Asia and the Pacific regional overview of food security and nutrition 2018 : accelerating progress towards the SDGs

This report seeks to accelerate progress toward the goals of a healthy and hunger-free Asia and the Pacific region in light of the slowdown that has become evident over the past three years. After years of gains in combating hunger, progress has stagnated in all parts of this vast region and nearly half a billion people remain undernourished. Children, in particular, continue to face the burden of malnutrition with one child in every four below the age of five suffering from stunting. At the same time, Asia and the Pacific has witnessed rapid growth in the number of overweight children and the serious consequences that entails for their future health and well-being. Efforts to fight hunger and malnutrition must go hand in hand with those to build and sustain peace and there is an urgent need to accelerate and scale up actions that strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of people and their livelihoods to climate variability and extremes. And, as migration from rural to urban areas continues apace, particularly involving poorer families, urban malnutrition is another challenge facing many countries.