The World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and UNICEF told a United Nations press briefing that acute hunger worsened in 2024 across dozens of countries and that projected funding cuts for 2025 risk reducing lifesaving aid.

Arif Hussain, World Food Programme chief economist, said the ninth Global Report on Food Crises found about 295,000,000 people in 53 countries experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2024, an increase of almost 14,000,000 from 2023. He said the full list includes about 65 countries and territories with food crises in 2024, but that consensus data were available for 53 countries.

The report matters because it is a widely used reference for humanitarian planning and highlights where immediate assistance is needed. Briefing participants emphasized that conflict, extreme weather and economic shocks are the main drivers and often interact, and that declining humanitarian funding will constrain response where needs have risen.

Hussain and colleagues said the most severe outcomes continued in multiple countries. "Famine was confirmed in Sudan; risk of famine persisted in Gaza," Hussain said, and he listed South Sudan, Yemen and Haiti among places where close to half the population experienced high levels of acute hunger. He said more than 35,000,000 people in 36 countries experienced emergency (IPC phase 4) levels of hunger in 2024.

Rainn Paulson, director of FAO's Office of Emergencies and Resilience, expanded on underlying drivers and patterns. He said conflict was identified as a primary reason in 20 countries, extreme weather or natural disasters in 18 countries and economic shocks in 15 countries. "It is almost always reinforcing," Paulson said: more than one driver typically occurs in the same places.

Paulson and Hussain warned that funding trends threaten the 2025 response. Hussain gave figures comparing recent years: he said WFP received about $9,800,000,000 in 2024, with a peak of $14,200,000,000 in 2022, and that current projections for 2025 are about $6,400,000,000 — roughly a 40% drop from 2024 in his projection. "These cuts are not without consequences," he said, adding that agency and partner funding shortfalls would force reductions in assistance and monitoring capacity.

Paulson put the prospective reduction in the broader sector context: he said estimates of next-year funding shortfalls for the food-security sector range from roughly 11% to as much as 46%, depending on donor decisions.

Joan Macchi, UNICEF director of nutrition and child development, emphasized child nutrition. She said this year's global report devotes a full chapter to child wasting and reported about 10,000,000 children who are severely underweight by height. "No child should die from a condition we know how to cure," Macchi said, and she warned that cuts to funding and services put children and pregnant and breastfeeding women at heightened risk. She noted that nearly 11,000,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women were acutely malnourished last year.

Speakers also highlighted displacement: Hussain said roughly 96,000,000 people in the 53 countries assessed were forcibly displaced and that about 72,000,000 of them were internally displaced, a number that has roughly doubled since 2018.

Report authors and agency officials urged sustained and predictable financing, and a mix of emergency food aid, cash and emergency agricultural assistance to protect livelihoods. Paulson noted that emergency agriculture receives a small share of humanitarian food funding despite its cost effectiveness in protracted crises.

Report availability and data caveats: presenters said the printed report and detailed country analyses are posted online and that some country-level data remain the subject of ongoing review; the briefing focused on consolidated results and broad trends for 2024 with an outlook for 2025.

The briefing closed with reporters asking about the immediate impact of announced U.S. cuts to humanitarian spending in early 2025 and the agencies reiterating that cuts by major donors would reduce assistance and could destabilize fragile settings, with human consequences for food security and child survival.