War means hunger, warns UN chief

The number of people facing acute food insecurity rose from 193 million to 258 million in 2022

A three-year-old Yemeni child suffering from acute malnutrition. AFP

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that the combination of war and climate change results in hunger.

More than a quarter of a billion people in 58 countries and territories are grappling with acute hunger as they face persistent conflict and worsening natural disasters fuelled by global warming.

“When conflict combines with the climate crisis, harvests shrink and people go hungry,” he said during a Security Council ministerial-level meeting on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

“Fighters destroy crops and steal livestock, explosives contaminate fertile land, markets cannot function and prices rocket.”

Alain Berset, president of Switzerland, who chaired Tuesday's meeting, said the number of people facing acute food insecurity rose to 258 million last year, noting it was "30 times the population of New York City.”

The main cause of rising food insecurity worldwide last year was the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine, which contributed to the rise in the price of food, energy and fertiliser globally.

During recent visits to Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Mirjana Spoljaric, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said she witnessed a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation with “entire regions trapped in cycles of conflict without an end in sight.”

She said the confluence of factors including drought, inadequate investment in climate adaptation measures within conflict zones, and the knock-on effects of the international armed conflict involving the Russian Federation and Ukraine, is "seriously impacting" people in conflicts around the world.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Washington's top envoy at the UN, accused Russia of pushing millions of people into food insecurity by using “food as a weapon of war in Ukraine,” and blocking Ukrainian grain shipments that many countries, especially in Africa and the Middle East, rely on.

She said the agreement, allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports, which was extended for 60 days on May 17, was a “beacon of hope to the world.”

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, however, blamed “unilateral sanctions” by western states for generating food insecurity.

“We're convinced that hunger is also a method of economic warfare that the West is conducting around the world and arbitrarily shuts down opportunities for trade in food. The manifestation of the Black Sea initiative is one of the manifestations of this tactic,” he said.

Mariam Al Mheiri, UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment and Minister of State for Food Security, urged the Security Council to confront climate change – the “existential challenge” of our time – stressing that if current practices persist, natural disasters will become more frequent and severe.

She also called on all member states to fully enact the provisions of a resolution approved late last year exempting humanitarian aid from all current and future UN sanctions regimes.