Ten Countries Account for Two-Thirds of People Most Affected by Hunger (Report)
Two-thirds of people facing food crises worldwide last year lived in just 10 countries, according to an annual UN-backed report.
Conflicts remained the primary driver of acute food insecurity, the Global Report on Food Crises said, based on data from the United Nations, the European Union, and humanitarian organizations.
As conflicts and extreme climate events are “likely to sustain or worsen conditions in many countries,” the outlook for 2026 is described as “bleak,” the report added.
“Acute food insecurity remains highly concentrated” in 10 countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen, the report specified.
Improvements recorded in some countries, such as Bangladesh and Syria, were “almost fully offset by notable deteriorations” in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe, it continued.
For the first time in the report’s ten editions, famine was confirmed in two separate contexts — in Gaza and in parts of Sudan — within the same year.
Around 266 million people in 47 countries or territories experienced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2025 — nearly double the proportion recorded in 2016, according to the report.
The report also warned of a sharp decline in humanitarian funding and noted that conflict in the Middle East could worsen existing crises by increasing displacement in a region already hosting millions of refugees and by driving up fertilizer costs.
