645M people still faced hunger in 2025 despite 3rd yearly decline: UN report

• Africa has highest number of hungry people as conflicts, climate shocks, aid cuts threaten recent gains

Around 645 million people faced hunger worldwide in 2025 despite global hunger declining for a third consecutive year, according to a UN report released Tuesday, which warned that progress remains "fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient" to achieve the goal of ending hunger by 2030.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), published by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, World Food Program (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO), estimated that 7.8% of the global population experienced hunger in 2025, down from 8.1% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2022.

The report said the number of hungry people declined by nearly 14 million from 2024 and by 43 million from 2022, but stressed that recovery remains uneven across regions.

Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean recorded steady improvements, while Africa is now home to 309 million hungry people -- having "the highest number of hungry people," compared with 292 million in Asia.

An estimated 2.1 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2025, while 2.69 billion could not afford a healthy diet.

The report also found that the average global cost of a healthy diet rose to 4.28 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars per person per day in 2025, up from 3.44 PPP dollars in 2021 and 2.94 PPP dollars in 2017, with the highest costs recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Africa, affordability worsened markedly, with 66.6% of the population unable to afford a healthy diet -- more than double the levels observed in Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The work that lies ahead over the years to 2030 is immense. However, a world in which a healthy diet is no longer out of reach for nearly one in three people is a world worth building," said the report.

The UN agencies warned that the conflict in the Middle East, weather extremes and cuts to official development assistance and humanitarian funding could undermine recent progress in reducing global hunger.