Palestinian children carry empty bowls during a march demanding an end to war and famine in Rafah, Gaza on March 6, 2024. Ahmad Hasaballah / Getty Images

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Progress in the fight to end world hunger has been “set back 15 years,” with roughly 733 million people facing hunger in 2023, according to the United Nations’ The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI) report.

That is equal to one out of 11 people internationally and one out of five in Africa.

“The bottom line is that we are still far off-track towards the goal of ridding the world of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by 2030,” said Maximo Torero, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) chief economist, as UN News reported.

Torero said that if current trends continue, approximately 582 million people will face hunger by the end of the decade — half in Africa.

Global hunger levels have been static for three years in a row. From 713 to 757 million people remained undernourished in 2023, an increase of 152 million since 2019, the report said.

The report was jointly published by FAO, the UN World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Regionally, hunger continued to increase in Africa, with 20.4 percent of the continent’s population going hungry. Trends showed Asia’s hunger remained stable at 8.1 percent.

Latin America showed some improvement with 6.2 percent of the population facing hunger. Meanwhile, food insecurity rose in the Caribbean, Western Asia and most of Africa’s subregions from 2022 to 2023.

Torero pointed out that Africa is the one region where hunger has gone up due to the three major drivers: climate extremes, conflict and economic downturns.

The UN’s chief economist said war remained “a major driver” of hunger, worsening the food crisis across nations.

Other of the report’s key findings included that about 2.33 billion people worldwide were “moderately or severely food insecure.”

More than 864 million people were severely food insecure, which means having no food for periods of time. In Africa, 58 percent of the population was found to be moderately to severely food insecure.

The report found that, in 2022, 2.8 billion people were not able to afford a healthy diet. In high-income countries, 6.3 percent of the population was not able to afford a nutritious diet, while in poorer nations the number was 71.5 percent.

To achieve the second of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: Zero Hunger, the report recommends a comprehensive approach, including the transformation of agrifood systems, making healthy diets accessible and affordable and addressing inequalities.

The SOFI report called for an increase in cost-effective financing, as well as a standardized approach to nutrition and food security.

“One of the major recommendations is to come up with a common definition so that we understand what we are financing and the key elements to include in this definition. This will enhance accountability for donors and provide a clearer picture of financial flows,” Torero said, as UN News reported.

UN agency heads, including Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, and Qu Dongyu, FAO director-general, said it is crucial to close the financing gap.

They said substantial investment must be made to end malnutrition and hunger, which is both a fundamental obligation and an investment in the future.

Sixty-three percent of the nearly 120 low- and middle-income nations featured in the report have limited financing access while being affected by multiple contributors to food insecurity. The report said that higher risk tolerance, increased transparency and improved data coordination were essential to strengthening efforts to tackle global food insecurity and bridge the financing gap.

“We need to understand that our agri-food systems are under increasing risk and uncertainty due to climate change… donors must adopt greater risk tolerance to activate effective finance,” Torero said.

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