A critical forecast built on eroding data
Earlier this year, the Global Report on Food Crises, which tracks Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessments globally, confirmed famine (IPC Phase 5) in parts of both the Gaza Strip and Sudan — the first time two famines have been recorded simultaneously since IPC reporting began. These are situations where immediate action is required to save lives. Yet the report also recorded its lowest country coverage in a decade. Of the 65 countries and territories selected for analysis, 18 had no acute food insecurity data, or no data meeting technical requirements. The report attributes these gaps to restrictions on data collection or sharing, limited funding, and insufficient priority given to data collection.
Overlaying the report’s country set with the April 2026 IPC Phase 3+ estimates suggests that around 44 million people in 2025 were living in crisis-affected areas in countries without eligible data, out of an estimated 335 million across the full sample.
Nearly one in three people living in crisis-affected areas were outside official monitoring coverage worldwide.
The same deterioration is visible across the broader humanitarian data ecosystem. The Centre for Humanitarian Data’s 2026 State of Open Humanitarian Data finds that data availability across 22 humanitarian operations fell to 68 percent, down from 74 percent the previous year. Food security was the weakest of the six categories assessed, at 46 percent.
The report found that operational capacity is also weakening. In some contexts, enumerator and key-informant networks built over many years have been disbanded. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration reported reductions of around 40 percent in data-related staff as of early 2026, while World Food Programme household interviews fell from 1.1 million in 2024 to 800,000 in 2025, a decline of roughly 30 percent. Preliminary reporting from West and Central Africa suggests that the erosion is continuing into 2026: in the March 2026 Cadre Harmonisé round, only two of 18 countries were able to support the IPC process with primary data collection.
These gaps matter directly for the April 2026 World Food Security Outlook, the World Bank’s most recent quarterly update on the current and projected state of global food security. Its estimates rest on three layers of evidence: macroeconomic projections, historical development indicators, and acute food-security monitoring. Each is under strain.
READ MORE: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/global-food-security-monitoring-goes-dark
