The 2015 edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2015), published jointly by FAO, IFAD and WFP, was released yesterday, 27 May 2015, at FAO headquarters in Rome. The focus of this year’s report is meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress. This year’s SOFI presents updated estimates of the number and proportion of hungry people in the world in 2015, the target year of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and raises awareness on global hunger issues, discusses underlying causes of hunger and malnutrition and monitors progress towards hunger reduction targets. It also offers analysis into what drives successful anti-hunger programmes, the growing importance of social protection schemes and the new challenges presented by the increasingly protracted nature of food insecurity crises.  

A second, in-depth report on Asia-Pacific is being released today. “Regional Overview of Food Insecurity Asia and the pacific – Towards a food secure Asia and the Pacific” reviews progress made since 1990 for Viet Nam and all other countries, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The region has achieved the MDGs hunger target (MDG-1c) of halving the proportion of undernourished people in 2015. The region has also achieved the largest reduction in the absolute number of undernourished people. Importantly, the report also indicated that Viet Nam drastically reduced poverty during their transformation from centrally planned to market-oriented systems.

“Viet Nam has made great progress in this regard. The national prevalence of undernourishment dropped from 45.6 percent in 1990-92 to an estimated 11 percent in 2014-16. The number of undernourished people in the country dropped from 32.1 million in 1990-92 to an estimated 10.3 million in 2014-16. This clearly shows that country has achieved both the WFS and MDG-1 targets” said JongHa Bae, FAO Representative in Viet Nam.

The serious challenge facing the Asia-Pacific region is the remaining undernourished 12 percent of the total population that is still hungry and has been left behind, denied their share of the benefits of economic growth.Therefore, the challenge facing the region is not only to produce more food from the increasingly limited natural resource base, but also how to ensure more equitable access to food, while addressing various threats such as climate change.It will be crucial to accelerate actions through the Zero Hunger Challenge (ZHC) and other relevant food security and nutrition initiatives,focusing on supporting resource-poor family farms and the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society.
 
The full report is available for download from the FAO website at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4624e.pdf