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The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of countries’ hunger situation. The GHI measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger. The GHI is updated once a year.

The Index was adopted and further developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and was first published in 2006 with the Welthungerhilfe, a German non-profit organization (NGO). Since 2007, the Irish NGO Concern Worldwide joined the group as co-publisher.

The 2014 GHI was calculated for 120 developing countries and countries in transition, 55 of which with a serious or worse hunger situation.

In addition to the ranking, the Global Hunger Index report every year focuses on a main topic: in 2014 the thematic focus was on hidden hunger, a form of undernutrition characterized by micronutrient deficiencies.

Topics of previous years included:
 * Early childhood undernutrition among children younger than the age of two (2010).
 * Rising and more volatile food prices of the recent years and the effects these changes have on hunger and malnutrition in 2011.
 * In 2012: Achieving food security and sustainable use of natural resources, when the natural sources of food become scarcer and scarcer.
 * In 2013, the thematic focus was on the strengthening of resilience at the community level against under- and malnutrition.

In addition to the yearly GHI, the Hunger Index for the States of India (ISHI) was published in 2008 and the Sub-National Hunger Index for Ethiopia was published in 2009.

Calculation of the Index
The Index ranks countries on a 100 point scale, with 0 being the best score ("no hunger") and 100 being the worst, though neither of these extremes is achieved in practice. The higher the score, the worse the food situation of a country. Values less than 4.9 reflect "low hunger", values between 5 and 9.9 reflect "moderate hunger", values between 10 and 19.9 indicate a "serious", values between 20 and 29.9 are "alarming", and values exceeding 30 are "extremely alarming" hunger problem.

The GHI combines three equally weighted indicators: 1) the proportion of the undernourished as a percentage of the population; 2) the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five; 3) the mortality rate of children under the age of five.

The data used for the 2014 GHI are for the period from 2009 to 2013 – the most recent available global data for the three components of the GHI. The data on the proportion of undernourished come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and IFPRI (estimates). Data on underweight of children under 5 are collected from UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, [www.measuredhs.com MEASURE DHS], the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development, and also include the authors’ own estimates. Data on child mortality are from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

Global and regional trends
Worldwide, the Global Hunger Index 2013 has a value of 12.5. this means that the overall value decreased by 39 % compare to the value for 1990. Despite this progress the number of starving people remains very high.

According to the GHI 2014, hunger is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa has a GHI of 18.2, while is at 18.1 for South Asia. This means that the hunger situation in these two regions is still serious following the index’s categorization. In East Asia and Southeast Asia the situation continues to improve. The GHI here has dropped to 7.6 over the last years. Very little hunger can be found in the Near East and North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean as well as in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The food and hunger situation in two countries is still “extremely alarming” according to the GHI 2014: Burundi (35.6) and Eritrea (33.8). In 14 countries the situation is classifies as alarming. This group so countries includes mainly countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Haiti, Lao PDR and Timor-Leste.

Ranking
The Global Hunger Index is composed of the proportion of the undernourished as a percentage of the population, the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five and the mortality rate of children under the age of five (calculated average, in percentages).

The 2014 GHI score could only be calculated for former Sudan as one entity, because sepa- rate undernourishment estimates for 2011–2013 were not available for South Sudan, which became independent in 2011, and present-day Sudan.

Focus of the GHI 2014: Hidden Hunger
Hidden hunger concerns over 2 million people worldwide. This micronutrient deficiency develops, when humans do not take in enough micronutrients such as zinc, jod and iron, and vitamins or when their bodies cannot absorb them. Reasons include an unbalanced diet, a higher need for micronutrient (e.g. during pregnancy or while breast feeding) but also health issues related to sickness, infections or parasites.

The consequences for the individual can be devastating: mental impairment, bad health, low productivity and death caused by sickness. Especially children are hit if they did not absorb enough micronutrients in the first 1000 days of their lives (from conception to their 2nd birthday).

Micronutrient deficiencies are responsible for an estimated 1.1 million of the yearly 3.1 million death caused by under nutrition in children. Despite the size of the problem, it is still not easy to get precise data on the spread of hidden hunger. Macro- and micronutrient deficiencies cause a loss in global productivity of 1.4 to 2.1 bn US Dollars per year.

To prevent hidden hunger different measures exist. It is very effective to ensure that humans get a diverse diet. Quality of the produce is as important as the quantity (measured in calories). This can be achieved by promoting the production of a wide variety of nutrient rich plants and the creation of house gardens.

Other possible solutions are the industrial enrichment (fortification) of food or biofortification of feedplants (e.g. vitamin A rich sweet potatoes). In the case of acute nutrient deficiency and in specific life phases, food supplements can be used. In particular the addition of vitamin A, leads to a better survival rate of children.

Generally, the situation concerning hidden hunger can only be improved, when many measures intermesh. In addition to the direct measures described above this includes education and empowerment of women, creation of better sanitation adequate hygiene, access to clean drinking water and access to health services.

Simply eating until satisfied is not enough. Every woman, man and child have the right to a culturally adequate amount, but also adequate quality to cover their food needs. The international community has to ensure that hidden hunger is not overlooked and that the post-2015 agenda includes a comprehensive goal for the elimination of hunger and malnutrition of any type.

Focus of the GHI 2013: Resilience to build food and nutrition security
Many of the countries, in which the hunger situation is "alarming" or "extremely alarming", are particularly prone to crises: In the African Sahel people experience yearly droughts. On top of that, they have to deal with violent conflict and natural calamities. At the same time, the global context becomes more and more volatile (financial and economic crises, food price crises).

The inability to cope with these crises leads to the destruction of many development successes that had been achieved over the years. In addition, people have even less resources to withstand the next shock or crises. 2.6 billion people in the world live with less than 2 USD per day. For them, a sickness in the family, crop failure after a drought or the interruption of remittances from relatives who live abroad can set in motion a downward spiral from which they cannot free themselves on their own.

It is therefore not enough to support people in emergencies and, once the crises is over, to start longer term development efforts. Instead, emergency and development assistance has to be conceptualized with the goal of increasing resilience of poor people against these shocks.

The Global Hunger Index differentiates three coping strategies. The lower the intensity of the crises, the less resources have to be used to cope with the consequences:


 * Absorption: Skills or resources, which are used to reduce the impact of a crisis without changing the lifestyle (e.g. selling some livestock)
 * Adaptation: Once the capacity to absorb is exhausted, steps are taken to adapt the lifestyle to the situation without making drastic changes (e.g. using drought-resistant seeds).
 * Transformation: If the adaptation strategies do not suffice to deal with the negative impact of the crises, fundamental, longer lasting changes to life and behavior have to be made (e.g. nomadic tribes become sedentary and become farmers because they cannot keep their herds).

Based on this analysis the authors present several policy recommendations:
 * Overcoming the institutional, financial and conceptual boundaries between humanitarian aid and development assistance.
 * Elimination of policies that undermine people's resilience. Using the Right to Food as a basis for the development of new policies.
 * Implementation of multi-year, flexible programs, which are financed in a way that enables multi-sectoral approaches to overcome chronic food crises.
 * Communicating that improving resilience is cost effective and improves food and nutrition security, especially in fragile contexts.
 * Scientific monitoring and evaluation of measures and programs with the goal to increase resilience.
 * Active involvement of the local population in the planning and implementation of resilience increasing programs.
 * Improvement of food especially of mothers and children through nutrition-specific and sensitive interventions to avoid that short-term crises lead to nutrition-related problems late in life or across generations.

Focus of the GHI 2012: Pressures on land, water and energy resources
Increasingly, Hunger is related to how we use land, water and energy. The growing scarcity of these resources puts more and more pressure on food security. Several factors contribute to an increasing shortage of natural resources: Signs for an increasing scarcity of energy, land and water resources are for example: growing prices for food and energy, a massive increase of large-scale investment in arable land (so-called land grabbing), increasing degradation of arable land because of too intensive land use (for example, increasing desertification), increasing number of people, who live in regions with lowering ground water levels, and the loss of arable land as a consequence of climate change. The analysis of the global conditions lead the authors of the GHI 2012 to recommend several policy actions:
 * 1) Demographic change: The world population is expected to be over 9 billion by 2050. Additionally, more and more people live in cities. Urban populations feed themselves differently than inhabitants of rural areas; they tend to consume less staple foods and more meat and dairy products.
 * 2) Higher income and non-sustainable use of resources: As the global economy grows, wealthy people consume more food and goods, which have to be produced with a lot of water and energy. They can afford not to be efficient and wasteful in their use of resources.
 * 3) Bad policies and weak institutions: When policies, for example energy policy, are not tested for the consequences they have on the availability of land and water it can lead to failures. An example are the biofuel policies of industrialized countries: As corn and sugar are increasingly used for the production of fuels, there is less land and water for the production of food.
 * Securing land and water rights
 * Gradual lowering of subsidies
 * Creation of a positive macroeconomic framework
 * Investment in agriculture technology development to promote a more efficient use of land, water and energy
 * Support for approaches, that lead to a more efficient use of land, water and energy along the whole value chain
 * Preventing and overuse of natural resources through monitoring strategies for water, land and energy, and agricultural systems
 * Improvement of the access to education for women and the strengthening of their reproductive rights to address demographic change
 * Increase incomes, reduce social and economic inequality and promotion of sustainable lifestyles
 * Climate change mitigation and adaptation through a reorientation of agriculture

Focus of the GHI 2011: Rising and volatile food prices
The report cites 3 factors as the main reasons for high volatility, or price changes, and price spikes of food:
 * Use of the so-called biofuels, promoted by high oil prices, subsidies in the United States (over one third of the corn harvest of 2009 and 2010 respectively) and quota for biofuel in gasoline in the European Union, India and others.
 * Extreme weather events as a result of Climate Change
 * Future trading of agricultural commodities, for instance investments in fonds, which are speculating on price changes of agricultural products (2003: 13 Bn US Dollar, 2008: 260 Bn US Dollar), as well as increasing trade volume of these goods.

Volatility and prices increases are worsened according to the report by the concentration of staple foods in a few countries and export restrictions of these goods, the historical low of worldwide cereal reserves and the lack of timely information on food products, reserves and price developments. Especially this lack of information can lead to overreactions in the markets. Moreover, seasonal limitations on production possibilities, limited land for agricultural production, limited access to fertilizers and water, as well as the increasing demand resulting from population growth, puts pressure on food prices.

According to the Global Hunger Index 2011 price trends show especially harsh consequences for poor and under-nourished people, because they are not capable to react to price spikes and price changes. Reactions, following these developments, can include: reduced calorie intake, no longer sending children to school, riskier income generation such as prostitution, criminality, or searching landfills, and sending away household members, who cannot be fed anymore. In addition, the report sees an all-time high in the instability and unpredictability of food prices, which after decades of slight decrease, increasingly show price spikes (strong and short-term increase).

At a national level, especially food importing countries (those with a negative food trade balance, are affected by the changing prices.

Focus of the GHI 2010: Early Childhood Under-nutrition
Under-nutrition among children has reached terrible levels. About 195 million children under the age of five in the developing world – about one in three children - are too small and thus underdeveloped. Nearly one in four children under age five – 129 million – is underweight, and one in 10 is severely underweight. The problem of child under-nutrition is concentrated in a few countries and regions with more than 90 percent of stunted children living in Africa and Asia. 42% of the world’s undernourished children live in India alone.

The evidence presented in the report shows that the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans is the 1,000 days between conception and a child’s second birthday (that is the period from -9 to +24 months). Children who are do not receive adequate nutrition during this period have increased risks to experiencing lifelong damage, including poor physical and cognitive development, poor health, and even early death. The consequences of malnutrition that occurred after 24 months of a child's life are by contrast largely reversible.