2013 GLOBAL HUNGER

INDEX

The Challenge of Hunger

BUILDING RESILIENCE TO ACHIEVE FOOD ANDNUTRITION SECURITY

Why a Global Hunger Index?

• To raise awareness of regional and country differences in hunger

• To show progress over time

• To help learn from successes and failures in hunger reduction

• To provide incentives to act and improve the international ranking

• To focus on one major hunger-related topic every year

• Ranking is a powerful tool

• Other sectors use it successfully, too

• It gets public and professional attention

• It can spur competition

• A special subject can be highlighted

The GHI measures three dimensions of hunger

• Undernourishment

• Child underweight

• Child mortality

GHI score =

Proportion of the population

that is undernourished

(%)

+Prevalence of

underweight in children under

age five (%)

Mortality rate of children

under age five (%)

3

+

The GHI ranks countries on a 100-point scale

• An increase in a country’s GHI score means the hunger situation is worsening; a decrease indicates improvement in the country’s hunger situation.

• Minimum (zero) and maximum (100) values are not observed in practice.

About the 2013 GHI

• The 2013 GHI is calculated for 120 developing countries and countries in transition for which data on the three indicators of hunger are available.

• This year’s GHI reflects data from 2008 to 2012—the most recent country-level data available on the three GHI measures. It is thus a snapshot of the recent past.

Key findings (1)

• According to the 2013 GHI, hunger on a global scale remains “serious.” Nineteen countries have levels of hunger that are “alarming” or “extremely alarming.”

• The 2013 world GHI fell by 34 percent from the 1990 world GHI, from a score of 20.8 to 13.8.

• South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara have the highest levels of hunger with regional scores of 20.7 and 19.2, respectively.

Key findings (2)

• From the 1990 GHI to the 2013 GHI, 23 countries reduced their scores by 50 percent or more.

• In terms of absolute progress, Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Thailand, and Vietnam saw the largest improvements in their scores from the 1990 to 2013 GHI.

Good news, but …

• The GHI has declined somewhat since 1990, but ... … it remains “serious” at 13.8.

• South Asia reduced its GHI score significantly between 1990 and 1996, but ...… could not maintain this rapid progress.

• South Asia in the 1990s made more progress than Africa south of the Sahara, but … … has fallen back since; its 2013 score is now higher than that of Africa south of the Sahara.

Regional performance and progress

Winners and losers from 1990 GHI to 2013 GHI

3 countries “extremely alarming,” 16 “alarming”

Extremely alarming AlarmingBurundi 38.8 Timor-Leste 29.6 Haiti 23.3

Eritrea 35.0 Sudan 27.0 Sierra Leone 22.8

Comoros 33.6 Chad 26.9 Burkina Faso 22.2

Yemen, Rep. 26.5 Mozambique 21.5

Ethiopia 25.7 India 21.3

Madagascar 25.2 Tanzania 20.6

Zambia 24.1 Congo, Rep. 20.5

Central African Rep.

23.3 Niger 20.3

Complete data are not available for Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, and Somalia.

Country snapshot: Eritrea• Rank: 77• GHI score: 35.0• GHI category: Extremely alarming

Country snapshot: India

• Rank: 63• GHI score: 21.3• GHI category: Alarming

Country snapshot: Ghana• Rank: 18• GHI score: 8.2• GHI category: Moderate

Country snapshot: Vietnam• Rank: 16• GHI score: 7.7• GHI category: Moderate

Understanding resilience for food and nutrition security

• For the long-term development of communities, regions, and countries, poor and vulnerable people need greater resilience.

• Building their resilience will involve boosting food and nutrition security.

• According to one framework for resilience, three different responses are linked to different intensities of shock or change.

Resilience involves absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities

Resilience in three hypothetical pastoral communities

Trends in food aid receipts, 1988-2011

Building community resilience to undernutrition

Welthungerhilfe:Fostering community resilience to food and nutrition crises in Haiti

Concern Worldwide:Community resilience in the Sahel and Horn of Africa

Selected policy recommendations for the international development, humanitarian, and

donor communities

• Break down the institutional, financial, and conceptual walls separating development and humanitarian assistance in donor and UN agencies to achieve greater synergies in strategies and implementation plans.

• Support a coordinated approach to monitoring resilience-building measures and building an evidence base on the impact and effectiveness of such measures.

• Support a pro-poor resilience approach.

Selected policy recommendations for country-level policymakers in food-insecure countries

• Develop national approaches to food and nutrition security that are resilient to shocks and other stresses.

• Encourage and facilitate a multisectoral approach to resilience, coordinating plans and programs across line ministries.

• Evaluate national sectoral strategies and action plans using disaster-proofing and resilience-building lenses.

Selected policy recommendations for development and humanitarian practitioners

• Focus on improving maternal and child nutrition in developing regions, with interventions to address the immediate and underlying causes of undernutrition.

• Support positive coping mechanisms that people already use, such as community-level savings networks or banks.

• NGOs and their national partners should use their long-term experience in development programming more proactively to lobby for resilience-enhancing policy change.

• Report available in English, German, French, and Italian

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