supply‑chain shocks — that are deepening hunger, worsening child malnutrition in hotspots and threatening longer‑term resilience.