People living in poor communities often lack access to nutritious food and live in unsafe environments with contaminated water, poor sanitation, and inadequate access to health services and education — all of which contribute to hunger and malnutrition.
The largest global burdens of severe malnutrition are in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which also suffer from high rates of extreme poverty and climate shocks. But, people in any region may face malnutrition if they’re poor, displaced, or have other risk factors.
While many people living in poverty face hunger, it is children under the age of five years who are especially prone to hunger and its deadly effects. When kids are hungry, it’s hard for them to grow, learn and even to stay healthy.
Children who suffer from diseases or illnesses such as malaria, cholera or pneumonia are more susceptible to malnutrition. The combination of disease and malnutrition weakens the immune system. Acutely malnourished children are up to nine times more likely to die from common infections than their better-nourished peer.
Women
Women are disproportionately affected by hunger; in nearly two-thirds of the world’s countries, women are more likely than men to suffer from hunger and food insecurity.
In many places, women eat least and last, despite the fact that 90 percent of the time, they are responsible for preparing and purchasing food for their families. Recent data revealed that 150 million more women than men were hungry in 2021.
The Most Marginalized
Those marginalized within a community – such as the elderly, women, displaced people and refugees, and those with disabilities – are more likely to face barriers to essential services, jobs, income, and resources. They are also more likely to face food insecurity and illness, including malnutrition.
An estimated 60% of the world’s hungry people live in countries experiencing active conflict. Conflict disrupts harvests, hampers the delivery of humanitarian aid, and forces families to flee their homes.
Refugees & Displaced People
The number of people who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict, hunger, persecution, and human rights violations has reached a new record high. Displaced people, including refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (people who flee their homes but stay within their home country), face greater risk of hunger.
Olivia Acland
Action Against Hunger, Democratic Republic of Congo
Every year, we spend three months with our land underwater, and it takes another three months to dry out and get back to everyday life. We are trying our best, fighting with nature and loss.”
Women and girls are disproportionately affected by hunger: in too many households, they eat last and least. The top drivers of hunger – conflict, climate change, and inequity – also hit women hardest.
The flood destroyed everything people had. But we couldn't plant here either, because it’s also flooded...All the people who came here tried planting maize, but all of it was destroyed by the floods.”
Those marginalized within a community – such as the elderly, women, displaced people and refugees, and those with disabilities – are more likely to face barriers to essential services, jobs, income, and resources.
Hunger can affect people from all walks of life. Millions of people in America are just one job loss, missed paycheck, or medical emergency away from hunger. But hunger doesn't affect everyone equally - some groups like children, seniors, and people of color face hunger at much higher rates.
Action Against Hunger (French: Action Contre La Faim - ACF) is a global humanitarian organization which originated in France and is committed to ending world hunger. The organization helps malnourished children and provides communities with access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger.
Hunger and health are deeply connected. People who are food insecure are disproportionally affected by diet-sensitive chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and according to research, food insecurity is also linked to many adverse effects to overall health.
Around 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition. Approximately 45 million young children across the globe suffer from severe malnutrition each year – that's nearly one out of every three children under 5 years of age.
There's more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet. Yet as many as 783 million people still go hungry. Poverty, conflict and the climate crisis are keeping life-giving food out of reach. Hunger doesn't need to take any more lives.
With the support and generosity of our community of donors, Action Against Hunger reaches more than 28 million people across 50+ countries each year with our lifesaving and life-changing programs.
The Hunger Project has a global reach in rural communities across Africa, South Asia and Latin America, encompassing millions of people working to end their own hunger and poverty.
Hunger is serious in both South Asia (where hunger is highest) and Africa South of the Sahara (where hunger is second highest). South Asia has the world's highest child stunting and child wasting rates.
What is Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero hunger? SDG 2 aims to end world hunger. It focuses on ensuring that all people, especially the poorest and most vulnerable — which includes lactating mothers — have access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food, ending all forms of malnutrition.
Food insecurity is a systemic issue that can happen to anyone, not a personal failure. According to our Elevating Voices Report, people facing hunger struggle with high living costs, expensive housing, unemployment, and low-wage jobs.
Helping people in need We tackle the causes and effects of hunger and diseases that threaten the lives of vulnerable children, women and men. We're committed to helping anyone who's going hungry in the countries where we work, no matter who they are or where they come from.
The mission of Action Against Hunger is to save lives by eliminating hunger through the prevention, detection and treatment of malnutrition, especially during and after emergency situations of conflict, war and natural disaster.
And the burden of hunger and food insecurity falls most heavily on low-income people, rural communities, people of color, women, children, older adults, and disabled people. Families with children, especially single-parent families, are also more likely to face hunger.
Poverty is the greatest cause of hunger around the world – in both higher-wealth and low- to middle-income countries. Most people who are hungry live in extreme poverty, defined as income of $2.15 per day or less.
Introduction: My name is Errol Quitzon, I am a fair, cute, fancy, clean, attractive, sparkling, kind person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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