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| Global Hunger Index 2016 by severity |
Global hunger levels have
risen for the first time in more than a decade, now affecting 11% of the
world's population, as conflict, climate change and economic woes bite, U.N.
agencies said on Friday.
Reuters
report continues:
Last
year, 815 million people were hungry - 38 million more than in 2015 - the five
agencies said in the first global assessment since governments set an
international target to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030, as one of a
set of so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The
number of hungry began to rise in 2014, but this is the first time in more then
a decade that the proportion of the global population going hungry has risen.
About
489 million of the hungry are living in countries affected by conflict.
"Over
the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more
complex and intractable in nature," the heads of five U.N. agencies said
in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 report.
"This
has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and
all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that
undermine food security and nutrition," they said.
Famine
struck parts of South Sudan earlier this year, and there is a high risk that it
could return there - and develop in other countries affected by conflict:
northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, the agencies said.
The
report was produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), U.N. Children's Fund
(UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO).
HUNGER
AND WAR
The
agencies called for new ways of working to achieve the goal of ending hunger
and malnutrition by 2030.
"It's
not only about meeting need, but also ending the need and addressing the root
causes of hunger," Zlatan Milisic, WFP's deputy director of programmes
told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In
war-torn countries, it means agencies need to spend more time understanding the
complexities of the conflict and working towards building peace, he said.
"We
have a lot of research ... which says food insecurity doesn't directly lead to
conflict, but it is a very powerful trigger ... (and) food security has been as
seen as a contributor to maintaining peace," Milisic said.
Aid
can sometimes increase tensions in a community. For example, unless aid for
refugees supports their hosts as well, it may raise tensions with those
families - who are often poor themselves with little access to basic services.
Aid
programmes that create jobs, restore roads and improve farming in countries
recovering from war help address root causes of conflict, FAO says.
Intense
and prolonged droughts can significantly increase the likelihood of conflict,
according to the report. And these are expected to become more frequent with
climate change.
FEWER
CHILDREN STUNTED
The
proportion of children stunted by hunger fell to 22.9% in 2016, from
29.5% in 2005. Now, about 155 million children under five years old are
affected. Stunting can undermine children's physical and mental development.
"We
see there is a decline - we also know that decline is not as fast as we would
like ... to meet the SDG targets," said Victor Aguayo, UNICEF's director
for nutrition said.
The
number of stunted children - short for their age - fell by 40% between
1990 and 2015 and Aguayo said this decline should continue.
Progress
hinges around improving diets for women and children, improving the status of
women in society, and lowering poverty levels, he added.
A
worrying trend is the rise of child obesity, with an estimated 41 million
children around the world now overweight.
"Obesity
is going to increasingly affect the poor, caused by poor diet and poor
lifestyle," Aguayo said.
NEW
TREND?
Asia
has the largest number of hungry people - 520 million - and sub-Saharan Africa
has the highest proportion of hungry, affecting 20% of the population.
Wars,
droughts linked to last year's El Niño weather phenomenon and a global economic
slowdown have affected people's access to food, the agencies said.
Falling
commodity prices - especially for oil - have made it harder for some countries
to import food and to fund state subsidies which normally protect people from
hunger, said Jose Rosero Moncayo of FAO's statistics division.
Overall, however, it's not clear whether the rise in the number of hungry people is a sign of longer-term trend, he said.
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