2024 Global Hunger Index: Gender Justice for Climate Resilience and Zero Hunger
Debt crises, wars, and increasingly dramatic impacts of climate change exacerbate structural inequalities—women and marginalized groups are particularly affected. But progress is possible. What needs to be done?
Little progress has been made to reduce hunger amid overlapping crises. Debt crises, wars, and increasingly dramatic impacts of climate change exacerbate structural inequalities—women and marginalized groups are particularly affected. But progress is possible. What needs to be done?
On 10 October, Welthungerhilfe (WHH), Concern Worldwide, and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV), launched the 2024 edition of the Global Hunger Index (GHI). With the 2030 target date for achieving Zero Hunger fast approaching, the 2024 GHI makes it starkly clear that the world is far from meeting that critical goal. The realization of the right to adequate food is out of reach for billions of people and many countries and territories experience acute food crises. While the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th anniversary of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food, the human right to adequate food and humanitarian law are blatantly disregarded in many parts of the world.
What is the Global Hunger Index?
The Global Hunger Index is a peer-reviewed report published by Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide on an annual basis. In 2024, the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) has joined the effort to calculate and develop the Index. Since 2006, the GHI has become the key civil society report to measure and track long-term trends of hunger at global, regional, and national levels. The report raises awareness of the scale and scope of hunger across the globe with the aim of providing incentives to act. It also serves as a basis for discussion with government, civil society, academia, and others across various countries.
To capture the complex and multidimensional nature of hunger, the GHI combines the following four indicators:
- Undernourishment: the share of the population whose caloric intake is insufficient
- Child stunting: the share of children under the age of five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition;
- Child wasting: the share of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition; and
- Child mortality: the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, reflecting in part the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments
This allows the GHI to capture not only the availability of calories but also diet quality and utilization of food.
Read more about the methodology on our website: Methodology - Global Hunger Index (GHI).
Progress towards achieving Zero Hunger is falling short
Over the past decade, worldwide progress against hunger has slowed to a troubling degree. The 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI) score for the world is 18.3, considered moderate, down only slightly from the 2016 score of 18.8. Progress towards achieving Zero Hunger by 2030 is falling short of internationally agreed targets. At the current pace, at least 64 countries will not reach low hunger—much less Zero Hunger—by 2030. The situation is most severe in Africa South of the Sahara and South Asia, where hunger remains serious.
Dozens of countries still experience a level of hunger that is much too high. According to the 2024 GHI, hunger is considered alarming in 6 countries: Burundi, Chad, Madagascar, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. In another 36 countries, hunger is designated as serious. Furthermore, many countries are slipping backward: in 22 countries with moderate, serious, or alarming 2024 GHI scores, hunger has further increased since 2016. In another 20 countries in these categories, progress has largely stalled.
The right to adequate food is largely unenforced and unrealized
These score trends reflect the reality that for billions of people, the right to adequate food is out of reach. Globally, 733 million people—significantly more than a decade ago—lack access to sufficient calories. Worldwide, 148 million children are stunted, 45 million children are wasted, and almost 5 million children die every year before age five. 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Acute food insecurity and the risk of famine are on the rise. Approximately 282 million people were experiencing an acute food crisis in 2023. This number has been on the rise for five consecutive years, with a surge in people at risk of starvation in a number of states and territories, including Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Mali, and South Sudan.
A barrage of successive and overlapping crises is driving hunger
Underlying these alarming statistics is a state of permacrisis—a barrage of successive and overlapping challenges that have hit the world’s poorest countries and people hardest, amplifying structural inequalities. In the past two years, large-scale armed conflicts have erupted, climate change indicators have climbed off the charts, and inequality between and within countries is on the rise. More than 115 million people face displacement because of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations, or civil disorder, and many more due to weather-related disasters. Low- and middle-income countries have found themselves facing dire economic outlooks, with market disruptions, high domestic food prices, and surging debt service payments constraining their capacity to invest in crucial public services, including nutrition services, and investments in climate resilience and food systems transformation.
In Haiti, for example, hunger levels have been climbing dramatically as the country experiences a series of compounding shocks, including erratic rainfall, rampant inflation, and political turmoil that has fueled gang violence and internal displacement. In Pakistan, high inflation, fiscal deficits, and frequent natural disasters exacerbate food shortages. In 2022, extreme rainfall led to unprecedented flooding and a severe food crisis that has been attributed to climate change.
Globally, investments and actions do not match the size of the problem or commitments made. The impacts of malnutrition cost the global economy up to US$3.5 trillion a year, yet international assistance for basic nutrition has remained low and erratic. In 2023, official development assistance (ODA) from OECD countries amounted to just 0.37 percent of gross national income, far below the 0.7 percent target.
Climate change is wreaking havoc across many countries
Some of the world’s poorest countries are now on the front lines of the climate crisis. Madagascar, for example, is facing a prolonged drought, attributed to climate change. Southern Africa is currently experiencing a severe drought—reported to be the worst on record in parts of Zambia and Zimbabwe—with devastating impacts for the population, which depends largely on rainfed subsistence crop production and drought-sensitive water sources. Since October 2020, large parts of Eastern Africa have faced their worst drought in 40 years, resulting in harvest failures, livestock losses, decreased surface water availability, and increased conflict.
By mid-century, climate change could push 80 million more people into hunger, primarily in Africa South of the Sahara, South Asia, and Central America. In the ten years from 2008 to 2018, disasters caused an estimated US$108.5 billion loss in crop and livestock production in low- and middle-income countries, nearly matching Germany’s total Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the same years.
Yet, funding to support climate strategies that avert loss and damage is far below what is needed and is often provided in the form of loans, adding to debt burdens.
Conflicts have again raised the specter of famine
Conflicts have again raised the specter of famine, and starvation is proliferating as a weapon of war. The wars in Gaza and Sudan have devastated food systems and severely restricted humanitarian access, leading to exceptional food crises. Sudan is facing a hunger crisis on a scale not experienced since the Darfur crisis of the early 2000s and in July 2024 famine was confirmed in parts of North Darfur. Gaza is experiencing the most severe food crisis recorded in the past 20 years, as almost the entire population of Gaza is facing an acute food crisis, and famine might already be occurring. In Mali, armed groups were conducting a siege pushing food insecurity to catastrophic levels, while rising conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is driving record levels of gender-based violence, displacement, and hunger.
Past successes show that progress is possible
Examples of progress and hope exist amid crises and worrying trends. In contrast to the global trend, reductions in hunger have been notable in a small number of countries since 2016, although challenges remain: Bangladesh, Mozambique, Nepal, Somalia, and Togo.
While hunger remains protracted in Somalia, an improved security and governance situation in some parts of the country as well as increased international assistance have contributed to reduced hunger levels. Timely humanitarian assistance prevented famine in 2022.
Bangladesh—a country particularly affected by climate change—is known for its pro-poor development policies. The country has prioritized food and nutrition security and invested in nutrition-sensitive sectors, such as health, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene. The country has also managed to significantly reduce gender inequalities.
Gender inequality is one of the most pervasive threats to the realization of the Right to Food
Countries where gender inequality is high also tend to be those where hunger is high and food systems are at high risk from climate change – and vice versa. Discriminatory norms and gender-based violence often place women and sexual and gender minorities at heightened risk of food and nutrition insecurity and climate change impacts while hampering their ability to cope with these challenges.
Women are 1.3 percentage points more likely than men to suffer from food insecurity. Over 1 billion adolescent girls and women worldwide suffer from undernutrition, with lifelong and intergenerational impacts. Climate change exacerbates malnutrition, especially for women and children, for example, through disaster-induced disruptions to health services and heat-related risks during pregnancy.
While women are not inherently more at risk from climate change and shocks, discriminatory norms and resource constrains can make them more vulnerable. Agrifood systems—which are particularly affected by climate impacts—are often more vital for women’s livelihoods than for men’s. At the same time, unpaid care work; limited access to opportunities, services, technology, finance, and resources; and weak tenure rights reduce their coping capacity. Climate shocks, such as heat stress, often increase women’s workload, like longer travel to fetch water.
Gender justice is a cornerstone of climate and food justice
The good news is gender justice—equity between people in all spheres of life—holds the promise of transformative change.
Women are crucial to food systems, making up nearly 40 percent of agrifood workers. Evidence—including from the work of Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and Concern Worldwide—shows that increasing women’s agency and asset control, as well as promoting joint decision-making, can improve household food security, child nutrition, and resilience to climate change.
For example, closing the labor and productivity gaps in agriculture between women and men could increase global GDP by 1 percent and lift 45 million people out of food insecurity.
In South Sudan, a WHH project found that activities to boost climate adaptation, like tree planting and agroforestry, picked up significantly when both women and men were equally involved in decision-making and ownership of resources.
This year’s guest authors, Nitya Rao, Siera Vercillo, and Dzifa Gertrude Torvikey highlight three interconnected dimensions of gender justice:
- Recognitional justice entails transforming gender discriminatory norms in order to change how households, communities, and the wider culture view gender roles and capacities. This requires understanding that vulnerabilities and marginalities work differently for women and men belonging to different groups, different regions, different locations.
- Redistributional justice involves directing resources and opportunities to redress gender inequalities. Ensuring women’s access to and control over critical productive resources can challenge inequitable power dynamics and create an enabling environment for food and nutrition security.
- Representational justice seeks to close the gender gap in women’s participation in politics and decision-making. Legal changes and women’s political participation and leadership may help push policies toward gender equity, though such outcomes are not assured and can take time.
Reforms are needed at all scales and levels, ranging from individuals to entire systems and from formal mechanisms to informal social and cultural norms. While enabling access to resources for women is essential, structural inequalities must be addressed as well, for example through universal social protection and macroeconomic measures, such as tax and trade policies, that support the most vulnerable.
Equity and justice must be central to climate, nutrition, and food systems policies
Climate, nutrition, and food systems policies should be guided by human rights obligations and international law, emphasizing the principles of equity and justice. Governments must urgently strengthen and enforce the Right to Food and international law, including in conflict situations, for example by enshrining the Right to Food in concrete laws and by strengthening judicial effort against perpetrators. They should promote gender-transformative approaches to food and climate policies and funding. For example, public investments in care, education, health, and rural development should be used to address discriminatory norms and promote equitable distribution of labor within households and communities.
To protect gains and accelerate progress, urgent, decisive, and coherent action is needed to address conflict, climate change, and governance issues. Promoting gender justice is a cornerstone to building equitable, nutritious, and resilient food systems, ensuring the Right to Food for all.
