GENEVA The latest report on food security on Wednesday said that global hunger levels have plateaued for three consecutive years after having risen sharply in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as one out of 11 people in world faced hunger last year. "The world is still far off track" to achieve the sustainable development goal of zero hunger by 2030, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report by UN agencies. Noting that between 713 and 757 million people may have faced hunger in 2023 in the world - and one out of every five in Africa, the report found that considering the mid-range (733 million), this is about 152 million more people than in 2019.
Hunger is still on the rise in Africa, it said, but it has remained relatively unchanged in Asia, while notable progress has been made in the Latin America and Caribbean region. Africa remains the region with "the largest proportion of the population facing hunger" with 20.4 percent, compared with 8.
1% in Asia, 6.2% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7.3% in Oceania, it found.
However, the report said, Asia is still home to more than half of all those facing hunger in the world. "The lack of improvement in food security and the uneven progress in the economic access to healthy diets cast a shadow over the possibility of achieving Zero Hunger in the world, six years away from the 2030 deadline," it said. According to the report, it is projected that 582 million people will be "chronically un.