NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and trends

1.1. Prevalence of undernourishment

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) PoU indicator is derived from official country data on food supply, food consumption and dietary energy needs in the population considering such demographic characteristics as age, sex and level 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.^{1 1} For full details, please see FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP & WHO. 2019. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019. Safeguarding against economic slowdowns and downturns. Rome, FAO.

World hunger decreased slightly from 9.3 percent in 2021 to 9.2 percent in 2022. In other words, almost one out of ten of the world’s inhabitants regularly go to bed hungry. However, undernourishment in the Arab States continued its growing trend (Figure 1 and Table 1) and, at 12.9 percent in 2022, remained well above the world average. In addition, hunger reached its highest value in 2022 since 2000, when hunger hit 11.8 percent of the Arab population. The prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) increased by 0.7 percentage point, from 12.2 percent in 2021 to 12.9 percent in 2022. Conflict, climate change, economic slowdowns and downturns are the major drivers of food insecurity in the region: six countries in the region are hit by conflicts, and the region is one of the most vulnerable globally to climate change, the most arid in the world, with scarce water and land resources threatening more and more frequently crop yields (FAO, 2023c).

In 2022, the PoU was the highest in low-income countries² (27.1 percent), and Arab States LDCs (25.6 percent): almost every third person suffered from hunger in these countries (Figure 2, Table 1). Undernourishment in conflict countries (23.6 percent) was almost four times higher than in non-conflict countries (6.6 percent). In upper-middle-income countries, hunger was also higher (16.3 percent) than the average of Arab States (12.9 percent). Hunger is less frequent in lower-middle-income countries (6.6 percent). High-income countries had a very low level of PoU (2.8 percent). ² See Annex IV.

Hunger in the Arab region reached its lowest level in 2010, before the Arab Spring, when 9.7 percent of the region’s population suffered from hunger. Hunger has risen by one-third from 2010 until 2022 (Figure 2), which has been driven mainly by the increase in hunger in upper-middle-income countries (44.2 percent increase since 2021, Figure 2) and lower-middle-income countries (37.5 percent increase) due to socio-economic and commodity price shocks, such as the increase of food prices in 2007–2011, the effects of the Arab Spring, and recently the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Due to conflicts and staple food price shocks in 2007–2008 and 2010–2011, there was a sharp increase in PoU after 2013, especially in the Arab States LDCs, low-income countries, conflict countries and high-income countries. The two exceptions where the PoU has decreased since 2010 are high-income countries and Arab States LDCs, where the PoU decreased by almost two-thirds and one-quarter, respectively.

In 2020, the measures implemented to contain the COVID-19 pandemic sent the Arab States (except for Egypt) into an economic downturn, widened inequalities and worsened food security (FAO et al., 2023). Furthermore, given the scarcity of required natural resources for food production, the region depends heavily on importing agricultural products, which makes it vulnerable to international commodity markets, supply shocks and price inflation. Many countries in the Arab region heavily depend on imported foodstuff and fertilizers from the Russian Federation and Ukraine, including wheat as a staple food (FAO, 2022b). The surge in international prices has put pressure on the international reserves of food-importing countries and, consequently, on their exchange rates.

High international food prices and currency depreciation have generated high domestic inflation and food prices, which erodes purchasing power and negatively affects access to food. The most vulnerable population tends to be hurt disproportionately by rising prices. Food inflation has been key in driving food insecurity since before the COVID-19 pandemic in the region (Gatti et al., 2023).^{3 3} According to World Bank (Gatti et al., 2023), the food-insecure population in the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) region attributed to inflation grew by 66 percent between 2018 (pre-pandemic) and 2023. (2018 refers to the 2017–2019 period, while 2023 refers to the 2022–2024 period, as data is available as three-year centered moving averages).

Considering trends in undernourishment since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, undernourishment increased overall in the Arab region from 11.8 percent in 2019 to 12.9 percent in 2022. The two crises had the most significant effect in lower-middle-income countries (37.5 percent), non-conflict countries (32.0 percent) and upper-middle-income countries (15.6 percent). On the other hand, high-income countries succeeded in decreasing undernourishment significantly by one-third since 2019, as oil-exporting countries benefitted from the oil price boom in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery and from the oil price shocks due to the war in Ukraine.

The number of undernourished people reached 59.8 million in 2022, an increase of 75.9 percent since 2000. The number of undernourished people (Figure 3, Table 2) globally decreased from 2021 (738.8 million) to 2022 (735.1 million). However, undernourishment increased in the Arab region in the same period: from 55.9 million in 2021 to 59.8 million. 8.1 percent of the world’s undernourished people lived in the Arab States in 2022. Over two-thirds (67.7 percent) of the undernourished people in the Arab States were from conflict-hit countries (40.5 million). Over half (32.6 million) of undernourished people in the Arab region lived in low-income countries, 26.9 million in the Arab States LDCs, 14.4 million in lower-middle-income countries, and 11.1 million in upper-middle-income countries.

Undernourishment varies significantly within each subregion (Figure 4). Somalia had the highest PoU among low-income countries: almost every other person (48.7 percent in 2020–2022, down from 58.7 percent in 2013–2015) suffered from hunger, with prolonged drought, conflict, high food and water prices, and displacement being the major drivers of severe hunger (IPC, 2023a), aggravated by severe desert locust upsurge through 2020 and 2021. Somalia is followed by Yemen (34.5 percent), the Syrian Arab Republic (27.8 percent), and Djibouti (16.8 percent). The much higher PoU level in upper-middle-income countries compared to lower-middle-income countries could be explained by the fact that upper-middle-income countries include two conflict-hit countries (Iraq and Libya, where 16.3 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, of the population was undernourished in 2022), while lower-middle-income countries consist of many countries that have relatively well-developed agricultural sectors with a larger food production basis, such as Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia. In lower-middle-income countries, hunger was the highest in Djibouti (16.8 percent), followed by Comoros (13.5 percent), Mauritania (8.7 percent), Egypt (7.2 percent), Morocco (6.3 percent), and Tunisia (3.0 percent). High-income countries, which benefit from high oil export revenues, had low levels of hunger: Oman (2.8 percent), Saudi Arabia (3.8 percent).

Considering hunger trends in regional countries, Figure 4 shows that hunger increased in all income categories between the 2013–2015 and 2019–2021 periods, except for high-income countries. Hunger increased by 16.7 percent in low-income countries and in almost all conflict countries: in Sudan by 28.0 percent, in the civil-war-hit Syrian Arab Republic, it almost tripled. In Yemen, hunger increased from already a very high level (34.5 percent) by 4.9 percent. The Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen remain two of the most food-insecure countries in the world and are marked as hunger hotspots of acute food insecurity⁴ (WFP and FAO, 2023). Among lower-middle-income countries, undernourishment increased in Egypt by 30.9 percent, in Mauritania by 33.8 percent, and in Morocco by 57.5 percent. PoU remained relatively low in Tunisia. PoU decreased significantly in Djibouti by 26.6 percent but remained still high in 2020-2022 at 16.8 percent due to low dietary diversity, low purchasing power, and limited livelihood activities (IPC, 2023a). Hunger increased in Libya by 55.6 percent, mainly due to the second Libyan Civil War (2014–2020). In the other conflict-hit country, Iraq, hunger stabilized at a high level, around 16 percent. Hunger decreased in all high-income countries, with Oman experiencing the lowest undernourishment (2.8 percent in 2020–2022). ⁴ Hunger hotspots and “acute food insecurity” refers to the indicator of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC/CH). For more details see for example page 2 of FAO-WFP, 2023.