Stunting is defined as low height-for-age. It is the result of chronic or recurrent undernutrition, usually associated with poverty, poor maternal health and nutrition, frequent illness and/or inappropriate feeding and care in early life. Stunting prevents children from reaching their physical and cognitive potential. The consequences of child stunting are both immediate and long term and include increased morbidity and mortality, poor child development and learning capacity, increased risk of infections and non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, stunted children who experienced rapid weight gain after 2 years have an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese later in life (Soliman et al., 2021, WHO, 2014b).
| 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2012 | 2015 | 2020 | 2022 | |
| World | 33.0 | 31.1 | 27.9 | 26.3 | 24.6 | 22.7 | 22.3 |
| Arab States | 28.0 | 27.1 | 25.1 | 23.7 | 22.1 | 20.5 | 19.9 |
| Low-income countries | 39.9 | 39.8 | 36.7 | 35.1 | 33.7 | 31.6 | 30.5 |
| Lower-middle-income countries | 24.4 | 21.9 | 20.7 | 19.7 | 18.1 | 16.6 | 16.0 |
| Upper-middle-income countries | 24.5 | 24.2 | 20.9 | 19.0 | 16.5 | 13.8 | 12.8 |
| High-income countries | 10.8 | 10.3 | 10.3 | 10.2 | 10.4 | 10.9 | 10.8 |
| Arab States LDCs | 43.5 | 42.7 | 39.3 | 37.4 | 35.2 | 32.3 | 31.2 |
| Conflict countries | 36.8 | 36.6 | 33.5 | 31.6 | 29.8 | 27.5 | 26.5 |
| Non-conflict countries | 21.5 | 19.5 | 18.5 | 17.6 | 16.3 | 15.2 | 14.7 |
The prevalence of stunting in children under the age of 5 was 19.9 percent in the region in 2022, 10.8 percent (2.4 percentage points) below the world average of 22.3 percent (Figure 10, Table 7). Both globally and within the Arab States, rich economies tend to have lower levels of stunting than poorer ones (World Bank, 2023). Furthermore, stunted children are more likely to live in poorer households reside in rural areas and have mothers with no formal education (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2022). In the Arab region, Arab LDCs (31.2 percent), low-income countries (30.5 percent) and conflict countries (26.5 percent) had the highest level of stunting, above the regional average of 19.9 percent. Stunting was the highest (Figure 11) in 2022 in conflict-hit countries, such as Libya (52.2 percent), the Sudan (36.0 percent), Yemen (35.1 percent), and the Syrian Arab Republic (25.4 percent). Lower-middle-income countries (16.0 percent), non-conflict countries (14.7 percent) upper-middle-income countries (12.8 percent), and high-income countries (10.8 percent) had lower levels of child stunting than the average of Arab States. Stunting was the lowest in Qatar (4.8 percent), Bahrain (5.0 percent), and Jordan (6.6 percent).
Significant progress has been made in reducing stunting among children under 5 years of age worldwide and in the region between 2000 and 2022 as Figure 10 and Table 6 show. In this period, stunting decreased by around a third (10.7 percentage points) globally and in the Arab States (8.1 percentage points); however, the reduction has been slower more recently. Stunting decreased the fastest in upper-middle-income countries, where it was almost halved. In lower-middle-income countries and non-conflict countries stunting also decreased faster than the regional average. In Arab LDCs, conflict countries and low-income countries stunting decreased slower than the regional average. In high-income countries, stunting remained at a low level of around 10.8 percent during 2000 and 2022.
Figure 11 also shows the trends in the prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years of age by country and subregion between 2000 and 2022. We can see significant reductions in child stunting across all income categories. Stunting decreased by more than half in Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Iraq, Lebanon and Qatar. On the contrary, stunting in this period more than doubled in Libya and almost doubled in Kuwait.
However, overall, the region is off-track in meeting the intermediate Target of SDG 2.2.1 (WHO, 2014a), reducing the prevalence of stunting by 40% by 2025 (from the baseline 2012 levels). Child stunting decreased only by 16.0 percent between 2012 and 2022 from 23.7 percent to 19.9 percent. In addition, the gains made in reducing the prevalence of child stunting by almost one-third (28.9) in the previous two decades (2000-2022) are under threat by the triple crises of climate, conflict and the economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, combined with growing inequalities. High food inflation persists in the region in 2023 from 2022, when global food prices hit record levels, causing many local currencies to depreciate, further inflating prices.7 In addition, higher food prices impact the poor more because they spend a larger share of income on food. According to some studies, there is a direct correlation between the increase of food price inflation and the rise in the risk of under-age-five stunting.8 Thus, the food price increase in the region is expected to slow down further or may even turn the downward trend in reducing child stunting. For example, the World Bank estimates that the increase in food prices between March and June 2022 may have caused an additional 200 000 to 285 000 newborns to be stunted (Gatti et al., 2023). 7 Inflation was 8.8 percent in 2022 and 6.6 percent in 2023 (IMF, 2023). 8 According to Woldemichael et al. (2022), a 1 percentage point higher month-to-month food inflation rate while an individual is in utero increases the risk of under-age-five stunting by 0.0046 probability point.
In 2012, WHO adopted a resolution on maternal, infant and young child nutrition that included a global target to reduce the number of stunted children under the age of five by 40 percent until 2025 (WHO, 2012). Persistent food price inflation and decreasing incomes make it less likely that the region will meet this target.
