What's New

The realities of a changing climate are becoming increasingly clear, with temperatures rising around the world and extreme weather events, like flooding and droughts, becoming more and more frequent. April 2025 was the second hottest April globally on record, and evidence suggests such anomalous high temperatures could become the norm rather than the exception.

Within a few weeks of marking the first anniversary of the Hamas-Israel war, the worst possible food security scenario is playing out in Gaza.

As the world edges closer to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal deadline, progress on achieving Zero Hunger has stalled, according to the FAO’s 2024 flagship report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World.

As many as 757 million people may have experienced hunger in 2023, while 2.33 billion experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. In 2022, as many as 2.8 billion were not able to afford a nutritious diet. The situation is particularly dire in low-income countries, especially for rural populations, women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples.

Despite some improvements during April and May, the Gaza Strip continues to face catastrophic food insecurity with a high risk of famine, according to the latest assessment of the Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), released on June 25.

The IPC reports that 96% of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 4) through September, while 22%, over 495,000 people, face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5).

An estimated 122 million more people around the world faced hunger in 2022 than in 2019, according to the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, released in December. While progress in reducing hunger was made in Asia and Latin America between 2021 and 2022, hunger continued to rise in Africa, as well as in Western Asia and the Caribbean.

If these trends continue, the report’s authoring organizations[1] warn, the world will not be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of ending hunger by 2030.

Global and Regional Trends