The world is producing enough food, yet 37.4 million people are living at IPC Phase 4 in 2025. That is the emergency level of food insecurity, where families face extreme food gaps, very high malnutrition, and rising deaths.
This marks the highest figure since 2021, when the total peaked at 39.2 million. As reported by World Food Program USA, it is also more than 2.5 times the 14.5 million recorded in 2016.
The raw number, however, is only part of the story. The geography of hunger is narrowing.
In 2025, 85.7% of people in Phase 4 lived in watchlist countries, up from 78.6% a year earlier. That is 32 million people, against just 5.4 million in the rest of the world.
The most alarming trend sits at the top of the scale. The number of countries with populations in IPC Phase 5, the catastrophe category, has tripled from two in 2016 to six in 2025, including Haiti, Mali, Gaza, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.
Together, they held about 1.41 million people in catastrophic hunger in 2025. The distribution is stark: Gaza (about 641,000) and Sudan (about 637,000) account for roughly 90% of the total, followed by South Sudan with 83,000, Yemen with 41,000, Haiti with 8,400, and Mali with 2,600.
FAO and WFP's latest early-warning analysis identifies 13 hunger hotspots through November 2026. Armed conflict is a primary driver in 12 of them.
Sudan has 14 areas at risk of famine, and 15 areas hold populations at risk to face catastrophe. Nigeria joined the highest-concern category this year, with Borno State facing alarming conditions.
Somalia's Burhakaba district was added after a failed rainy season and rising prices. José Graziano da Silva, a former FAO director-general, argued in his analysis titled "Food Under Fire: Breaking the vicious cycle of conflict and hunger" that the world no longer lacks information.
Satellite data, market monitoring, and early-warning systems all exist. Ten years after the UN Security Council first took up the issue, and eight years after Resolution 2417 condemned starvation as a method of warfare, he says the failure is one of enforcement in early action.
This raises another connected issue of collapsing funding. Humanitarian assistance to food sectors in crisis countries fell an estimated 59% between 2022 and 2025, returning to 2016-17 levels.
As reported by AP, the Trump administration terminated around 83% of USAID global programs. The share of people facing acute hunger has doubled since then.
By June 2026, only a third of global humanitarian requirements had been funded, and aid agencies are prioritizing 87 million people for life-saving help out of 135 million targeted. The cuts reach the data too.
WFP survey interviews dropped from 1.1 million down to 800,000, and several analyses, including WFP's household surveys (the primary field interviews used to track vulnerable families and assess deep food security trends), have moved from twice yearly to annual cycles. The number of active real-time monitoring country offices plummeted from 35 in 2022 to just 18, making it harder to see where the next crisis is forming.
In 2026, three pressures - war and energy, El Niño, and inflation - are now compounding the structural crisis, alongside disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, which carries about a fifth of global oil and a third of fertilizer trade. International organizations continue to urge immediate and decisive diplomatic interventions to restore supply chains and protect vulnerable populations.
Without coordinated global action, the compounding effects of climate shocks and prolonged conflicts threaten to push millions more into irreversible destitution. Governments and donors must reassess their commitments to ensure that early-warning mechanisms translate into immediate on-the-ground relief before these localized emergencies transform into widespread regional famines.