As 2024 draws to a close, the most recent Hunger Hotspots update from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that food crises are expected to worsen in 22 countries between November 2024 and May 2025.
This is certainly discouraging. It is not likely that global hunger as a whole will fall over the next several months. But that does not mean that conditions in some countries and regions cannot or will not improve significantly. People trapped in very difficult circumstances are nonetheless using their ingenuity and all available resources to provide food and shelter for their children and themselves. Countless brave humanitarian workers are serving people directly, and Bread for the World members and others are advocating for the assistance they need.
The purpose of the WFP/FAO updates is to give decision-makers, advocates, and aid workers timely information about what is happening. Beyond a list of countries facing hunger emergencies with estimates of how many people are affected, the updates describe which regions of a country have been struck hardest, offer reasons for what is happening, and report experts’ opinions on conditions in the short term.
The new update identifies 14 countries/territories and two regional clusters comprising eight additional countries as Hunger Hotspots. The report states that it “focuses on the most severe and deteriorating acute hunger situations, but it does not represent all countries/territories experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.” Words to that effect appear more than once in the update.
The countries/territories “of highest concern” for the period from now through May 2025 are Sudan, Gaza, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali. These are the same five that were of highest concern in the last update, which covered May 2024 through October 2024. These countries and territories require the most urgent attention since their situations can be described as famine or catastrophic.
This means that, after doing everything in their power and receiving all available assistance, households still have an extreme lack of food. The update, like previous Hunger Hotspots updates, does not mince words, reporting that “Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.” It is no surprise, then, that humanitarian officials are calling for urgent action to prevent “widespread death and total collapse of livelihoods.”
Without swift action to ensure that humanitarian assistance can reach people in these areas, coupled with efforts to secure immediate de-escalation of conflict, “further starvation and loss of life are likely in [Gaza], Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali.”
A second group of Hunger Hotspots countries are considered “of very high concern,” meaning that large numbers of people—half a million or more—are facing or are projected to face critical levels of acute food insecurity. These are the conditions expected over the next six months in Chad, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Syria, and Yemen. Conditions in these countries are deteriorating due to an escalation of the factors that produced the already life-threatening conditions.
Some of the remaining Hunger Hotspot countries have been carried over from the May-October 2024 update: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Somalia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Others have just been added to the list: Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, and Niger.
The report emphasizes that all Hunger Hotspots need immediate and expanded assistance to improve access to food and protect people’s ability to earn a living. Decision-makers should not wait until conditions deteriorate further. Earlier action—increasing funding for humanitarian assistance and intensifying diplomatic efforts to end conflict and allow humanitarian access—saves lives, reduces food gaps, and protects assets and livelihoods at a significantly lower cost than delayed action.
However, based on data from August 2024, humanitarian funding appears set to decline for the second year in a row. The 2024 Global Humanitarian Overview requests $49 billion. By August 2024, $14.5 billion, or 29 percent of what is needed, had been received. This was $1.36 billion less than at the same time in 2023.
Twelve humanitarian response plans and flash appeals face gaps of more than 75 percent in food security funding. Seven of these are Hunger Hotspots, among which are three countries of very high concern: Yemen, Syria, and Myanmar.
In addition to the 22 countries that are current Hunger Hotspots, the report lists an additional 11 countries that “merit close monitoring.” People may well be facing acute food insecurity in these countries, but, either food security conditions were not deteriorating as quickly as in Hunger Hotspots countries, or there was insufficient data.
There is also a note that the need for close monitoring is not limited to these 11 countries, which are Afghanistan, the Cox’s Bazaar region of Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Sierra Leone.
Michele Learner is managing editor, Policy and Research Institute, with Bread for the World.
