2025 Global Outlook: needs and solutions
Publication | 22 November 2024
The scale of the current global hunger and malnutrition crisis is enormous. A total of 1.9 people are in the grips of catastrophic hunger – primarily in Gaza and Sudan but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. They are teetering on the brink of famine. In Zamzam camp in northern Sudan, famine has been confirmed. Many food crises involve multiple overlapping issues that are building year on year.
A coordinated effort across governments, financial institutions, the private sector and partners is the only way to end the global food crisis. In countries such as Somalia, the international community came together and managed to pull people back from the brink of famine in 2022.
Political and diplomatic solutions are needed to strengthen peacebuilding efforts and ensure safe and unrestricted access across borders and conflict lines – to save lives and prevent the hunger catastrophe spreading even further.
But it is not sufficient to solely keep people alive. We must go further, and this can only be achieved by addressing the underlying causes of hunger. WFP's work to build resilience, adapt to climate change, promote good nutrition and improve food systems lays the foundations of a more prosperous future for millions.
In just four years, WFP and local communities turned 158,000 hectares of barren fields in the Sahel region of five African countries into farm and grazing land. Our climate-insurance programme – the R4 Rural Resilience initiative – had benefited nearly 550,000 vulnerable households and families in 18 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean by 2023. At the same time, WFP is working with governments in 83 countries to boost or build national safety nets and nutrition-sensitive social protection, allowing us to reach more people with emergency food assistance.
Severe funding shortfalls are forcing WFP to scale back assistance and refocus efforts on the most severe needs. With persistent access constraints also hampering support, some of the most vulnerable people are being left behind.
Unless resources are made available and unrestricted access granted, lost lives and the reversal of hard-earned development gains will be the price to pay.