 For the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising world hunger figures appear to have plateaued in 2022. According to new state of food security and nutrition in the world figures, global hunger remained relatively unchanged from 2021 to 2022. This is still far above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, affecting around 9.2% of the world population in 2022, compared with 7.9% in 2019. New figures estimate that between 691 and 783 million people in the world faced hunger in 2022. This reflects an additional 122 million people who have fallen into hunger since 2019, and projections suggest around 600 million people will be chronically undernourished in 2030, despite ambitious targets set forth in the SDG 2030 agenda. This is about 119 million more than in a scenario in which neither the pandemic nor the war in Ukraine had occurred, and around 23 million more than if 2022 events had not happened. Nevertheless, the report shows that the trends in hunger vary greatly by region. From 2021 to 2022, progress was made towards reducing hunger in Asia and Latin America. But there are many places in the world facing serious food security crises. Hunger was on the rise in Western Asia, the Caribbean and all regions of Africa. Those disparities are also visible across demographics. Worldwide, food insecurity disproportionately affects women and people living in rural areas. Globally, more than 3.1 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet. 148 million children under age 5 or 22.3% were affected by stunting, and 6.8% suffered from wasting. At the same time, 37 million children of children under 5 or 5.6% are overweight. Steady progress has been made on increasing exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, and on reducing stunting among children under 5 years of age, but not overweight, wasting and low birth weight. In this challenging environment, urbanization is a megatrend that must be factored into our efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms. Urbanization is driving changes in agri-food systems across the rural urban continuum that affects access to affordable healthy diets, and will be key to continuing efforts to meet the SDG2 target by 2030.