The Covid-19 pan­demic has caused hunger to cast a heav­ier shadow over human­ity, a report com­piled by five agen­cies of the United Nations found.

In 2020, the under­nour­ished peo­ple on the planet rose to 768 mil­lion, almost 10 per­cent of the world’s entire pop­u­la­tion, com­pared to 650 mil­lion only a year ago, the report said.

The per­cent­age of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from hunger had remained vir­tu­ally unchanged for five years before the advent of the pan­demic.

‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ report, the first to assess the impact of the pan­demic on food secu­rity world­wide, also indi­cated that Africa was the region hit hard­est by the ris­ing lev­els of hunger.

A total of 282 mil­lion peo­ple, which trans­lates to 21 per­cent of its pop­u­la­tion, the high­est per­cent­age of any other region in the world, faced the threat of hunger in 2020. More than half of the world’s under­nour­ished peo­ple, how­ever, 418 mil­lion, live in Asia.

“Unfortunately, the pan­demic con­tin­ues to expose weak­nesses in our food sys­tems, which threaten lives and liveli­hoods,” the U.N. agen­cies that co-authored the report said in a joint state­ment. ​“No region of the world has been spared.”

The authors of the report also warned that the goal of the U.N. to elim­i­nate world hunger by 2030 might no longer be real­is­tic.

“Our worst fears are com­ing true,” Arif Husain, the chief econ­o­mist of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), said. ​“Reversing such high lev­els of chronic hunger will take years if not decades.”

The head of WFP, on the other hand, David Beasley, was crit­i­cal of the inca­pac­ity of the world to gather the funds required to fight global hunger.

“The fact that we’re beg­ging and scream­ing [for funds] is a dis­grace on the face of human­ity,” Beasley said.

Global food inse­cu­rity, defined as the lack of con­sis­tent access to enough food for all per­sons in a house­hold, had already started to re-emerge in the mid-2010s after decades of decline.

Limited access to food became more pro­found in coun­tries affected by eco­nomic slumps, cli­mate change, and con­flict, and fur­ther dete­ri­o­rated due to the Covid-19 pan­demic.

António Guterres, the sec­re­tary-gen­eral of the United Nations, called for action to cre­ate a food sup­ply sys­tem to pro­vide for peo­ple deprived of suf­fi­cient food resources.

“In a world of plenty, we have no excuse for bil­lions to lack access to a healthy diet,” Guterres said. ​“This is why I’m con­ven­ing a global Food Systems Summit this September.”

“[Investing in] changes in our food sys­tems will ini­ti­ate a shift to a safer, fairer, more sus­tain­able world,” he added. ​“It is one of the smartest – and most nec­es­sary invest­ments we can make.”

• Reuters
• World Health Organization
• Feeding America