Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries faced acute hunger in 2023, and the Gaza Strip was the territory where most people suffered from hunger last year, according to a United Nations report.
The report said that in 2023 the number of people facing acute hunger increased by 24 million compared to 2022 due to a sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. It also highlights that the UN has increased the number of countries in which it monitors food supplies compared to 2022. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the introduction to the report that the conflicts that have erupted in the last 12 months have led to a catastrophic global situation.
More than 80 percent of the people facing hunger, 577,000 of them, are in the Gaza Strip and thousands of people are facing catastrophic famine in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali. According to UN estimates, about 1.1 million people in the Gaza Strip and 79,000 in South Sudan will face extreme hunger by July.
