In 2020, we helped to control the spread of COVID-19 and Ebola among some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. We supported health centers, raised awareness about how to prevent outbreaks, and provided urgently-needed supplies that ranged from medicine to hygiene kits to personal protective equipment. We also helped some of the world’s poorer people weather the impacts of pandemic-related inflation. 

Today, conflict and climate change mean that hunger is once again on the rise. Globally, nearly one in three people worry about where their next meal is coming from. Two-thirds of children—more than 400 million kids—don’t get the nutrients they need to thrive. Worse, every 15 seconds, a child loses the fight against hunger’s deadly effects.

Despite these warning signs, the world is seeing cuts in the funding that made previous progress possible. Our analysis of funding through the UN humanitarian system revealed that only 35% of appeals from countries dealing with crisis levels of hunger were satisfied in 2023, resulting in a hunger funding gap of 65%.