UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist Lisa Lock Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Chief Editor Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, released Tuesday by five United Nations specialized agencies. The report estimates that 7.8% of the global population faced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022, confirming a sustained, albeit slow, improvement.

This means that around 645 million people were affected by hunger in 2025, representing a reduction of nearly 14 million compared with 2024 and 43 million compared with 2022. Despite global progress, recovery remains uneven across regions. Asia, together with Latin America and the Caribbean, has recorded steady improvements in recent years.

In contrast, Africa is now home to approximately 309 million hungry people, compared with 292 million in Asia. Although Africa's previously rising trend is beginning to stabilize, with the share of its population facing hunger decreasing from 20.3% in 2024 to 20.0% in 2025, the continent now has the highest number of hungry people in absolute terms amid a rapidly growing population. Broader measures of food access tell a similar story.

In 2025, an estimated 25.8% of the global population (around 2.1 billion people) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they were at times forced to compromise on the quality or quantity of the food they ate. This is down from 27.1% in 2024 and 28.7% in 2020—equivalent to nearly 86 million fewer people than in 2024 and 135 million fewer than in 2020, though still above pre-pandemic levels. Regional disparities remain stark.

More than half of Africa's population (56.6%) faced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, compared with 20.3% in Asia, 22.9% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.7% in Northern America and Europe. Food insecurity also continues to be more prevalent in rural areas than in peri-urban and urban areas, while women remain disproportionately affected, although the gender gap narrowed slightly in 2025. Hunger projections in the context of the Middle East conflict The annual report also offers updated hunger projections for the next five years in light of the conflict in the Middle East.

Depending on the duration of the crisis' impact on food inflation—which is driven by higher energy and fertilizer prices—approximately 510–520 million people may still be facing hunger in 2030 (compared with the lower projection of 503 million in the pre-conflict scenario), with the global number of undernourished people expected to decrease by 20%. However, other potential disruptors, including the effects of weather extremes such as El Niño in 2026 and 2027, are not considered in these projections and could further compound these effects. The report's joint authors—the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO)—warn that the 2026 Middle East conflict, along with weather extremes and reductions in official development assistance and humanitarian funding, threatens to undermine the progress made to end global hunger.