Food is central to people's development throughout their lives. Hunger and poverty impede the enjoyment of fundamental rights.

In recent years, various factors have diverted the world off the path to eradicating hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Agenda. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this trend, and our region is no exception.

This edition of the Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2021: Statistics and Trends reveals a bleak scenario for the future of the region. In 2020, 59.7 million people suffered from hunger. Between 2019 and 2020, the prevalence of hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 2 percentage points, meaning 13.8 million more people suffered from hunger than in 2019.

Over the same period, moderate or severe food insecurity increases were even steeper at 9 percentage points. Forty-one percent of the population of the region is moderately or severely food insecure, which translates to 267 million people whose human right to food is not being met.