SDG 2 is 'slipping away,' global hunger index shows

WASHINGTON — Eleven countries have alarming levels of hunger while a further 40 have serious levels, according to the 2020 Global Hunger Index. The index, an annual look at levels of hunger around the world, ranks countries on a 100 point scale with a score of zero meaning there is no hunger. The index’s severity scale categorizes countries into five groups across the scale: low, moderate, serious, alarming, and extremely alarming levels of hunger. While average global hunger levels are moderate — scoring between 10 and 19.9 — almost 690 million people in the world are undernourished. This includes 144 million stunted children and 47 million wasted children. In 2018, 5.3 million children died before they turned 5 years old. “We’re in an era of bad news, and this year’s GHI really does have bad news because we’re looking at 51 countries that have levels of hunger that are serious or alarming,” Réiseal Ní Chéilleachair, head of international advocacy at Concern Worldwide, which produces the index along with German NGO Welthungerhilfe. “The possibility of achieving [Sustainable Development Goal] 2 on ending hunger is really slipping away. We do have a momentous challenge for so many reasons, and COVID then really makes that much, much worse.” The GHI uses four indicators to measure levels of hunger by country: undernourishment of the entire population, wasting, stunting, and mortality rates of children under 5 years of age. “A report like GHI is really an opportunity to say we have no time to lose. We don’t have the choice to not invest in the right place.” --— Réiseal Ní Chéilleachair, head of international advocacy, Concern Worldwide The three countries with highest levels of hunger — alarming — are Chad, Madagascar, and Timor-Leste. Data for all countries that qualify for inclusion in the index was not as widely available this year, partially due to complications of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, the index classified another eight countries provisionally as having alarming levels of hunger despite having incomplete datasets: Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In lieu of complete data, the GHI used a combination of indicator values that were available, a country’s last known GHI severity designation, last known prevalence of undernourishment, the prevalence of undernourishment in the subregion where the country is geographically located, and data from previous editions of the “Global Report on Food Crises.” The index notes that in the eight countries designated provisionally as having alarming levels of hunger, it is possible that complete data would actually see them falling into the extremely alarming category. But without a complete picture, the index “conservatively” categorized them as alarming. “We are increasingly challenged by … the lack of data for certain countries. So it’s one of the things that we spent quite a lot of time on: How do you present a relatively good picture and up to date picture of the situation while acknowledging that there are data gaps and data lags?” Ní Chéilleachair said. “This year we’ve seen that challenge more so than before.” Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia have the highest regional undernutrition levels, both with serious levels of hunger. The index includes two case studies: DRC, which is provisionally classified as having alarming levels of hunger, suffers from armed conflict, extreme poverty, and political instability; and Nepal, which has moderate levels of hunger largely as a result of inequality, particularly for children and women. The index does not take into account the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is predicted to contribute to further millions of people falling into hunger around the world. Ní Chéilleachair notes that hunger can also make someone more susceptible to a disease like COVID-19, with undernutrition compromising immune systems. “A report like GHI is really an opportunity to say we have no time to lose. We don’t have the choice to not invest in the right place,” Ní Chéilleachair said. “We have to make the right investment because the cost and the challenge of helping families once they’re in the grip of malnutrition, it’s really, really difficult — so being able to invest well to prevent malnutrition, invest in good, robust health systems.” The numbers show the world with an increasingly unlikely chance of meeting SDG 2, zero hunger, by 2030. If current trends continue, 37 countries will not reach even low hunger levels in the next 10 years. Some countries have even higher levels in the 2020 index than they did in 2012, due to conflict, poverty, inequality, poor health, and climate change. Ní Chéilleachair said SDG 2 is also intimately tied with other goals because things such as conflict and climate change impact a person’s ability to get adequate food. “There are lots of things that we need to do and the timing is right to do them, and perhaps COVID is in many ways the wake up call for us,” Ní Chéilleachair said. “The funding, the emergency and long-term interventions that are needed to address food systems to recognize the impact of pandemics on how we live — they have to be equitable, they have to be sustainable.”