The Asia-Pacific region is home to more than 60 percent of the roughly 800 million hungry people in the world. Since 1990, the region as a whole managed to reduce hunger by half – a key objective of the former Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But most of those gains were made in the earlier part of that quarter-century. Presently, 12 percent of the region’s population remains undernourished – some 490 million people – most of them in Southern Asia. 

In the first post-MDG report of its kind, FAO’s 2016 Asia and the Pacific Regional Overview of Food Insecurity – Investing in a Zero Hunger Generation, warns that progress in reducing hunger and improving nutrition has slowed in more recent years and many countries must pick up the pace in order to meet the SDG global goal of zero hunger by 2030. The report reveals that, region-wide, nearly one in three children suffers from stunting.