Syllabus:

GS2: Issues relating to poverty and hunger.

Context: 

The GRFC 2025 reveals rising global food insecurity and malnutrition, driven by conflict, displacement and economic shocks,

Key highlights of the report

In 2024, over 295 million people across 53 countries and territories faced acute levels of hunger.

• This marks an increase of 13.7 million people compared to 2023.

About 23% of the assessed population experienced acute food insecurity, the fifth consecutive year this figure has exceeded 20%.

It was also the sixth consecutive year of rising acute food insecurity and child malnutrition in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

Acute food insecurity worsened in 19 countries, mainly driven by conflict — including Nigeria, Sudan, and Myanmar.

15 countries showed improvements due to better economic conditions, weather, and humanitarian assistance — notably Afghanistan, Kenya, and Ukraine.

Malnutrition and Nutrition Crises

• In 26 countries/territories with nutrition crises, around 37.7 million children aged 6–59 months were acutely malnourished.
• The worst-affected countries in terms of child malnutrition were Sudan, Yemen, Mali, and the Gaza Strip.
• The Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) burden in the top ten countries rose from 26.9 million (2023) to 30.4 million (2024).
• Most acutely malnourished children were located in the seven countries facing the largest food crises.
• Food and nutrition crises often overlap, compounding the impact in fragile regions.

Displacement and Hunger Severity

In 2024, 95.8 million forcibly displaced people lived in food crisis contexts across 53 countries/territories.

• Of these, 75% were internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Out of the 65 countries/territories selected, 53 had data meeting GRFC technical requirements.

India was not selected among the 53 countries analysed for the report.

The total number of people facing Catastrophe (IPC/CH Phase 5) more than doubled from 2023 to 2024.

What is Famine?

• The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) defines Famine as a situation in which at least one in five households has an extreme lack of food and face starvation and destitution, resulting in extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.
• A Famine classification (IPC Phase 5) is the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.