GLOBAL HUNGER REDUCED- GHI

Every year for the past
eight years, the Global Hunger
Index has mapped the world's
nutrition. Over time, the maps
demonstrate progress: The dark
red splashes across Africa that
signified "extremely alarming"
levels of hunger have mostly
faded to orange, and much of
the orange is now yellow,
meaning "serious" but not
"alarming".
Ghana is now light green,
meaning it has "moderate"
hunger, an improvement from
the "serious" level of 2006.
Similarly, many countries in Asia
have shown great improvement.
The 2013 Index, which launches
this week, shows yet further
improvement. The organizations
that compile the Index - the
International Food Policy
Research Institute (IPFRI),
Concern Worldwide and Welt
Hunger Hilfe - say that 23 out of
the 120 countries they track have
made significant progress,
improving their scores by 50
percent or more over the
Millennium Development Goal
(MDG) baseline from 1990.
Among the top 10 in terms of
progress are Angola, Ethiopia,
Malawi and Niger, along with
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand
and Vietnam.
Lawrence Haddad, the director of
the Institute of Development
Studies, who worked on this
year's Index, says the trends they
have documented may overturn
stereotypes.
"An interesting twist on this," he
said, "is that in 2000 South Asia
actually had a better score than
sub-Saharan Africa, but now Sub-
Saharan Africa has a better score
than South Asia. We always
default to thinking that bad news
is coming out of Africa, but at a
regional level Africa has been
doing better than South Asia
over the past 10 to 15 years. So
that's great."
But amid the general
improvement, many countries
are still struggling. Burundi,
Eritrea and the Comoros are still
deep in the red zone. Swaziland,
where the hunger is not as
extreme, has nonetheless
suffered a severe decline in
nutrition; the Global Hunger
Index estimates that hunger in
Swaziland has increased by 38
percent since 1990.
Dominic MacSorley, the chief
executive of Concern Worldwide,
told IRIN, "I think there are
different factors. HIV/AIDS in
Swaziland is one of the key
contributors. There are other
countries where [hunger rates
change] in relation to urban
density, and we know now that
poverty, with the tip-over into
more people living in urban
environments, is a significant
contributing factor.