On World Food Day, the goal of defeating global hunger is moving away: we will get there (perhaps) in 2137.
One hundred and forty million peopledouble the Italian population: many are currently in a condition of acute hunger linked to a war. In the last year, armed conflicts have triggered at least 20 food crises in the world: they have been the largest global multiplier of hunger, responsible – in 2024 – for 47% of global cases of acute hunger.
These are the numbers contained in the Global Hunger Index, the Global Hunger Index 2025, one of the most important reports on the measurement of hunger in the world, edited for the Italian edition by CESVI, a non-profit organization committed to fighting poverty and promoting sustainable development.
The publication arrives on the occasion of World Food Day on 16 October 2025 and on the eightieth birthday of FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, founded on 16 October (1945).
A “new normal”: hunger as a weapon
The right to food should be a universal right, yet the use of hunger as a weapon of war seems to be going through a normalization phase, as demonstrated by the armed conflicts in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. According to the report, which has among its international signatories the NGOs Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and Concern Worldwide and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV), a German academic research institute on humanitarian crises, between 2023 and 2024, people exposed to famine levels more than doubled, reaching almost two million: 95% of them live in these two places torn apart by conflict.
Hunger was not, and is not only, a “collateral” consequence of armed clashes, but has become a form of violence deliberately acted through blockades of aid, bureaucratic obstacles aimed at preventing it from arriving, systematic destruction of agricultural fields and productive activities, spread of unexploded bombs and destruction of water and sanitation services: these conditions are all present simultaneously in Gaza and will constitute a danger to food for many years to come.
Again in Gaza, the most emblematic example of the consequences of hunger used as a weapon of war, despite the fragile truce a dramatic famine is underway, with incoming aid still very limited and the prices of basic necessities skyrocketing (+3,400% for flour). Local food production is made impossible by the destruction of 98% of agricultural land; 320,000 children under 5 are at risk of acute malnutrition, over 54,600 already suffer from it, over 20,000 people have been injured or killed (2,580) trying to get food or access aid.
A delay of a century
The Global Hunger Index calculates the global level of malnutrition through four indicators: malnutrition, stunting of childhood growth, childhood wasting And infant mortality. From 2016 to today there have been no significant improvements in these 4 areas due to a combination of armed conflicts, economic fragility and climate change. Today the global score of the Global Hunger Index is 18.3: in technical jargon it is a “moderate” level of global malnutrition, in practice this translates into 295 million people suffering from acute hunger in 53 countries or territories, 13.7 million more in 2024 compared to 2023.
Numbers that make the hope of defeating hunger and guaranteeing global food security of Objective 2 of Agenda 2030 go up in smoke. Proceeding at the current pace, the report reveals, we would get there in 2137, over 100 years later.
The geography of hunger
The document notes that hunger has reached alarming levels in 7 countries (Haiti, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Burundi and Yemen) and is classified as serious in 35 others. In some of these, such as Palestine, Sudan, North Korea, the levels could be even more serious than the statistics report, because the essential data to calculate the index indicators is missing. This risks making the situation even worse, because a scarcity of data risks making needs become “invisible”.
In mid-2024, famine was confirmed in some areas of Darfur, a region of western Sudan, with approximately 760,000 people in catastrophic food insecurity due to the civil war that has ravaged the country for over two years.
40% of undernourished people globally are found in South Asia, while the regions of Africa south of the Sahara hold the sad record for child mortality linked to hunger. In Southeast Asia, Myanmar stands out for the precarious conditions of its population, recovering from an increase in violence and the earthquake which displaced 3 million people in March 2025. 25% of the population is in critical conditions of food insecurity.
