2017 '' State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World '' Report

The ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017’, a report from the United Nations, which was released last week. 

And this is not your regular UN report: it was prepared jointly by UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UNICEF the World Food Programme (WFP) and the WHO.

According to the report, some 815 million people battled hunger last year.

 That’s a whopping 11 per cent of the global population, and that’s an increase of about 40 million from 2015. 

Asia has 520 million hungry people; 243 million in Africa and 42 million in Latin America and the Caribbean. And worse, this club of the hapless include millions of children, as the UN has found out.

About 155 million children aged under five are stunted; which means they are too short for their age, and some 52 million have body weight way below the required levels

The study has singled out two key reasons: climate change and conflicts. Both may seem independent of each other, but of late in several trouble zones of the planet these two reasons merge mercilessly, forcing people to starve, kill and flee in search of ‘green’ pastures.

Of the 815 million hungry people, 489 million live in conflict countries. In June 2017, the UNHCR, which tracks global refugee movement, said forced displacement was at its highest in decades worldwide, at 65.6 million. Millions feel war zones such as Syria and geographies such as South Sudan, where famine and civil wars wreak havoc.