Global hunger eases but remains above pre-pandemic levels

Global hunger fell in 2025 for a third straight year, but it still remained above the level recorded before COVID-19, according to the United Nations. The figures point to a partial recovery from the pandemic-era surge while conflict, economic stress and extreme weather continue to leave hundreds of millions short of food.

The UN’s latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report estimated that 645 million people faced hunger in 2025. That was 14 million fewer than in 2024 and 43 million fewer than in 2022, the report said.

As a share of the global population, hunger affected 7.8 percent of people in 2025, down from 8.1 percent in 2024 and 8.6 percent in 2022, according to the UN report published Tuesday.

Africa remains the center of the crisis

The report said Africa accounted for an estimated 309 million undernourished people in 2025, equal to one in five people on the continent and nearly half of the world total. Asia had 292 million undernourished people, or 6 percent of its population, while Latin America and the Caribbean had 32 million, or 4.8 percent.

According to the UN, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have reduced both the rate and the number of people facing hunger in recent years. In Africa, the long rise in hunger appeared to level off, with prevalence slipping from 20.3 percent in 2024 to 20 percent in 2025, though population growth meant the total number of hungry people still rose.

The UN projected that the number of undernourished people worldwide could fall by about one-fifth by 2030 compared with current estimates. Even with that improvement, the report said 510 million to 520 million people are expected to face hunger at the end of the decade, 56 percent of them in Africa.

The report also warned that recent crises, including the 2026 US-Israel war on Iran, could threaten progress, especially in Africa and Asia.

Healthy food remains out of reach for billions

The UN report said 2.69 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2025, down from 2.97 billion in 2021. That represented 32.7 percent of the global population, compared with 37.4 percent four years earlier.

The report said the decline suggested that, on average, income available for food rose faster than the price of a healthy diet. Still, the global daily cost of a healthy diet increased to $4.28 in purchasing power parity terms in 2025, up from $3.44 in 2021 and $2.94 in 2017.

Asia had the largest number of people unable to afford a healthy diet, at 1.4 billion, or 29 percent of its population, according to the report. Africa had the highest rate, with 1.03 billion people — nearly two-thirds of its population — unable to afford nutritious food.

Latin America and the Caribbean had about 172 million people in that category, equal to 26 percent of the population. The report put the figures at 77.5 million in Europe and North America, or 7 percent, and 2.3 million in Oceania, or 5 percent.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank define a healthy diet basket as the lowest-cost mix of locally available foods that meets daily energy needs and provides most essential nutrients. The basket includes 11 items from six food groups and provides about 2,330 kilocalories per person per day.

Catastrophic hunger persists

A separate Global Report on Food Crises 2026 by the FAO and the World Food Programme estimated that about 1.4 million people worldwide faced catastrophic hunger, the most severe level under the IPC/CH food security classification system.

The IPC/CH scale ranks food insecurity from Phase 1, or minimal, to Phase 5, catastrophe or famine. At Phase 5, households have exhausted survival options and face extreme food and basic-needs shortages, with starvation, acute malnutrition, destitution and death becoming widespread, according to the classification.

The FAO and WFP report said Gaza had about 640,700 people in catastrophic hunger, or 32 percent of its population. It put the figure for Sudan at 637,200 people, about 1 percent of the country’s population, followed by South Sudan with 83,500, Yemen with 41,200, Haiti with 8,400 and Mali with 2,600.

This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.