Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger | 13
Despite overall progress, marked differences in reducing undernourishment have persisted across regions. There have been significant reductions in both the estimated prevalence of undernourishment and the number of undernourished in most countries in South-Eastern Asia, Eastern Asia, Caucasus and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean in which the target of halving the hunger rate has been reached, or almost reached. In comparison, sub-Saharan Africa has shown limited progress in recent years, remaining the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment. Western Asia witnessed a rise in the prevalence of undernourishment compared to 1990–1992, and Southern Asia and Oceania showed progress insufficient to meet the MDG hunger target by 2015.
One in seven children under age five in the world is underweight Proportion of children under age five moderately or severely underweight, 1990 and 2012 (Percentage) Southern Asia 50 30 Sub-Saharan Africa 29 21 Oceania 18 19 South-Eastern Asia 31
Useful policy implications can be drawn by analysing the different dimensions of food security The prevalence of undernourishment does not capture the complexity of food security and its multiple dimensions. There are several countries in which underweight and stunting in children persist even when undernourishment is low and most of the population has access to sufficient quantities of food. Nutritional failures are the consequence not only of insufficient food access but also of poor health conditions and the high incidence of diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has recently proposed a suite of indicators to measure the different dimensions of food security to allow identifying appropriate policy actions. In countries where low undernourishment coexists with high malnutrition, nutrition-enhancing interventions are crucial to improving the nutritional aspects of food security. Improvements require a range of policies, encompassing improvements in health conditions, hygiene, water supply and education, targeting women in particular, while less emphasis is required on access to food per se.
16 Western Asia 14 6 Caucasus and Central Asia 12 5 Northern Africa 10 5 Eastern Asia 15 3 Latin America and the Caribbean 7 3 World 25 15 0
10 1990
20 2012
30
40
50
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2015 target
Note: The trend analysis presented was based on harmonized estimates on child malnutrition from the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization and the World Bank.
An estimated 99 million children under age five in the world were underweight—inadequate weight for age— in 2012. This represented 15 per cent of all children under five, or approximately one in seven. The number of underweight children fell by 38 per cent from an estimated 160 million children in 1990. Eastern Asia has experienced the largest relative decrease in the prevalence of underweight children among all regions since 1990, followed by Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Western Asia. While Southern Asia had the highest underweight