NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional overview of food security and nutrition 2021: Statistics and trends

This section reports on four global nutrition indicators: stunting, wasting and overweight in children under five years of age, and anaemia in women of reproductive age.

2.1 Stunting among children under five

The prevalence of stunting among children under five years in the Arab region was 20.5 percent in 2020, down from 28.7 percent in 2000. Despite the improvement in the past two decades, the current prevalence of stunting in the region is still considered as high based on the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of malnutrition severity as a public health problem. Stunting has declined steadily since 2000 across all income levels, conflict-affected and non-conflict countries in the region. The current estimate for the Arab region is lower than the global average of 22 percent. By level of income, low-income economies are the most affected with 32.9 percent, indicating very high prevalence. This is followed by lower-middle-income economies with 17.3 percent (medium public health problem), upper-middle-income economies with 13.5 percent (medium’) and high-income economies with 5.1 percent (low). Conflict-affected countries have a high prevalence of stunting among children under five years (27.8 percent), while the prevalence is a medium public health problem in non-conflict countries (15.2 percent).

The prevalence of stunting declined in the vast majority of Arab States between 2000 and 2020. The exceptions are Djibouti, Kuwait, Libya and the Syrian Arab Republic where the stunting rates have increased. The most significant increase occurred in Libya where the prevalence of stunting has more than doubled from 20.5 percent in 2000 to 43.5 percent in 2020. This is the only country in the region where the public health significance of the prevalence of stunting has changed for the worse in the past two decades from high to very high. In the rest of the Arab countries the public health significance of stunting has remained the same or it has improved. The most significant progress has been achieved in Algeria where the prevalence of stunting as a public health issue has improved from high in 2000 to low in 2020. In 2020, four Arab countries, including Djibouti, Libya, the Sudan and Yemen exhibited a very high prevalence of stunting. Five other countries, the Comoros, Egypt, Mauritania, Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic, have high levels of stunting among children under five years of age. Stunting was a low public health issue in eight countries of the region, including Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.