2010 Global Hunger Index released

The annual Global Hunger Index was released today with a focus on child malnutrition. The authors of this year's index says that child malnutrition effects half of the people who who are hungry. The report calls on the world's governments to improve health care and education to combat poor nutrition in children.

Overall, the levels of hunger are better than when the Index began in 1990, but the last couple of years have seen a slight increase. The Index blames the increase in the double crises of food price increases and the global recession. Only three countries have hunger levels that are called "extremely alarming," they are the Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Chad. Most of the high levels of hunger are found in Africa and Southern Asia

Below is an interactive world map that shows the hunger levels for each country.



From the Global Hunger Index website, this press release gives a full explanation of the data.

Malnutrition among children under two years of age is one of the leading
challenges to reducing global hunger and can cause lifelong harm to health, productivity, and earning potential, according to the 2010 Global Hunger Index (GHI).

Released in advance of World Food Day (October 16) for the fifth year, the report is
published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe, and Concern Worldwide.

The Index scores countries based on three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the child mortality rate. The biggest contributor to the global score is child undernutrition, which accounts for almost half of the score.

“To improve their scores, many countries must accelerate progress in reducing child
malnutrition. Considerable research shows that the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans from conception to age two. After age two, the negative effects of undernutrition are largely irreversible,” explained Marie Ruel, director of IFPRI’s Poverty, Health and Nutrition division and co-author of the report.

The Index is calculated for 122 developing and transition countries for which data on the three components of hunger are available. Twenty-nine countries have levels of hunger that are “extremely alarming” or “alarming.” Most of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

While the highest regional GHI scores are for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia has made much more progress since 1990. In South Asia, the low nutritional, educational, and social status of women is among the major factors that contribute to a high prevalence of malnutrition in children under five.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, low government effectiveness, conflict, political instability, and high rates of HIV and AIDS are among the major factors that lead to high child mortality and a high proportion of people who cannot meet their calorie requirements. In some countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example Burundi, Madagascar, and Malawi, about half of the children are stunted (low height for age) due to poor nutrition.

The burden of child undernutrition could be cut by 25-36 percent by providing universal preventive health services and nutrition interventions for children under two and their mothers during pregnancy and lactation.

“The health of women, specifically mothers, is crucial to reducing child malnutrition. Mothers who were poorly nourished as girls tend to give birth to underweight babies, perpetuating the cycle of undernutrition,” noted Welthungerhilfe chairperson Bärbel Dieckmann.

“Nutrition interventions should be targeted towards girls and women throughout the life cycle and especially as adolescents before they become pregnant.”
The report recommends that to reduce global hunger, countries must:

• target interventions where they will do the most good – among pregnant and
breastfeeding women and children in their first two years of life;

• address the underlying causes of undernutrition, including poverty, gender inequality, and conflict;

• engage, empower, and support those working at the local level to improve nutrition;

• and make nutrition, especially for young children, a political priority.
“Ensuring appropriate and adequate nutrition during the first 1,000 days is absolutely critical,” said Concern Worldwide CEO Tom Arnold. “This Global Hunger Index report sets out clear recommendations to inform and encourage the international community to take decisive action on this issue.”

The 2009 Global Hunger Index

Above is a really neat interactive map distributed by the International Food Policy Institute. You can drag and drop the marker to any country and find the countries 2009 Hunger Index.

On this years report, the IFPI is calling on policy makers worldwide to consider how their decisions will effect the poor. The food and economic crises of the past year has had great impacts on the poor, greater than anyone else. So the IFPI asks world leaders to consider how their efforts to work out of the crises will impact the poor.

From the IFPI website, comes a summary of this year's Global Hunger Index findings, you can download a pdf or the report from here.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that worldwide progress in reducing hunger remains slow. The 2009 global GHI has fallen by only one quarter from the 1990 GHI. Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean have reduced hunger significantly since 1990, but the GHI remains distressingly high in South Asia, which has made progress since 1990, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been marginal.

Some countries achieved noteworthy progress in improving their GHI. Between the 1990 GHI and the 2009 GHI, Kuwait, Tunisia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Turkey had the largest percentage improvements. Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Vietnam saw the largest absolute improvements in their scores.

Nonetheless, 29 countries have levels of hunger that are alarming or extremely alarming. The countries with the highest 2009 GHI scores are Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. In most of the countries with high GHI scores, war and violent conflict have given rise to widespread poverty and food insecurity. Nearly all of the countries in which the GHI rose since 1990 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Global Hunger Index Released

It should go without saying, but hunger is closely tied to poverty. There are many hungry people in middle to low income countries. A report released today gauges the number of hungry thought the world.

The International Food Policy Research Institute says that thirty three countries have dangerously high levels of hunger.

The report is unable to take into account the current food price crisis, as the statistics used only go up to the year 2006. Which is the last year available.

Also, the report does not rank industrialized nations.

The five least hungry countries were Mauritius, Jamaica, Moldova, Cuba and Peru. While the hungriest were Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone.

You can download and view the full report here.

Here is more from the organizations press release. Our snippet also includes some police changes the institute suggests.

The Index measures global hunger by ranking countries on three leading indicators and combining them into one index. The three indicators are prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

In the nearly two decades since 1990, some regions—South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean—have made major headway in improving food security. But South Asia still suffers from high levels of hunger, along with Sub-Saharan Africa. While South Asia has made significant strides since 1990, progress in Sub-Saharan Africa has been minimal.

In South Asia, the major problem is a high prevalence of underweight in children under five, resulting largely from the lower nutritional and educational status of women, poor nutrition and health programs, and inadequate water and sanitation services. In contrast, the poor performance of Sub-Saharan Africa is due to high rates of child mortality and a large proportion of people who cannot meet their calorie requirements. Government ineffectiveness, conflict, and political instability, as well as high rates of HIV/AIDS, have driven these two indicators in the region.

To address the current food crisis and improve the long-term functioning of the world food system, IFPRI recommends three areas for high-priority policy actions:

1. Productivity and Research: undertake fast-impact food production programs in key areas and scale up investments for sustained agricultural productivity, including agricultural science policy and appropriate finance.
2. Nutrition and Social Protection: expand emergency responses and humanitarian assistance to food-insecure people and invest in social protection for nutritional improvement.
3. Markets and Trade: eliminate agricultural trade restrictions and facilitate rule-based and fair global and regional trade openness; change biofuel policies; support market-oriented regulation of speculation, and implement innovative virtual grain reserve policies.

IFPRI estimates that the additional global public investment required to overcome the food crisis, and still meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, is at least US$14 billion per annum. For Sub-Saharan Africa, the annual additional investment is estimated to be about US$5 billion, if African governments fulfill their commitment to invest 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture.