End World Hunger
SDGs were adopted by the UN in 2015 as a universal call to action to ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. They are 17 goals and goal 2 specifically is about creating a world free of hunger.
After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is on the rise again, affecting nearly 10% of people globally, a crisis driven largely by conflicts and wars such as the war in Ukraine which is disrupting the global food supply chains and creating the biggest global food crisis since the second world war, by climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.
828 million ppl suffered from hunger in the year 2021, which is 46 more from a year earlier and 150 m more than 2019.
45 million children under the age of 5 were suffering from wasting which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times.
149 million children under the age of 5 had stunted growth and development due to a chronic lack of essential nutrients in their diets.
2.3 billion people were severely food insecure, 350 million more compared to before the outbreak of the covid 19 pandemic.
3.1 billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet reflecting the effects of inflation in consumer food prices stemming from the economic impacts of the covid 19 pandemic.
Looking at the side-by-side bar chart, we can see the Global Hunger Index values in 2021 and 2022. GHI is a tool that attempts to measure and track hunger. It is a 100-point scale with zero being the best score meaning no hunger and 100 being the worst. The graph clearly shows us that the global hunger index values became worse in 2022 compared to those in 2021. For example, GHI for Congo was 30.3 in 2021, and it increased to 37.8 in 2022.
This line chart shows us that even though the % of stunted children was declining, back in 2019 it started to rise again and is continuing according to research.
There is no single idea that will solve world hunger alone. But there is a range of solutions available to us from an institutional level to an individual level that collectively can bring us to zero hunger.
Sustainable food: which can be achieved through funding projects so people can provide food for themselves in a sustainable way and are able to create their own steady supply of food instead of relying on aid from foreign countries.
Access to education: which is the best weapon against poverty and hunger because it means better opportunity and more access to income and food.
Empowering women: which has a direct correlation with hunger. Empowering women to gain access to food, be providers and lead their families has had a major impact on food access and the ability to change financial situations.
Transitioning: people suffering from hunger need help transitioning into a state of self-dependence. Some organizations have already started supporting with this transition. For instance, 15 feeds family starts by providing families with food, but then slowly find solutions to empower families to be self-sufficient because this will allow for a certain food income while relying on donations does not always guarantee food.
Food donations and school campaigns: even though we want the world to be self-sustainable, this is something that will not happen overnight, so it is important in the meantime to lend a helping hand. Donations have had an immerse impact on world hunger, for example organizations such as food for all was able to raise 60 million $ to fight world hunger in the year 2019. Besides, the World Food Program has been supporting school feeding for 6 decades. In 2020, 15 million school children received nutritious meals and snacks from WFP, and working with governments to build capacity, it helped strengthening the national school feeding programs of 65 countries, benefiting a further 39 million children.
Speaking of facts, governments, authorities, and NGOs worldwide need to urgently react and cooperate in the face of one of the largest challenges the world community is faced with. Extra effort to tackle the crisis should be put in place and proposed solutions which some of them have already been implemented need to expand into larger scales to be able to address the issue because what is being done is fine but never enough in the face of increasing rates.