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This Glob­al Report on Food Crises is a roll call of human fail­ings. In a world of plen­ty, chil­dren are starv­ing to death. War, cli­mate chaos and a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis – com­bined with inad­e­quate action – mean that almost 300 mil­lion peo­ple faced acute food cri­sis in 2023. The num­ber of peo­ple on the brink of famine rose to over 700 000 – almost dou­ble the num­ber of 2022. The con­flicts erupt­ing over the past 12 months com­pound a dire glob­al sit­u­a­tion. The Gaza Strip has the high­est num­ber of peo­ple fac­ing cat­a­stroph­ic hunger ever record­ed by the Glob­al Report on Food Crises, even as blocked aid trucks line up at the bor­der. Con­flict in the Sudan has cre­at­ed the world’s largest inter­nal dis­place­ment cri­sis, with atro­cious impacts on hunger and nutri­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for women and chil­dren. This cri­sis demands an urgent response. Using the data in this report to trans­form food sys­tems and address the under­ly­ing caus­es of food inse­cu­ri­ty and mal­nu­tri­tion will be vital. So will finance. Fund­ing is not keep­ing pace with need. Gov­ern­ments must boost the resources avail­able for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment – by putting our pro­pos­als for an SDG Stim­u­lus in sup­port of devel­op­ing coun­tries into action, and ful­ly fund­ing human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions. Human­i­ty can and must do bet­ter. Togeth­er, with com­mit­ment and con­cert­ed action, we can cre­ate a world where hunger has no home.

António Guter­res

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations