CHAPTER 3
Niger: A 2023 GHI score of over 35 highlights is due to political, religious, and structural factors. Food scarcity has increased in recent vears, exacerbated by drought and climate related factors, with large numbers of families undernourished and unable to meet basic food needs. Sierra Leone: The issue of food scarcity has become more pronounced in Sierra Leone. According to an August 2022. Food Security Monitoring System analysis, 81% of households were unable to meet their basic food and nutrition needs. 15% were se- verely food insecure and needed emergency food assistance. Haiti: Haiti is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster with catastrophic hunger, reinforc- ing the pervasive and dire food insecurity situation. Political instability, an economic crisis and a collapse in security caused by gang violence have deepened hunger across the country. Guyana: After a worsening trend in recent years, it is estimat- ed that 58% of Guyanese are moderately or severely food insecure, with the lowest-income households most affected. Bolivia: Bolivia remains among the poorest and most unequal countries in South America, with large parts of the population facing serious challenges to the eradication of hunger and mal- nutrition. Nationally, 52% of the population lives in food insecuri- ty, predominantly affecting those in rural areas. CAR: With a 2023 GHI score of over 42, nearly half of the population is undernourished, 40% of children are stunted, and children under five years face a 10% mortality rate. DRC: A score of 36 in the 2023 GHI highlights the alarming state of DRC’s food security, with high pockets of malnutrition and child stunting throughout the country.
South Sudan: Parts of the country are touching the “Ex- tremely Alarming” (50 or higher) level in the 2023 GHI. How- ever, the score cannot be calculated accu- rately in full because of unavailable data. Undernourishment, child stunting and child mortality levels are all considered to be worryingly high.
The impacts of the global food supply disruptions are highly heterogeneous as local factors remain important when looking at food security in partner countries. Such factors include the extent of local food production vs. reli- ance on imports, as well as the strength of harvests. While India and Brazil, for example, both have large domestic agriculture sectors, food prices have developed very dif- ferently: As of November 2023, India has experienced an 8.7 percent (annual) pick-up in food prices, in part due to the Indian agriculture sector facing weather-related problems in 2023, pushing up the local inflation rate and thereby making the poorest more vulnerable to the availa- bility of and access to food. Meanwhile, Brazil’s 2023 food inflation rate has remained low amid strong harvests, high- lighting the strong influence of local versus global factors in food-producing countries. Food-importing countries are more exposed to fluctua- tions in the global food markets. In December 2023, the UN FAO’s global food price index was down 10 percent compared to one year ago (in US$ terms), but food prices remain about 25 percent higher than their pre-pandemic level in real terms. For consumers in partner countries, particularly the very poorest, these shocks to prices have threatened their well-being, and advances on poverty re- duction and food security have regressed. While many governments in partner countries have provided food price subsidies, in some cases these were insufficient to bridge the affordability gap, which was exacerbated by si- multaneous global fuel price rises (which have also eased since recent highs). The world map highlights some of the countries particularly affected by food security challenges around the world which, in some cases, are also reflected in high and worsening Global Hunger Index (GHI) scores. 6
6 The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at global, regional, and national levels, reflecting multiple di- mensions of hunger over time. Each country’s GHI score is calculated based on a formula that combines four indicators that together capture the multidimension- al nature of hunger: Undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting and child mortality. The scoring range runs from Low (9.9 or less), Moderate (10.0–19.9), Serious (20.0–34.9), Alarming (35.0–49.9), and Extremely alarming (50 or higher) levels of hunger. For more detail, see https://www.globalhungerindex.org.
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