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.
Throughout history, portions of the world's population have often suffered sustained periods of hunger. In many cases, hunger resulted from food supply disruptions caused by war, plagues, or adverse weather. In the decades following World War II, technological progress and enhanced political cooperation suggested it might be possible to substantially reduce the number of people suffering from hunger. While progress was uneven, by 2015, the threat of extreme hunger had receded for a large portion of the world's population. According to the FAO's 2023 The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, this positive trend had reversed from about 2017, when a gradual rise in number of people suffering from chronic hunger became discernible. In 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in the number of people suffering from undernourishment. A recovery occurred in 2022 along with the economic rebound, though the impact on global food markets caused by the invasion of Ukraine meant the reduction in world hunger was limited.
While most of the world's people continue to live in Asia, much of the increase in hunger since 2017 occurred in Africa and South America. FAO has identified three reasons for the recent increase in hunger: climate, conflict, and economic slowdowns. Extreme weather is a primary driver of the increase in hunger, rising rates are especially severe in countries where agricultural systems were most sensitive to extreme weather variations. There is also a strong correlation between increases in hunger and countries that had suffered an economic slowdown. FAO found that if nothing was done to counter the adverse trends of the past six years, the number of people suffering from chronic hunger could rise by over 150 million by 2030. COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp jump in the number of people experiencing hunger, which levelled off in 2022. In 2024, hunger had increased globally for 6 years in a row with 8.2% of the global population experienced hunger in 2023, down from 8.5% in 2022 and 8.7% in 2021. An estimated 7.8% of the global population faced hunger in 2025. 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.
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.
Definition and related terms
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 Nations' 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 insecurity occurs when people are at risk, or worried about, not being able to meet their preferences for food, including in terms of raw calories and nutritional value. In the FAO definition, all hungry people are food insecure, but not all food-insecure people are hungry (though there is a very strong overlap between hunger and severe food insecurity.). The FAO have reported that food insecurity quite often results in simultaneous stunted growth for children, and obesity for adults. For hunger relief actors operating at the global or regional level, an increasingly commonly used metric for food insecurity is the IPC scale. Acute hunger is typically used to denote famine like hunger, though the phrase lacks a widely accepted formal definition. In the context of hunger relief, people experiencing 'acute hunger' may also suffer from 'chronic hunger'. The word is used mainly to denote severity, not long-term duration. Not all of the organizations in the hunger relief field use the FAO definition of hunger. Some use a broader definition that overlaps more fully with malnutrition. The alternative definitions do however tend to go beyond the commonly understood meaning of hunger as a painful or uncomfortable motivational condition; the desire for food is something that all humans frequently experience, even the most affluent, and is not in itself a social problem.
Very low food supply can be described as "food insecure with hunger." A change in description was made in 2006 at the recommendation of the Committee on National Statistics (National Research Council, 2006) in order to distinguish the physiological state of hunger from indicators of food availability. 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. Food security statistics is measured by using survey data, based on household responses to items about whether the household was able to obtain enough food to meet their needs.
World statistics
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 a 2026 United Nations report, global hunger had declined for three consecutive years, but improvements were not fast enough to be on track to achieve the 2030 SDG goal. Progress remains uneven with worsening hunger in parts of Africa and elsewhere; the report calls for multi-sectoral interventions to strengthen food systems.
Year2005201020152019202020212022202320242025Number (million) of undernourished people (global)788.8611.2 594.8583.7663.3686.1687.6 686.4 658.8 673.2Percentage of undernourished people (global)12.0%8.7%8.0%7.5%8.4%8.6%8.6%8.5%8.1%7.8% An alternative measure of hunger across the world is the Global Hunger Index (GHI). Unlike the FAO's measure, the GHI defines hunger in a way that goes beyond raw calorie intake, to include for example ingestion of micronutrients. GDI is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of countries' hunger situation. The GHI measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger. 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.K. von Grebmer, J. Bernstein, A. de Waal, N. Prasai, S. Yin, Y. Yohannes: 2015 Global Hunger Index - Armed Conflict and the Challenge of Hunger. Bonn, Washington D. C., Dublin: Welthungerhilfe, IFPRI, and Concern Worldwide. October 2015. 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.K. von Grebmer, J. Bernstein, R. Mukerji, F. Patterson, M. Wiemers, R. Ní Chéilleachair, C. Foley, S. Gitter, K. Ekstrom, and H. Fritschel. 2019. 2019 Global Hunger Index: The Challenge of Hunger and Climate Change. Bonn: Welthungerhilfe; and Dublin: Concern Worldwide.
In 2026, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization found that Between 608 and 696 million people in the world, corresponding to 7.4 and 8.5% of the global population, respectively, faced hunger in 2025. For the first time, Africa hosts the largest number of people facing hunger. In 2025, hunger affected 309 million people in Africa, 292 million in Asia and 32 million in Latin America and the Caribbean – 20.0%, 6.0% and 4.8% of the population, respectively.
In 2025 they 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 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.
The fight against hunger
Pre World War II