Global Hunger Index 2022 released

The 2022 Global Hunger Index (GHI) was released on October 12, 2022. The GHI is a peer-reviewed annual report, jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and country levels. The aim of the GHI is to trigger action to reduce hunger around the world.

Concern Worldwide works with the world's poorest people to transform their lives. It is an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and suffering in the world’s poorest countries.

 

Welthungerhilfe is one of the largest private aid organisations in Germany, independent of politics and religion. It was established in 1962, as the German section of the "Freedom from Hunger Campaign".

 

How the GHI Is Calculated

Each country’s GHI score is calculated based on a formula that combines four indicators that together capture the multidimensional nature of hunger:

Undernourishment: the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake.

Child stunting: the share of children under age five who have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.

Child wasting: the share of children under age five who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition.

Child mortality: the share of children who die before their fifth birthday, partly reflecting the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments. 

 

This calculation results in GHI scores on a 100-point scale, where 0 is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. In practice, neither of these extremes is reached. A value of 100 would signify that a country’s undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality levels each exactly meets the thresholds set slightly above the highest levels observed worldwide in recent decades. A value of 0 would mean that a country had no undernourished people in the population, no children younger than five who were wasted or stunted, and no children who died before their fifth birthday.

 

Key Messages of 2022 GHI:

• Global progress against hunger has largely stagnated in recent years. In many countries across regions the situation has worsened. Indeed, one indicator used in the GHI, the prevalence of undernourishment, shows that the share of people who lack regular access to sufficient calories is increasing, with as many as 828 million people undernourished in 2021.
• The situation is likely to worsen in the face of the current barrage of overlapping global crises—conflict, climate change, and the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic—all of which are powerful drivers of hunger. The war in Ukraine has further increased global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices and has the potential to contribute to food shortages in 2023 and beyond.
• These crises come on top of underlying factors such as poverty, inequality, inadequate governance, poor infrastructure, and low agricultural productivity that contribute to chronic hunger and vulnerability. Globally and in many countries and regions, current food systems are inadequate to the task of addressing these challenges and ending hunger.
• Africa South of the Sahara and South Asia are the regions with the highest hunger levels and are most vulnerable to future shocks and crises. Like other world regions, progress against hunger in these regions has stagnated, which is particularly troubling given their desperate need for improvement.
• Without a major shift, neither the world as a whole nor approximately 46 countries are projected to achieve even low hunger as measured by the GHI by 2030. There are 44 countries that currently have serious or alarming hunger levels. Twenty countries with moderate, serious, or alarming hunger have higher 2022 GHI scores than 2014 GHI scores, the most recent historical reference year for GHI scores in this report. These countries are in diverse world regions, not just those with the highest hunger overall.
• Levels of hunger and undernutrition vary widely within countries. Hotspots of food and nutrition insecurity persist even within well-performing regions and countries, where increased and targeted efforts are needed. A closer look at within-country data and at the performance of existing efforts to combat hunger can help guide programs and policies so that they benefit the specific populations most in need.

The Scores and Ranking:

The top 17 countries with a Score of less than 5 are: Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Chile, China, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Türkiye, and Uruguay.

 

The scores and ranks of India and the neighbouring countries are:

Country	Rank	Score
Sri Lanka	64	13.6
Myanmar	71	15.6
Nepal	81	19.1
Bangladesh	84	19.6
Pakistan	99	26.1
India	107	29.1

 

As it happens with all such global rankings where India fares poorly, the government spokespersons have objected to the Index. Activists of the Right to Food Campaign have, however, accused the Centre of diverting the issue of hunger away from the real situation on the ground and the food and nutritional insecurity in the country. Countering the Centre’s stand on the GHI that it overlooked Central schemes and that the sample size of the survey was too small, the activists argued that the survey was validated by the national data on unemployment and stagnant wages.

 

They said there had been a worsening in food security both in quantity and quality compared to the pre-COVID period for about 41% of the population. The activists urged the Centre to stop inadequate policy response to address the problem and to hold the census at the earliest to find the number of people without ration cards. They said about 12 crore people in the country had not been enrolled in the ration cards.