The food insecurity gap and protracted humanitarian crisis

In 2022, record-high food prices, supply-chain disruptions and increasing climate and conflict risks are causing millions of people across the globe to face worsening levels of food insecurity. But the trend toward greater food insecurity is not simply a product of current events. The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2022 highlights that the population considered in need of urgent action due to acute food insecurity doubled between 2016 and 2021. Food insecurity can cause, deepen, or worsen humanitarian crises, and understanding the most effective ways to target assistance is crucial to preventing multiple and protracted crises.What is food insecurity?Acute food insecurity is faced by people who are unable to afford or access essential food needs, and presents the risks of malnutrition, starvation or death. While the risk of food insecurity is greater for those in humanitarian crisis contexts, a humanitarian crisis does not have to be present for countries to experience high levels of food insecurity.There are a number of metrics which indicate the overall level of food insecurity in a country: the absolute size of a population facing food insecurity; the size of a population facing food insecurity relative to the total population; and the intensity of the food insecurity felt by the population in need, as measured by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) acute food insecurity Phases 1-5.IPC phases range from 1 to 5, where Phases 1 or 2 (minimal or stressed) indicate no immediate unmet food needs; and Phases 3, 4, and 5 (crisis, emergency and catastrophe/famine) indicate increasing severity of unmet food needs and the requirement for urgent assistance. The number of people in Phase 3 and above is a primary metric in tracking food insecurity, although the IPC does not cover every country every year. In 2022, the GRFC assessed 53 countries experiencing acute food insecurity and requiring external emergency assistance to cope. To produce a global total, other sources such as humanitarian needs assessments can be used to supplement IPC data, although these figures may use differing definitions of food security. For more information on calculating the number of people facing food insecurity in countries not covered by the IPC, see the methodology in the Appendix.The food insecurity gapKnowing the overall numbers of people facing food insecurity does not give a complete picture, as the intensity of food insecurity differs between populations, ranging from crisis-level (IPC Phase 3) to catastrophic levels or even famine (IPC Phase 5).We can understand the difference in these levels as increasing gaps in food insecurity: populations with a greater gap – or deeper food insecurity – are experiencing more intense food insecurity and require a different and more urgent set of interventions. Measuring how the intensity of food insecurity differs and changes between populations is vital to understanding and comparing levels of need, and tracking progress over time. To do this, we created a metric known as the 'food insecurity gap', a single percentage figure which indicates the intensity of food insecurity across a population. See the Appendix for more information on the methodology used to calculate this metric.How do we define humanitarian crisis?We define countries experiencing humanitarian crisis as those with a United Nations (UN)-coordinated humanitarian appeal. We identify countries facing protracted crisis as those with five or more consecutive years of UN-coordinated humanitarian appeals, while recurrent-crisis countries are those with two to four consecutive years of appeals. As of September 2022, there are 71 countries with UN-coordinated humanitarian appeals and 44 facing protracted crisis