Around 281.6 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023, a year in which food crises increased drastically in conflict zones such as Gaza and Sudan, according to a report released this Wednesday.
The data is contained in the most recent edition of the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) produced by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) and which analyzed 59 countries/territories in food crisis.
Although the global percentage of the analyzed population facing high levels of acute food insecurity was slightly lower than in 2022, it remained higher than levels prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The conflicts that began last year in the Gaza Strip and Sudan have caused a rapid increase in acute food insecurity and malnutrition in these populations.
“The serious escalation of the conflict in Sudan from April 2023 and in the Gaza Strip from October 2023 led to devastating food crises,” the report points out.
To assess a situation of acute food insecurity, international agencies use a technical tool: the Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC), which is based on a scale of international scientific standards.
The “Hunger” classification represents the most severe phase of the IPC acute food insecurity scale, which has five stages: phase 1 (minimal), phase 2 (stress), phase 3 (crisis), phase 4 (emergency) and, finally, phase 5 (catastrophe/famine).
Sudan has the highest number of people in the world facing Emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of acute food insecurity, according to the report.
Already the Gaza Strip has become the most serious food crisis in the history of the IPC and GRFC, with its entire population of 2.2 million in IPC Phase 3 or an even more serious level.
The analysis carried out in December last year identified more than a quarter of the population of the Palestinian enclave facing the catastrophe phase (IPC Phase 5) and risk of famine.
Last month, famine was imminent in northern Gaza, a region under intense Israeli bombing since October 7, 2023, in retaliation for the unprecedented attack by the Islamist group Hamas.
Also according to the report, by next July it is expected that half of the enclave’s population (around 1.1 million people) will suffer catastrophe levels (IPC Phase 5) of acute food insecurity, reaching 70% in the provinces of north.
It is also estimated that almost a third of children suffer from acute malnutrition, amid ongoing hostilities and a lack of access to humanitarian aid and essential services.
More than 700,000 people in five countries faced disaster/famine (IPC Phase 5) in 2023 — the highest number in GRFC reports and almost double that recorded in 2022.
“In this phase of acute food insecurity, people face an extreme lack of food and the depletion of survival capabilities, which leads to starvation, acute malnutrition and death”, explains the survey, stressing that this level requires urgent measures to avoid more widespread extreme results.
Recurrent and increasingly intense shocks are interconnected and overlapping with food crises, the document noted, highlighting that, last year, conflicts were the main factor in 20 countries/territories, leading 135 million people to face high levels of food insecurity acute.
“It was the main driver of most of the ten biggest food crises – in number or percentage”, highlights the report, which also adds shocks to the economy and extreme weather events as factors that increased food insecurity in 2023.
In the global panorama, in countries with comparable data between 2022 and 2023, the report prepared by FSIN highlights that acute food insecurity has deteriorated in 12 of them, where an additional 13.5 million people were in urgent need of food and subsistence assistance.
Meanwhile, food security has improved in 17 countries, resulting in 7.2 million fewer people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
The Global Food Crisis Report is the result of a unique partnership and technical process that brings together the experience of 16 of the world’s leading food and nutrition security organizations.
