While the world is off-track in the fight against hunger and moving further away from the binding goal of ending hunger by 2030, the 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI) showed that over the years, Pakistan has shown improvement as the country was ranked 92nd out of 116.
GHI is a peer-reviewed report published by the Concern Worldwide of Ireland and Welthungerhilfe (WHH) every year since 2007 to track hunger across the globe.
An event, to launch the chapter regarding Pakistan, was organised at a local hotel on Tuesday and attended by the nutrition section of the Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) Secretariat in the planning ministry.
The sources of data to compile the report every year essentially include the Demographic and Health Surveys of Pakistan (DHSP) and nutrition-related surveys in the country, carried out by or led by the government.
It is worth mentioning that developed countries are not included in the survey so the report is based on the situation of developing and under-developed countries. This year, data of only 116 countries was available. As per the report, the country considered to have a reduced ratio of hunger is close to zero and ones close to 100 are considered to have a higher hunger ratio.
This year, Pakistan with a score of 24.7 is ranked 92 out of 116 countries with sufficient data available. India has been ranked at 101 but other countries of the region showed better ranking as compared to Pakistan. Sri Lanka was ranked 65th whereas Nepal and Bangladesh were ranked 76th.
