Briefing Papers Number 22, September 2013 | Page 2

The Final Stretch: The Global Hunger
Target Within Reach
Experience with the MDGs has shown that making progress is easier when there are specific goals. The global rate
of extreme poverty has been cut in half—a striking example
of the power of goal-setting. With just over two years left to
the MDG deadline of December 2015, now is the time for
an intensive effort to reach the MDG global hunger target:
cutting in half the proportion of hungry people.
Today, about 870 million people—one in every eight
people on Earth—are malnourished, the vast majority (852
million) in developing countries. While this is far too many,
there has been progress: the proportion of undernourished
people in the developing world decreased from 23.2 percent
in 1990–1992 to 14.9 percent in 2010–2012. The 2010-2012
figure is lower than expected; in fact, it puts the MDG
hunger target within reach if the international community
intensifies efforts to improve food security and agricultural
productivity over the next two years.
Fighting malnutrition, however, is part of the unfinished
agenda. In 2008, the leading British medical journal The
Lancet declared that malnutrition among children younger
than 2 is a global development challenge of the greatest
urgency. Malnutrition during the critical period between
pregnancy and the second birthday, often called the “1,000
Days” window, causes irreversible physical and cognitive
damage. The United States works through its global food
security initiative, Feed the Future, to emphasize the urgent
need to improve maternal and child nutrition.1 Nutrition

interventions during this window have a profound impact on
the long-term economic development and stability of entire
nations, because chronic malnutrition is an enormous drain
on a country’s financial and human resources, translating
into deficits of several billion dollars a year.
In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 41 percent of all children younger than 5 are malnourished.2 It is the only world
region where the number of child deaths is increasing, and
the only one projected to suffer further increases in food insecurity and absolute poverty.3
Reducing all forms of malnutrition will help achieve
many of the MDGs by ending preventable child deaths and
building smart, strong, and resilient communities and economies. Investing in nutrition is cost-effective. Every dollar
invested in nutrition generates as much as $138 in better
health and increased productivity,4 and of the “10 best buys
in development” identified by a group of top economists,
five are nutrition interventions.5 But despite the availability
of relatively simple, very affordable interventions to treat
malnutrition, nutrition has been and remains critically
underfunded—both in development assistance accounts and
in the most affected countries’ own budgets.
The good