Hunger

thumb|[[The Hunger March sculptures in Copenhagen]]

In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which an individual does not have the physical or financial capability to consume sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that surpasses the typical desire for food that all humans experience, also referred to as an appetite. The most severe type of hunger is when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, this results in a declaration of famine.

thumb|right|250px|[[Martin Luther King Jr. (center), one of many 20th century political figures who considered it important to fight hunger: "When I die, don't build a monument to me. Don't bestow me degrees from great universities. Just clothe the naked. Say that I tried to house the homeless. Let people say that I tried to feed the hungry."

Many thousands of organizations are engaged in the field of hunger relief, operating at local, national, regional, or international levels. Some of these organizations are dedicated to hunger relief, while others may work in several different fields. The organizations range from multilateral institutions to national governments, to small local initiatives such as independent soup kitchens. Many participate in umbrella networks that connect thousands of different hunger relief organizations. At the global level, much of the world's hunger relief efforts are coordinated by the UN and geared towards achieving SDG 2 of Zero Hunger by 2030.

There is one globally recognized approach for defining and measuring hunger generally used by those studying or working to relieve hunger as a social problem. This is the United Nation's FAO measurement, which is typically referred to as chronic undernourishment (or in older publications, as 'food deprivation,' 'chronic hunger,' or just plain 'hunger.') For the FAO:

Hunger or chronic undernourishment exists when "caloric intake is below the minimum dietary energy requirement (MDER). The MDER is the amount of energy needed to perform light activity and to maintain a minimum acceptable weight for attained height." The FAO use different MDER thresholds for different countries, due to variations in climate and cultural factors. Typically a yearly "balance sheet" approach is used, with the minimum dietary energy requirement tallied against the estimated total calories consumed over the year. The FAO definitions differentiate hunger from malnutrition and food insecurity:
Malnutrition results from "deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in the consumption of macro- and/or micro-nutrients." In the FAO definition, all hungry people suffer from malnutrition, but people who are malnourished may not be hungry. They may get sufficient raw calories to avoid hunger but lack essential micronutrients, or they may even consume an excess of raw calories and hence suffer from obesity. Food insecure is when food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food.

World statistics

thumb|Prevalence of undernourishment by region

thumb|Number of people undernourished by region

The United Nations publishes an annual report on the state of food security and nutrition across the world. Led by the FAO, the report was joint authored by four other UN agencies: the WFP, IFAD, WHO and UNICEF. The theme of the 2024 report is on how efforts to meet SDG 2.1 & 2.2 can be financed. The FAO's yearly report provides a statistical overview on the prevalence of hunger around the world, and is widely considered the main global reference for tracking hunger. No simple set of statistics can ever fully capture the multi dimensional nature of hunger however. Reasons include that the FAO's key metric for hunger, "undernourishment", is defined solely in terms of dietary energy availability – disregarding micro-nutrients such as vitamins or minerals. Second, the FAO uses the energy requirements for minimum activity levels as a benchmark; many people would not count as hungry by the FAO's measure yet still be eating too little to undertake hard manual labour, which might be the only sort of work available to them. Thirdly, the FAO statistics do not always reflect short-term undernourishment.

According to the report of United Nations from 2025, acute food insecurity has increased globally for 6 years in a row. As funding become scarce, a possible solution is "investment in sustainable agriculture, which is four times more cost-effective than direct food assistance but only accounts for three percent of humanitarian funds."

{| class="wikitable"

!Year!!2005!!2010!!2015!!2018!!2019!!2020!!2021!!2022!!2023

!2024

!Number (million) of undernourished people (global) The GHI is updated once a year. The data from the 2015 report showed that Hunger levels have dropped 27% since 2000. Fifty two countries remained at serious or alarming levels. The 2019 GHI report expresses concern about the increase in hunger since 2015. In addition to the latest statistics on Hunger and Food Security, the GHI also features different special topics each year. The 2019 report includes an essay on hunger and climate change, with evidence suggesting that areas most vulnerable to climate change have suffered much of the recent increases in hunger.

In 2025, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated 8.2% of the global population may have faced hunger in 2024, down from 8.5% in 2023 and 8.7% in 2022. The progress is driven by notable improvement in South-eastern Asia, Southern Asia and South America in contrast to the continuing rise in hunger in most subregions of Africa and in Western Asia. It is estimated that between 638 and 720 million people, corresponding to 7.8 and 8.8 percent of the global population, respectively, faced hunger in 2024. Considering the point estimate (673 million), this indicates a decrease of 22 million compared to 2022. In 2024, hunger affected about 307 million people in Africa, 323 million (20.2% of the population) in Asia and 34 million in Latin America (6.7% of the population) and the Caribbean (5.1% of the population). The global number of undernourished is expected to decrease, but 512 million people are still projected to be facing hunger in 2030, of whom nearly 60 percent will be in Africa. recognized. The philosopher Simone Weil wrote that feeding the hungry when you have resources to do so is the most obvious of all human obligations. She says that as far back as Ancient Egypt, many believed that people had to show they had helped the hungry in order to justify themselves in the afterlife. Weil writes that Social progress is commonly held to be first of all, "...a transition to a state of human society in which people will not suffer from hunger."

Social historian Karl Polanyi wrote that before markets became the world's dominant form of economic organization in the 19th century, most human societies would either starve all together or not at all, because communities would invariably share their food.

While some of the principles for avoiding famines had been laid out in the first book of the Bible, they were not always understood. Historical hunger relief efforts were often largely left to religious organizations and individual kindness. Even up to early modern times, political leaders often reacted to famine with bewilderment and confusion. From the first age of globalization, which began in the 19th century, it became more common for the elite to consider problems like hunger in global terms. However, as early globalization largely coincided with the high peak of influence for classical liberalism, there was relatively little call for politicians to address world hunger.

alt=A pencil sketch image depicts a mother with her head downcast, holding an infant in her arms. Near her are two other children, looking thin and sickly. There is no father depicted. Everyone is drawn slumped over and appears melancholy.|thumb|A poster made by the United States Food Administration around the years 1914-1917 urging Americans to ration

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the view that politicians ought not to intervene against hunger was increasingly challenged by campaigning journalists. There were also more frequent calls for large scale intervention against world hunger from academics and politicians, such as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Funded both by the government and private donations, the U.S. was able to dispatch millions of tons of food aid to European countries during and in the years immediately after WWI, organized by agencies such as the American Relief Administration. Hunger as an academic and social topic came to further prominence in the U.S. thanks to mass media coverage of the issue as a domestic problem during the Great Depression.

Efforts after World War II

While there had been increasing attention to hunger relief from the late 19th century, Dr David Grigg has summarised that prior to the end of World War II, world hunger still received relatively little academic or political attention; whereas after 1945 there was an explosion of interest in the topic.

The newly established United Nations became a leading player in co-ordinating the global fight against hunger. The UN has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). FAO is the world's agricultural knowledge agency, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas. WFP's key mission is to deliver food into the hands of the hungry poor. The agency steps in during emergencies and uses food to aid recovery after emergencies. Its longer term approaches to hunger helps the transition from recovery to development. IFAD, with its knowledge of rural poverty and exclusive focus on poor rural people, designs and implements programmes to help those people access the assets, services and opportunities they need to overcome poverty.

Until at least the 1980s—and, to an extent, the 1990s—the dominant academic view concerning world hunger was that it was a problem of demand exceeding supply. Proposed solutions often focused on boosting food production, and sometimes on birth control. There were exceptions to this, even as early as the 1940s, Lord Boyd-Orr, the first head of the UN's FAO, had perceived hunger as largely a problem of distribution, and drew up comprehensive plans to correct this. Few agreed with him at the time, however, and he resigned after failing to secure support for his plans from the US and Great Britain. In 1998, Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize in part for demonstrating that hunger in modern times is not typically the product of a lack of food. Rather, hunger usually arises from food distribution problems, or from governmental policies in the developed and developing world. It has since been broadly accepted that world hunger results from issues with the distribution as well as the production of food. Sen's 1981 essay Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation played a prominent part in forging the new consensus.

In 2007 and 2008, rapidly increasing food prices caused a global food crisis. Food riots erupted in several dozen countries; in at least two cases, Haiti and Madagascar, this led to the toppling of governments. A second global food crisis unfolded due to the spike in food prices of late 2010 and early 2011. Fewer food riots occurred, due in part to greater availability of food stock piles for relief. However, several analysts argue the food crisis was one of the causes of the Arab Spring.

Efforts since the global 2008 crisis

thumb|right|Ratifiers and (potential) signatories to the [[Food Assistance Convention:<br />

]]

In the early 21st century, the attention paid to the problem of hunger by the leaders of advanced nations such as those that form the G8 had somewhat subsided.

Food prices fell sharply in 2009 and early 2010, though analysts credit this much more to farmers increasing production in response to the 2008 spike in prices, than to the fruits of enhanced government action. However, since the 2009 G8 summit, the fight against hunger became a high-profile issue among the leaders of the worlds major nations and was a prominent part of the agenda for the 2012 G-20 summit.

thumb|left|British prime minister [[David Cameron (waving to camera) hosting a hunger summit in 2012, with Pelé (second left) and Mo Farah (right) outside 10 Downing Street in London]]

In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the world's first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The May 2012 Copenhagen Consensus recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. They put this ahead of other priorities, like the fight against malaria and AIDS. Also in May 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama launched a "new alliance for food security and nutrition"—a broad partnership between private sector, governmental and civil society actors—that aimed to "...achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years." The UK's prime minister David Cameron held a hunger summit on 12 August, the last day of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Europe, with its more generous welfare systems, had little awareness of domestic hunger until the food price inflation that began in late 2006, and especially as austerity-imposed welfare cuts began to take effect in 2010. Various surveys reported that upwards of 10% of Europe's population had begun to suffer from food insecurity. Especially since 2011, there has been a substantial increase in grass roots efforts to help the hungry by means of food banks, both in the UK and in continental Europe.

thumb|left|Affected areas in the western [[Sahel belt during the 2012 drought]]

By July 2012, the 2012 US drought had already caused a rapid increase in the price of grain and soy, with a knock on effect on the price of meat. As well as affecting hungry people in the US, this caused prices to rise on the global markets; the US is the world's biggest exporter of food. This led to much talk of a possible third 21st century global food crisis. The Financial Times reported that the BRICS may not be as badly affected as they were in the earlier crises of 2008 and 2011. However, smaller developing countries that must import a substantial portion of their food could be hard hit. The UN and G20 has begun contingency planning so as to be ready to intervene if a third global crisis breaks out.

By August 2013 however, concerns had been allayed, with above average grain harvests expected from major exporters, including Japan, Brazil, Ukraine and the US. 2014 also saw a good worldwide harvest, leading to speculation that grain prices could soon begin to fall.

In an April 2013 summit held in Dublin concerning Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice, and the post 2015 MDG framework for global justice, Ireland's President Higgins said that only 10% of deaths from hunger are due to armed conflict and natural disasters, with ongoing hunger being both the "greatest ethical failure of the current global system" and the "greatest ethical challenge facing the global community."

$4.15 billion of new commitments were made to tackle hunger at a June 2013 Hunger Summit held in London, hosted by the governments of Britain and Brazil, together with The Children's Investment Fund Foundation.

Despite the hardship caused by the 2008 financial crisis and global increases in food prices that occurred around the same time, the UN's global statistics show it was followed by close to year on year reductions in the numbers suffering from hunger around the world. By 2019 however, evidence had mounted that this progress seemed to have gone into reverse over the last four years. The numbers suffering from hunger had risen both in absolute terms and very slightly even as a percentage of the world's population.

In April and May 2020, concerns were expressed that the COVID-19 pandemic could result in a doubling in global hunger unless world leaders acted to prevent this. Agencies such as the WFP warned that this could include the number of people facing acute hunger rising from 135 million to about 265 million by the end of 2020. Indications of extreme hunger were seen in various cities, such as fatal stampedes when word spread that emergency food aid was being handed out. Letters calling for co-ordinated action to offset the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were written to the G20 and G7, by various actors including NGOs, UN staff, corporations, academics and former national leaders.

The FAO found that 122 million more people experienced hunger in 2022 compared to 2019. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, concerns have been raised over hunger resulting from rising food prices. This is forecast to risk civil unrest even in many middle income countries, where government capability to protect their populations was largely exhausted by the Covid pandemic, and has not yet recovered.

thumb|Projected levels of hunger in 2030 by UN [[Food and Agriculture Organization.]]

Between 713 and 757 million people may have faced hunger in 2023 – one out of 11 people in the world, and one out of every five in Africa. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has remained unchanged at the global level from 2020 to 2023 with hunger is still on the rise in Africa, but it has remained relatively unchanged in Asia, while progress has been made in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Africa is the region with the largest percentage of the population facing hunger – 20.4%, compared with 8.1% in Asia, 6.2& in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7.3% in Oceania. However, Asia is still home to the largest number: 384.5 million, or more than half of all those facing hunger in the world. In Africa, 298.4 million people may have faced hunger in 2023, compared with 41.0 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 3.3 million in Oceania.

Hunger relief organisations

Many thousands of hunger relief organisations exist across the world. Some but not all are entirely dedicated to fighting hunger. They range from independent soup kitchens that serve only one locality, to global organisations. Organisations working at the global and regional level will often focus much of their efforts on helping hungry communities to better feed themselves, for example by sharing agricultural technology. With some exceptions, organisations that work just on the local level tend to focus more on providing food directly to hungry people. Many of the entities are connected by a web of national, regional and global alliances that help them share resources, knowledge, and coordinate efforts.

Global

The United Nations is central to global efforts to relieve hunger, most especially through the FAO, and also via other agencies: such as WFP, IFAD, WHO and UNICEF. After the Millennium Development Goals expired in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) became key objectives to shape the world's response to development challenges such as hunger. In particular Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

The partnership Compact2025, led by IFPRI with the involvement of UN organisations, NGOs and private foundations develops and disseminates evidence-based advice to politicians and other decision-makers aimed at ending hunger and undernutrition in the coming 10 years, by 2025. It bases its claim that hunger can be ended by 2025 on a report by Shenggen Fan and Paul Polman that analyzed the experiences from Russia, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Thailand and concludes that eliminating hunger and undernutrition was possible by 2025.

Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2 or Goal 2)

The objective of SDG 2 is to "end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture" by 2030. SDG2 recognizes that dealing with hunger is not only based on increasing food production but also on proper markets, access to land and technology and increased and efficient incomes for farmers.

A report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) of 2013 argued that the emphasis of the SDGs should be on eliminating hunger and under-nutrition, rather than on poverty, and that attempts should be made to do so by 2025 rather than 2030. The argument is based on an analysis of experiences in Russia, China, Vietnam, Brazil, and Thailand and the fact that people suffering from severe hunger face extra impediments to improving their lives, whether it be by education or work. Three pathways to achieve this were identified: 1) agriculture-led; 2) social protection- and nutrition- intervention-led; or 3) a combination of both of these approaches.

National

thumb|Volunteers pass out food items from a food bank run by [[Feeding America.]]

Examples of hunger relief organisations that operate on the national level include The Trussell Trust in the United Kingdom, the Nalabothu Foundation in India, and Feeding America in the United States.

Local

Food bank

A food bank (or foodbank) is a non-profit, charitable organization that aids in the distribution of food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger. Food banks tend to run on different operating models depending on where they are located. In the U.S., Australia, and to some extent in Canada, foodbanks tend to perform a warehouse type function, storing and delivering food to front line food orgs, but not giving it directly to hungry peoples themselves. In much of Europe and elsewhere, food banks operate on the front line model, where they hand out parcels of uncooked food direct to the hungry, typically giving them enough for several meals which they can eat in their homes. In the U.S and Australia, establishments that hand out uncooked food to individual people are instead called food pantries, food shelves or food closets.

In Less Developed Countries, there are charity-run food banks that operate on a semi-commercial system that differs from both the more common "warehouse" and "frontline" models. In some rural LDCs such as Malawi, food is often relatively cheap and plentiful for the first few months after the harvest, but then becomes more and more expensive. Food banks in those areas can buy large amounts of food shortly after the harvest, and then as food prices start to rise, they sell it back to local people throughout the year at well below market prices. Such food banks will sometimes also act as centers to provide small holders and subsistence farmers with various forms of support.

Soup kitchen

thumb|A soup kitchen in [[Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1931]]

A soup kitchen, meal center, or food kitchen is a place where food is offered to the hungry for free or at a below market price. Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, they are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes obtain food from a food bank for free or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed the many people who require their services.

Others

Local establishments calling themselves "food banks" or "soup kitchens" are often run either by Christian churches or less frequently by secular civil society groups. Other religions carry out similar hunger relief efforts, though sometimes with slightly different methods. For example, in the Sikh tradition of Langar, food is served to the hungry direct from Sikh temples. There are exceptions to this, for example in the UK Sikhs run some of the food banks, as well as giving out food direct from their Gurdwaras.

Hunger and gender

thumb|[[Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1936)]]

World Bank studies consistently find that about 60% of those who are hungry are female. Globally, women typically face greater economic barriers compared to men and have access to fewer resources, creating greater obstacles to food security. In both developing and advanced countries, parents sometimes go without food so they can feed their children. Women, however, seem more likely to make this sacrifice than men. Older sources sometimes claim this phenomenon is unique to developing countries, due to greater sexual inequality. More recent findings suggested that mothers often miss meals in advanced economies too. For example, a 2012 study undertaken by Netmums in the UK found that one in five mothers sometimes misses out on food to save their children from hunger.

One partner-households are especially vulnerable to food insecurity and highlight a gender disparity in food security. In the U.S., households with children raised by single-mothers are more likely to be food insecure compared to households with single-fathers. Differences in time allocation between paid work and unpaid work may also be an explanation for increased food disparity in women-lead households, as women tend to dedicate more time to unpaid work comparatively.

In several periods and regions, gender has also been an important factor determining whether or not victims of hunger would make suitable examples for generating enthusiasm for hunger relief efforts. James Vernon, in his Hunger: A Modern History, wrote that in Britain before the twentieth century, it was generally only women and children suffering from hunger who could arouse compassion. Men who failed to provide for themselves and their families were often regarded with contempt.

This age group suffers the most from chronic conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory diseases. Eighty percent of this group has a minimum of one chronic condition, and almost 70% have two or more. These illnesses are exacerbated and are more likely to develop under the addition of hunger. A report from 2017 shows that seniors facing this issue are 60% more likely to experience depression than seniors who are not hungry, and 40% are more likely to develop congestive heart failure. The added stress of inconsistent and inadequate feedings make these conditions much more dangerous.

Fixed incomes often limit the elderly's ability to freely purchase food necessities. Medical costs and housing may take priority over quality foods. Limited mobility makes it difficult for these individuals to physically leave their homes, especially in areas lacking public transportation or transportation catering to a disabled body.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides aid to low-income seniors in relation to food security. This is an opportunity for seniors who receive benefits to allocate money in their budgets for other needs, such as medical or housing bills. However, participation is extremely low. Fewer than half of eligible seniors are enrolled and receive benefits; 3 out of five seniors are qualified but not enrolled.

Sources

References

External links

Action Against Hunger ACF-USA
Action Against Hunger ACF-UK
Hunger Relief International HRI
Hunger Relief research on IssueLab
The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)
Ten Things you can do to Fight World Hunger The Nation, 13 May 2009
United Nation 2007 report
World Food Programme WFP

World statistics

Efforts after World War II

Efforts since the global 2008 crisis

Hunger relief organisations

Global

Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2 or Goal 2)

National

Local

Food bank

Soup kitchen

Others

Hunger and gender

See also

Sources

References

Further reading

External links

Definition and related terms

World statistics

Efforts after World War II

Efforts since the global 2008 crisis

Hunger relief organisations

Global

Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2 or Goal 2)

National

Local

Food bank

Soup kitchen

Others

Hunger and gender

See also

Sources

References

Further reading

External links