The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises has delivered an uncomfortable message about Bangladesh. The country is not facing famine, nor does it belong to the world’s most severe food crisis zones. Yet it has appeared on a list where no country would want to be included. In 2025, Bangladesh was among the top 10 countries and territories in the world in terms of the number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

According to the report, at the peak period in 2025, around 16 million people in Bangladesh were facing crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity. Among them, approximately 15.6 million were in the “crisis” phase, and about 400,000 were in the “emergency” phase. This represents 17 per cent of the analysed population, although the report notes that the analysis covered only 59 per cent of the country’s total population, not the entire population.

These figures should be interpreted with caution. The same report states that the situation in Bangladesh improved somewhat in 2025 compared to 2024. The number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity decreased by 7.6 million. This improvement was mainly attributed to the absence of major natural disasters at the beginning of 2025, a slight reduction in food inflation, and an increase in remittances from abroad.