Food Security Bulletin No. 12, Summer 2015

The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) is pleased to launch the twelfth issue of the semiannual Food Security Bulletin, the first edition for the year 2015. As the Palestinian economy is struggling to recover after the devastating effects of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip of the summer of 2014, it is unlikely that the food security situation in Palestine will improve in the near future. Food insecurity is expected to continue posing a serious challenge to Palestinian households, especially those with lower incomes. New comprehensive data on food security and insecurity – for 2014 – will be available only after mid-2015. It is important to remember that even before the most recent Israeli war on Gaza food insecurity affected more than a third of Palestinian households and as much as 57% of .households in the Gaza Strip The year 2015 is an important one at the global scene as it marks the end of the period set by international actors for the achievements of two essential goals with respect to food security: the World Food Summit (WFS) of 1996 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 1990. Thus, a special section of this issue of the Bulletin focuses on how far the world as a whole, certain regions, and some countries have reached in accomplishing the targets. In specific, the Rome Declaration, adopted at the WFS, called for the overall number of chronically undernourished people to be decreased by 50% by 2015, while the MDG Target 1.C set to halve the proportion of people suffering from hunger worldwide by the same year. Now that 2015 has arrived, it is encouraging to say that 216 million fewer people around the globe are exposed to undernourishment today than in 1990. However, both international goals failed as this means that there has been a decline of only 21.4% in the number of hungry and of 41.6% in the proportion of undernourished. At the end of the deadline for the attainment of these targets, there is still a lot to be done by the international community to first retain the .positive results and then continue improving the situation for those impacted