NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2024: Statistics and trends

1.1 Prevalence of undernourishment

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ (FAO) prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) indicator is derived from official country data on food supply, food consumption and dietary energy needs in the population considering demographic characteristics such as age, sex and levels of physical activity. Designed to capture a state of chronic energy deprivation, it does not reflect the short-lived effects of temporary crises or a temporarily inadequate intake of essential nutrients. FAO strives always to improve the accuracy of the PoU estimates by taking into account new information; the entire historical series is updated for each report. For this reason, only the current series of estimates should be used, including for values in past years (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF and WHO, 2024).

World hunger remained unchanged in 2023 from 9.1 percent in 2022. In other words, almost one out of ten of the world’s inhabitants regularly go to bed hungry. Worryingly, however, undernourishment in the Arab States continued its growing trend (Figure 1, Table 1) and reached a new height, largely driven by the persistent impacts of conflicts, sharp deceleration in growth and inflationary pressures, climate change, and global supply chain shocks. The PoU increased by 0.6 percent in 2023 to reach 14 percent and the number of undernourished people 66.1 million in 2023, an increase of 4 million from the previous year.

In 2023, only high-income countries and upper-middle-income countries experienced a decline in their PoU. In 2023, the PoU was highest in low-income countries, reaching 31.1 percent, higher than the 28.9 percent for the year before. Arab States LDCs experienced an increase in PoU from 26.7 percent in 2022 to 28.8 percent in 2023 (Figure 2, Table 1).² Hunger was less prevalent in high-income countries (2.5 percent), and lower-middle-income countries (7.1 percent). ² Annex IV to this report contains the definitions for country groupings. Note that there are some overlaps for country groupings. For example, half of the low-income economies (namely, Somalia, the Sudan, and Yemen) are also part of the Arab States LDCs grouping (the Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, the Sudan, and Yemen).

The increasing number and magnitude of conflicts are significant drivers of food insecurity in the region (see the analysis of major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition in the region in Part II of this report). For this reason, the gap in undernourishment between countries affected by conflict and countries not affected by conflict in the region continued to increase in 2023; in fact, the PoU was four times higher in countries affected by conflict (26.4 percent) than in countries not affected by conflict (6.6 percent).

Hunger in the Arab region reached its lowest level in 2010 and 2013, when 10 percent of the region’s population suffered from hunger. Hunger rose by one-third from 2013 until 2023 (Figure 2), which can be explained via increases in hunger in upper-middle-income countries and lower-middle-income countries. Furthermore, there was a 39.7 and 22.6 percent increase in hunger across countries affected by conflict and Arab States LDCs from 2013 until 2023, respectively.

Due to conflicts, staple food price shocks in 2007–2008 and 2010–2011, and the socio-political instability caused by the Arab Spring, there was a sharp increase in PoU after 2013, especially in the Arab States LDCs, low-income countries, countries affected by conflict and upper-middle-income countries. The only exception where the PoU has decreased since 2013 is high-income countries, where the PoU decreased by over half its value. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the high food price inflation, the increasing debt burden and the slow real GDP growth in 2023 have been posing additional risks to food security.

The number of undernourished people in the Arab States region reached 66.1 million in 2023, a 30.7 million person increase since the year 2000; this increase was largely driven by repeated substantial increases in the number of undernourished people in low-income countries (Figure 3, Table 2).

Looking at the different subgroups of the Arab States (Table 2), 58.2 percent of the Arab population facing hunger resided in low-income countries in 2023. On the other hand, in the same year, only 2.3 percent of the Arab population facing hunger resided in high-income countries.

The number of hungry people in Arab States LDCs increased by 10.7 percent from 2022 to 2023, from 28 million to 31 million people (Table 2).

Highlighting the role of conflict in food insecurity, countries not affected by conflict displayed an increase of 2.1 percent between 2022 and 2023 (19.2 to 19.6 million people) while countries affected by conflict displayed an increase of 8.1 percent in the same period (43 to 46.5 million people).

Data on PoU by country and country income groups portrays an image of high variance across the region (Figure 4). Somalia had the highest PoU among low-income countries, with a PoU of 51.3 percent between 2021–2023. The Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen and Somalia are all classified as low-income countries and have all been devastated by conflict, climate change, and high food prices. The Sudan is also classified as a low-income country; however, it exhibited a much lower PoU in 2021–2023 than the other countries (11.4 percent). At the same time, it is expected that this will change as the conflict in the country escalates, especially as it is now highlighted as one of the hunger hotspots of highest concern with regards to deteriorating acute food insecurity (WFP and FAO, 2024).³ Unexpectedly, upper-middle-income countries suffered from higher rates of PoU than lower-middle-income countries in 2021–2023, which could be explained by the fact that two of the countries classified as upper-middle-income, Iraq (16.1 percent) and Libya (11.4 percent), suffer from persistent conflict and geopolitical instability. On the other hand, countries such as Egypt (8.5 percent), Morocco (6.9 percent) and Tunisia (3.2 percent), which boast relatively large agricultural capacities, are classified as lower-middle-income countries and have not been as plagued with internal instability in recent years. Unsurprisingly, high-income countries such as Oman (5.7 percent), Saudi Arabia (3 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (2.7 percent – the lowest in the region) exhibited the lowest PoU in 2021–2023; this is in no small part thanks to these countries benefitting from high oil export revenues and therefore much more stable economic positionings. ³ Hunger hotspots and acute food insecurity refer to the indicator of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC/CH). For more details see for example page 2 of FAO and WFP, 2024.