SOURCE: STEP FEED
BY: LAILA MAIDEN

Last week, StepFeed highlighted a list of Arab countries ranked by the quality of their tap water.

This week, in honor of World Food Day, we are ranking countries by their score on food security.

October 16th marks the annual celebration of World Food Day.

On this day in 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations was founded. The is tasked to lead international efforts to defeat hunger.

This year’s theme is linked to the issue of migration.

Over the past few years, the world has seen a dramatic surge in the number of people that needed to leave their homes in order to support themselves and their families with basic needs, such as food.

Food is a fundamental requirement of human life and is at the basis of human survival.

That is why the United Nations have pledged to end world hunger and poverty, placing this particular goal as a priority on its 2030 Agenda.

The ultimate aim is to get all countries involved and participated in ending the worldwide challenge of hunger and famine.

Below is a list of Arab countries ranked by the quality, safety, affordability, and accessibility of food.

The countries are ranked from lowest to highest, followed by a graph that shows the breakdown of their score.

Latest figures were derived from the Global Food Security Index, and are based on data from the annual baseline model.

Lack of food supply is often not the issue. A food shortage can be a byproduct of inefficiency in food distribution, leading to food waste.

The UAE, for example, wastes $3.5 billion worth of food annually.

As a result and recognition of this growing problem, Dubai set out a goal to be the first city in the Middle East to try to achieve zero food waste.

The UAE Food Bank was launched by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid and is a non-profit charitable organisation that aims to achieve this task by recycling unused food for other sources.

A project that could potentially be adapted across the Middle East.

• Globally, one in nine people in the world today (795 million) are undernourished.
• The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9 percent of the population is undernourished.
• Asia is the continent with the most hungry people – two-thirds of the total.
• The percentage in southern Asia has fallen in recent years but in western Asia, it has increased slightly.
• Southern Asia faces the greatest hunger burden, with about 281 million undernourished people.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, projections for the 2014-2016 period indicate a rate of undernourishment of almost 23 percent.
• Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45 percent) of deaths in children under five – 3.1 million children each year.
• One in four of the world’s children suffers stunted growth. In developing countries, the proportion can rise to one in three.
• 66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.

Malik Al ash-Shaykh contributed to this post.