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= Food security =

Rates[edit]
Number of people affected by undernourishment in 2010–12 (by region, in millions) The 2020 edition of the SOFI report found that even if the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic were excluded, the world was not on track to achieve Zero Hunger, or Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, preliminary projections suggested that the pandemic would add up to 132 million people to the ranks of the undernourished before the end of 2020.

 At the global level, the prevalence of food insecurity at moderate or severe level, and severe level only, is higher among women than men, magnified in rural areas  '''. The gender gap in accessing food increased from 2018 to 2019, particularly at the moderate or severe level  . Today, more than one billion women and girls around the world still do not have access to the healthy diets they need to survive and thrive, and two-thirds of countries report higher rates of food insecurity for women than men especially in the Near East area  . '''

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Effects of food insecurity[edit]
Famine and hunger are both rooted in food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity translates into a high degree of vulnerability to famine and hunger; ensuring food security presupposes elimination of that vulnerability.

Stunting and chronic nutritional deficiencies[edit]
See also: Malnutrition Children with symptoms of low calorie and protein intake and a nurse attendant at a Nigerian orphanage in the late 1960s Many countries experience ongoing food shortages and distribution problems. These result in chronic and often widespread hunger amongst significant numbers of people. Human populations can respond to chronic hunger and malnutrition by decreasing body size, known in medical terms as stunting or stunted growth. This process starts in utero if the mother is malnourished and continues through approximately the third year of life. It leads to higher infant and child mortality, but at rates far lower than during famines. Once stunting has occurred, improved nutritional intake after the age of about two years is unable to reverse the damage. Stunting itself can be viewed as a coping mechanism, bringing body size into alignment with the calories available during adulthood in the location where the child is born. Limiting body size as a way of adapting to low levels of energy (calories) adversely affects health in three ways:


 * Premature failure of vital organs during adulthood. For example, a 50-year-old individual might die of heart failure because his/her heart suffered structural defects during early development;
 * Stunted individuals suffer a higher rate of disease and illness than those who have not undergone stunting;
 * Severe malnutrition in early childhood often leads to defects in cognitive development. It therefore creates disparity among children who did not experience severe malnutrition and those who experience it.[citation needed]

Between 2000 and 2019, the global prevalence of child stunting declined by one-third.

Worldwide, the prevalence of child stunting was 21.3 percent in 2019, or 144 million children. Central Asia, Eastern Asia and the Caribbean have the largest rates of reduction in the prevalence of stunting and are the only subregions on track to achieve the 2025 and 2030 stunting targets.

 The 2020 edition of FAO's Near East and North Africa − Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition found that in 2019 22.5 percent of children under the age of five were stunted, 9.2 percent were wasted, and 9.9 percent were overweight across several Arab and North African countries  '''. '''

Although there has been some progress, the world is not on track to achieve the global nutrition targets, including those on child stunting, wasting and overweight by 2030.

Depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders[edit]
A recent comprehensive systematic review showed that over 50 studies have shown that food insecurity is strongly associated with a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. For depression and anxiety, food-insecure individuals have almost a threefold risk increase compared to food-secure individuals.[citation needed]

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Gender and food security[edit]
Main article: Gender and food security

Gender inequality both leads to and is a result of food insecurity. According to estimates, girls and women make up 60% of the world's chronically hungry and little progress has been made in ensuring the equal right to food for women enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Women face discrimination both in education and employment opportunities and within the household, where their bargaining power is lower. Women's employment is essential for not only advancing gender equality the promotion of women’s empowerment and gender transformative approaches within the workforce, but ensuring a sustainable future as it means less pressure for high birth rates and net migration. On the other hand, gender equality  and the promotion of women’s empowerment and gender transformative approaches  is described as instrumental  and critical  to ending malnutrition and hunger,  hence to achieving healthy diets and food security .

Women tend to be responsible for food preparation and childcare within the family and are more likely to spend their income on food and their children's needs. Women also play an important role in food production, processing, distribution and marketing. They often work as unpaid family workers, are involved in subsistence farming and represent about 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries, varying from 20% in Latin America to 50% in Eastern and Southeastern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. However, women face discrimination in access to land, credit, technologies, finance and other services. Empirical studies suggest that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, women could boost their yields by 20–30%, raising the overall agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4%. While these are rough estimates, there would be a significant benefit of closing the gender gap on agricultural productivity. The gendered aspects of food security are visible along the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

 Women play key roles in maintaining all four pillars of food security: as food producers and agricultural entrepreneurs; as decision-makers for the food and nutritional security of their households and communities and as “managers” of the stability of food supplies in times of economic hardship  '''. And yet, women’s contributions often remain invisible and undervalued, inadequately reflected in policy, legal and institutional frameworks, neglected by service providers and other actors operating across agrifood systems, thereby preventing them from reaching their full potential. '''

The number of people affected by hunger is  remains  extremely high, with enormous effects on  impacting  girls and women. There is sentiment that making this trend disappear should be a top priority for governments and international institutions. This is because food insecurity is an issue concerning equality, rights and social justice. Factors like capitalism, exploration of Indigenous lands all contribute to food insecurity for minorities and the people who are the most oppressed in various countries (women being one of these oppressed groups). Because girls and women are the most oppressed by the inequitable global economic processes that govern food systems and by global trends such as climate change, it is reflective of how institutions continue to place women in positions of disadvantage and impoverishment to make money and thrive on capitalizing the food system. When the government withholds food by raising its prices to amounts only privileged people can afford, they both benefit and are able to control the lower-class/marginalized people via the food market.