The figure represents a worldwide increase of 24 million from the previous year. This rise was due to the report’s increased coverage of food crisis contexts as well as a sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and the Sudan. Children and women are at the forefront of these hunger crises, with over 36 million children under 5 years of age acutely malnourished across 32 countries. Acute malnutrition worsened in 2023, particularly among people displaced because of conflict and disasters.

These interlinked drivers are exacerbating agrifood systems fragility, rural marginalization, poor governance, and inequality, and lead to massive displacement of populations globally. The protection situation of the displaced population is additionally impacted by food insecurity.

The GNAFC also aims at mitigating their impacts, and boosting resilient and sustainable post-crisis recovery and rehabilitation for transforming agriculture and food systems. It involves working at the global, regional and national levels to support partnerships within existing structures and to improve advocacy, decision-making, policy and programming through shared analysis and knowledge, strengthened coordination in evidence-based responses and collective efforts across the Humanitarian, Development and Peace (HDP) nexus.

Such policies should look to the future through linkages across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus to increase community, household, food systems and ecosystem resilience.

Examples of these drivers are conflict and insecurity, climate change, environmental degradation, and demographic change.

This must be done with great care and with respect for informal and traditional institutions and based on a good understanding of natural resource management (such as land and water), which can often be the basis of local tensions and disputes. FAO supports transparent and inclusive governance practices that involve civil society and indigenous/local populations, which are adapted to their contextual realities.