Based on the 1996 World Food Summit, food security is defined when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

The proliferation of conflicts and the multiplication of extreme climate events, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 global economic recession and growing inequalities, has increased rapidly and consistently the number of food insecure people globally, moving further away the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) of ending hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Decrease in Official Development Assistance (ODA) put an extra burden on global food and nutrition security.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition Report (SOFI) is jointly prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO and informs on the progress towards achieving SDG2. The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) is prepared by the Global network against Food Crises and informs on the size of the needs in food crises prone areas. 

The latest edition of SOFI 2026 reports a third consecutive year of gradual improvement in global hunger measured by the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU, SDG indicator 2.1.1). The PoU fell to 7.8% in 2025, corresponding to an estimated 645 million people (range: 608–696 million), from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity, measured with the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES, SDG indicator 2.1.2), shows a continuous five-year downward trend following the sharp increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, progress remains insufficient and uneven: it was estimated that 20% of the population in Africa faced hunger in 2025, compared to 6% in Asia, 4.8% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 8% in Oceania, and less than 2.5% in Northern America and Europe. Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have been showing steady recovery over several consecutive years, while the PoU in Africa had been on the rise since 2017 and stopped increasing only in 2025. Achieving SDG 2 — ending hunger (SDG 2.1) and all forms of malnutrition (SDG 2.2) — requires not only sufficient food but nutritious food. In 2025, an estimated 2.69 billion people (32.7%) could not afford a healthy diet; unaffordability is falling globally but rising in Africa, where it reaches 66.6%.  Minimum dietary diversity — for children (MDD-C) and for women (MDD-W) — was adopted as SDG indicator 2.2.4 in March 2025; only 30.8% of children aged 6 to 23 months and 62.7% of women aged 15-49 years attain it, falling to 20.5% and 43.0% respectively in Africa.

The Global Report on Food Crises has flagged high levels of acute hunger, consistently above 100 million people and increasing since 2016. The latest 2026 edition estimates that about 266 million people in 47 food crisis countries and territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above, or equivalent) and required urgent food assistance in 2025. This represents 22.9 percent of the analysed population, and a marginal increase from the 22.3 percent reported in 2024. At the same time, acute malnutrition remains a critical and growing concern. In 2025 alone, 35.5 million children were acutely malnourished, including nearly 10 million suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Nearly half of food-crisis contexts also faced nutrition crises, reflecting the combined effects of inadequate diets, disease burden, and breakdowns in essential services.

In West Africa, the Sahel and Cameroon, the Food Crises Prevention Network (Reseau de Prevention des Crises alimentaires - RPCA) promotes dialogue and co-ordination, to build a coherent and shared understanding of the region’s food and nutrition situation and to inform decision-making. The Food Aid Charter adopted for the first time in 1990 by Heads of State of CILSS (Comité Permanent Inter-États de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel) calls for strengthening information systems and dialogue platforms, and to ensure the coherence of interventions, thereby improving the effectiveness of collective action. The Charter is subject to internal and external assessments conducted within the framework of the RPCA.

Humanitarian assistance remains critical to promptly save lives and livelihoods, and alleviate human suffering.

Current high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition call for a transition towards more sustainable and resilient food systems  to ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all, in particular in fragile contexts. The United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021 (UNFSS) has given birth to an international Coalition for action with this objective. The European Union has adopted an ambitious strategy towards sustainable food systems (Farm to Fork strategy) and is committed to support such transition at global level through its trade policies and international cooperation instruments.

With the objective to provide a rapid overview of main definitions relevant to understanding the key elements of international food security and food crises reporting and response, the Knowledge Centre on Global Food and Nutrition Security has produced a Scientific Brief on Food Security and Food Crises. (cf. document below).