Rabat – Morocco ranked 42nd worldwide in hunger and malnutrition severity, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2019 rankings, published on October 14. GHI considers the severity of hunger in Morocco as low.
GHI is designed to raise awareness and understanding of the struggle against hunger, provide a way to compare levels of hunger between countries and regions, and call attention to those areas of the world where hunger levels are highest and where the need for additional efforts to eliminate hunger is greatest.
The index is based on four criteria: the percentage of the population that is undernourished, the percentage of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height, the percentage of children under the age of five who have low height for their age, and the mortality rate of children under the age of five.
The rate of undernourishment within the Moroccan population is estimated at 3.4% in 2019. Undernourishment has reduced from 6.8% in the year 2000.
The rates of children under the age of five who have low weight for their height and low height for their age are 3.4% and 16.6% respectively. Both numbers have reduced since 2000. In 2000, 4.3% were underweight, while 24.4% had a low height for their age.
Finally, the mortality rate of children under the age of five in Morocco is 2.3% in 2019, down from 5% in 2000.
The overall hunger index of Morocco went down from 15.8 in 2000 to 9.4 in 2019, marking a shift from a moderate hunger severity in Morocco to a low one.
Morocco also moved up two places in the rankings compared to last year, 2018, climbing from 44th globally to 42nd.
Morocco ranked 2nd in Africa, according to the index, behind Tunisia (24th globally). It also ranked 4th in the Arab world, behind Kuwait (1st), Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia (34th).
On the global rankings, 17 countries shared the first rank with an index below 5, including Bulgaria, Cuba, Turkey, Ukraine, and others.
The countries at the tail of the rankings were Chad (115th), Yemen (116th), and the Central African Republic (117th), with extremely alarming hunger severity.
One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) is to end world hunger by the year 2030. GHI’s ranking, however, shows that achieving the goal of zero hunger in about a decade is almost impossible.
In fact, GHI 2019 results show that many countries have higher hunger indexes now than in 2010. The report also states that around 45 countries wouldn’t be able to eliminate hunger within their populations by 2030.
Conflicts and wars, social disparities, and climate change are some of the principal root causes of undernourishment and malnutrition.
