Global Hunger Index 2022 and Bangladesh

Dr Matiur Rahman :
The 2022 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows a dire outlook as the crisis overlaps with global hunger. Overlapping problems facing the world are exposing global to local food system failures and highlighting the vulnerability of populations worldwide to hunger. The GHI report was jointly published by the Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and the German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe.
Bangladesh’s position in 2022 deteriorated compared to last year’s Global Hunger Index (GHI). Bangladesh is ranked 84th out of 121 countries this year despite being ranked 76th in the 2021 World Hunger Index report.
The Global Hunger Index is prepared based on four issues undernourishment: the share of the population that is undernourished, reflecting insufficient caloric intake; child wasting: the share of children under the age of five who are wasted (low weight-for-height), reflecting acute under-nutrition; child stunting: the percentage of children under the age of five who are stunted (low height-for-age), reflecting chronic under-nutrition; child mortality: the mortality rate of children under the age of five.
According to the World Health Organization, the global hunger index monitorscountries achieving hunger-related SDGs. The index captures three dimensions of hunger: insufficient availability of food, shortfalls in the nutritional status of children and child mortality (which is, to a large extent, attributable to undernutrition).
Bangladesh got a 19.6 score on this index this year, which is considered “moderate” on the GHI Severity Scale. Meanwhile, a score of 20 to 34.9 means “serious”. In 2014, the score of Bangladesh was 26.3. According to GHI’s 2022 score, hunger levels have reached alarming levels in at least 9 out of 121 countries. In addition, another 35 countries have severe hunger situations. Countries with dire hunger are the Central African Republic, Chad, the People’s Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Yemen, Burundi, South Sudan and Syria.
According to GHI, South Asia currently has the worst hunger in the world, and it has the second hungriest environment than sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, some countries in East Africa are facing the worst drought in the last 40 years, which has put the lives of millions of people at risk. Hunger is moderate in West Asia and North Africa, Where there are concerns about hunger relief initiatives. However, the lowest world hunger levels are in Latin America, the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia, and Europe and Central Asia.
In this year’s index, Sri Lanka is on top of Bangladesh among Asian countries. The country is ranked 64th with a score of 13.6. Then Myanmar is ranked 71st with a score of 15.6. On the other hand, India, another neighbour of Bangladesh, is ranked 107th. And in this index, Pakistan is in 99th place with a score of 26.1.
The top 17 countries with a score below 5 on the Global Hunger Index include Belarus, Herzegovina, Chile, China, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey and Uruguay. That is, there is less hunger in these countries in the world. At the very bottom of the index is war-torn Yemen, and the country is ranked 121st with a score of 45.1.
According to The State of Food Security and Nutrition-2022 report, the number of people suffering from undernourishment reached 828 million in 2021. A recently published report titled “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World” mentioned that the number of hungry people increased unusually in 2021. About 2.3 billion people face adequate, moderate or severe food insecurity, and about 924 million face severe food insecurity.
The Global Hunger Index report presents us a grim reality. The toxic cocktail of conflict, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic has already left millions of people vulnerable to food price hikes and exacerbated the risk of this crisis. Now the Ukraine war has hit global supplies and prices of food, fertiliser and fuel. And this crisis has gradually started to take catastrophic form.
The 2022 GHI reflects the terrible stigma of hunger in many countries worldwide and the changing trajectory of countries where decades of progress in combating hunger have eroded. Thus, there is an urgent need to respond to current emergencies by transforming food systems to be more equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient – and therefore able to help avoid future crises.

(The writer is a researcher and development worker).