World hunger down thanks to India
New data released yesterday by the FAO in Addis Ababa show a slight improvement, with the global population suffering from undernourishment dropping to 8.2 per cent (approximately 672 million people). However, large increases in Africa and the Middle East have offset much of the gains made by 19.4 million Indians leaving the most at-risk group.
Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) – For a third consecutive year, fewer people are suffering from hunger in the world in 2024, 673 million people or 8.2 per cent of the world’s population, down by 15 million or three decimal points over the previous 12 months ago.
Although positive, this decline is too slow. At this rate, at least 512 million people will still be living on the edge of survival by 2030, far from the Zero Hunger goal the United Nations had ambitiously set for that date.
This is the broad outline provided by The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (SOFI 2025), the most important annual report on hunger, released yesterday afternoon by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), where the UN Food Summit is underway.
While this is the general picture, specific regional data are of great interest (see figure 2). Looking through them, we can see that improvements are not uniform around the world; in fact, hunger is increasing in some areas, most notably Africa and the war-torn Middle East.
Thus, any improvements are due mainly to some regions in Asia, and, to a much lesser extent, Latin America.
Looking at the Asian continent, 323.4 million people suffer from hunger in 2024, that is 6.7 per cent of its population. This is evidently a significant number, but still 23.8 million fewer than a year earlier.
According to the FAO, this important step forward was made possible primarily by India, which alone is estimated to have lifted 19.4 million people out of the undernourished zone in 2024, a total of 47.1 million if the previous two years are considered.
This figure must certainly be viewed in relation to India's 1.4 billion people. FAO data show that 197 million Indians suffered from hunger two years ago; last year, they are 149.9 million, down by a quarter in 24 months, and just short of a quarter of the world's undernourished population.
India's case is the most striking, but it is not isolated; other countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia have also made significant progress, according to FAO estimates.
Putting India aside, Asia had 4.4 million fewer hungry people in 2024 than it had 12 months earlier, even including 1.2 million people in the Middle East, who have fallen into this group.
This means that 5.6 million people in other countries have seen their conditions improve.
These data should be taken for what they are, statistical surveys that clearly cannot convey the full complexity of a situation that often lies below the surface where it is hard to get to the data.
Yet despite all their limitations, the figures point to a general trend that is important to note, one worth exploring further.
.png)
