By Juana Casas
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress in their fight to eradicate hunger, though the region still has the highest rate of food insecurity worldwide and has yet to recover from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report by five United Nations agencies published on Thursday.
Some 43.2 million people went hungry in the region last year, or about 6.5% of the population, the U.N. agencies said. That’s down from the 7% who faced hunger in 2021.
“Progress was made in Latin America and the Caribbean in the fight against hunger and food insecurity, driven by improvements in South America,” the agencies said.
South America saw hunger drop due to improvements in the labor market and fresh social protection policies, with increased energy input prices boosting the region’s exporting nations.
Despite the progress, the rate of hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean is still nearly a full percentage point above the 2019 level, before the COVID-19 pandemic, which aggravated structural issues such as inequality, labor informality, poverty and lack of social benefits.
Meanwhile, moderate or severe food insecurity “was higher in the region compared to the world estimate,” the agencies said, with 37.5% of the region affected versus 29.6% globally.
Food insecurity is calculated by estimating the proportion of the population which faces limitations in obtaining sufficient food throughout the year.
“Persistent inequalities in the region have a significant impact on the food security of the most vulnerable,” the report said, highlighting discrepancies in access between men and women and between rural and urban communities, with women and people living in rural areas worse off.
The gender gap widened considerably during the pandemic, the U.N. said, though it narrowed in 2022 to 9.1 percentage points. In rural versus urban communities, the gap in food insecurity was 8.3 percentage points.
(Reporting by Juana Casas; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
