Pakistan second-worst in South Asia on hunger index: Report

Islamabad: Pakistan has been ranked second-worst in South Asia on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2026 with a score of 25.5, trailing only Afghanistan, showcasing the country's deteriorating food insecurity and malnutrition challenges, local media reported.

The report published on the GHI website stated, "With a 2026 Global Hunger Index score of 25.5, Pakistan has a serious level of hunger," Pakistan's leading news network Geo News reported.

Pakistan was only behind Afghanistan, which had a score of 28.6 on the GHI. Pakistan was placed at the 106th position out of 122 countries globally on the GHI. Pakistan's score dropped from 36.2 in 2002 to 25.5 in 2026, showing some improvement, as per the report.

The GHI score of Pakistan is based on four components: child stunting, undernourishment, child wasting and child mortality. The report said that 16.1 per cent of Pakistan's population is malnourished while 33.6 per cent of its children aged below five years are stunted, Geo News reported.

According to the report, 9.8 per cent of the children in Pakistan are wasted while 5.6 per cent of the children die below the age of five years.

In April, a United Nations-backed report ranked Pakistan among the world's top 10 fragile nations, where global acute food insecurity is most concentrated, local media reported.

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crisis named Pakistan along with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen as the primary centres of acute hunger, Pakistani daily Dawn reported.

According to the report, Pakistan was also named among 10 nations in the world which faced the largest food crises in 2025, with about 11 million people facing severe food insecurity.

Among those impacted in Pakistan, 9.3 million people were classified in "crisis" conditions and 1.7 million in "emergency", the most acute categories short of famine, Dawn reported.

According to the report, extreme weather was a continuing cause of food insecurity in Pakistan, pointing to heavy rains and floods that resulted in crop damage.

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