GNV News, April 29, 2026

On April 24, 2026, a group of UN agencies released the Global Report on Food Crises 2026 (GRFC). The report shows the grave state of food shortages, including the fact that the number of people facing severe hunger has doubled over the past decade.

In 2025, 266 million people in 47 countries and regions faced severe acute food insecurity, one of the most critical levels in the past 20 years. It was also revealed that these conditions are highly concentrated in specific regions: 10 countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—account for two-thirds of the total population facing severe hunger.

As the most serious situation, famine was confirmed in 2025 in Gaza Governorate in Palestine and parts of Sudan under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system. This corresponds to Phase 5, the most critical of the five IPC levels based on food security status. Since the GRFC began reporting, this was the first time famine had been confirmed in two different areas in the same year.

Alongside these realities, acute malnutrition has also become a serious and growing concern. In 2025, 35.5 million children suffered from acute malnutrition. This indicates that in nearly half of the areas facing food crises, nutrition crises are occurring simultaneously as a result of the combined effects of inadequate diets, disease, and the collapse of essential services.

As major concerns in these food crises, the report points to funding shortages and data gaps. Humanitarian and development funding for food crises has fallen back to levels of around a decade ago, undermining the response capacity of national governments and others. In addition, the 2026 GRFC covers the smallest number of countries with available data in the past 10 years. With armed conflicts ongoing in many places and data missing from countries facing the most severe crises, the lack of reliable data and the difficulty of obtaining it have become evident, making it impossible to judge the situation simply by looking at the figures.

On top of climate change and global economic uncertainty, the continuing conflict in the Persian Gulf brings risks such as rising food prices and shortages of oil-based fertilizers, raising the possibility that food crises will intensify further in 2026.

Learn more about food crises → “The world’s worst drought in East Africa that goes unreported”

Learn about concrete examples of hunger → “Nigeria: Record hunger and stalled aid”

Harvesting cassava, Nigeria (Photo: IFPRI / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])