Global Report on Food Crises – 2021

The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021)
highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers
of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or
equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent
conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic
shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in
the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year
existence.

While conflict continues to displace people, disrupt livelihoods
and damage economies, the COVID-19 pandemic and related
containment measures have exacerbated pre-existing drivers
of fragility, widened inequalities and exposed structural
vulnerabilities of local and global food systems, hitting the most
economically vulnerable households particularly hard.
The shocks come amid the frequent threat of weather extremes
that result in crop and livestock losses, destroy homes and
displace people. Together and separately, such shocks –
especially when persistent or recurrent – drive millions of
people to lose their livelihoods and lack adequate food. These
shocks also increase the risk of all forms of malnutrition, and, in
the most extreme cases, cause death.