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	Behind every person starving there are also a series of political decisions or failures by Sally Hayden Global Rights Compliance, agencies   It is important not to forget that behind every person starving there are also a series of political decisions or failures.   On a hot day in July, I attended a workshop in London for journalists focused on mass starvation and the international law surrounding it. The lawyers running the session had a message: starvation is not an inevitability. Famine and acute food insecurity is generally caused or exacerbated by human actions – it can be a result of bad governance, war tactics or opportunism.   I’ve thought about that when faced with constant headlines in recent weeks that reference the “global food crisis”. Around the world, millions of people are starving, as inflation soars and the cost of basic essentials go up, exacerbated by the Ukraine war and the Covid-19 pandemic.   In Kenya, where I currently am, four million people are facing acute food insecurity amid a record-breaking drought. In this broader region, more than 50 million people are expected to face crisis levels of food insecurity this year, according to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development. Some 300,000 people in Somalia and South Sudan may experience, or even already be experiencing, full-blown famine conditions (a famine can only be declared when a very specific series of criteria is met).   The United Nations’ latest State of Food Security and Nutrition report showed that the number of people affected by hunger globally rose as high as 828 million in 2021. Wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, affected about 45 million children under the age of five. Almost 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2020.   The denial of food has a long tail and not all consequences are immediately obvious. Undergoing a period of starvation can make those affected succumb to disease faster, or result in stunting in children, which will impact them for life. According to the UN, 149 million children under the age of five in 2020 had stunted growth and development due to a lack of nutrients.   It is important not to forget that behind every person starving there are also a series of political decisions or failures.   “Global food crisis is a broad term which covers all manner of acts and omissions,” said Catriona Murdoch, who works with non-profit legal practice Global Rights Compliance (GRC).   “At present five countries are in integrated food security phase classification (IPC) phase five – with catastrophic levels of hunger – Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan. Yet when we do see the headlines relating to these countries they are humanitarian appeals rather than calls for accountability for those responsible.”   She said there is an urgent need to “increase the literacy around the notion of starvation violations across a range of sectors, from police, immigration departments, journalists, courts and tribunals, investigators, and within humanitarian agencies. It is critical we are able to identify this violation and call it out loudly when we see or suspect it.”   While there are different tools that could be used, one particularly important development was UN Security Council resolution 2417, she says, which “shifted the debate [around starvation] away from poverty and climate into the arena of peace and security”. Adopted in 2018, it explicitly condemns the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war and the intentional blocking of humanitarian access, recognising that such violations may be crimes for which perpetrators could be held accountable.   GRC is currently investigating war crimes and starvation-related violations in Ukraine, which may provide the first test case when it comes to prosecuting crimes of starvation under international criminal law. Murdoch thinks a successful conviction there would make a difference more broadly “in relation to how we conceptualise the causes of famine and mass hunger”.   And starvation is not just an international crime when war is involved. In some cases, the starvation of a portion of a population may be considered a crime against humanity. But this can require the gathering of evidence around causation and mental intent, among other factors, and the law surrounding it is still developing.   Could international criminal prosecutions fuel the urge for other types of accountability too? And who could be held responsible? Businesspeople? Governments?   This year has seen record-breaking food prices across much of the world. But not everyone is suffering. In May, Oxfam released Profiting from Pain, a report that said that billionaires in the food and energy sectors saw their wealth rise by $453 billion (€438.4 million) in the last two years – the equivalent of more than $1 billion every two days. The fortunes of the world’s richest 20 billionaires are greater than the entire GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa, the international aid agency said, while calling for an end to “crisis profiteering” and “one-off solidarity taxes on billionaires’ pandemic windfalls”.   The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, an independent panel of experts, is also appealing for further analysis of the factors behind the food crisis. It says that the “failure to reform food systems”, including “excessive commodity speculation”, is driving up food prices globally. Its analysts are calling for debt relief and other support for food-importing countries; market transparency; the building up of regional grain reserves; and for the reduction of reliance on fertilisers. The most important thing to understand, they say, is that the global food crisis is a crisis of prices rather than availability. The world is at historically high levels of food production.   As lawyers expand this area of law, and analysts call for more understanding, they repeat the same message: there is enough food on the planet to feed everyone.   * This article was originally published by the Irish Times, authored by Sally Hayden.   http://starvationaccountability.org/news-and-events/world-hunger-is-not-an-inevitability-its-politics/ http://starvationaccountability.org/news-and-events/nothing-kills-like-hunger-concern-worldwides-latest-campaign/ http://globalrightscompliance.com/home-foundation/resources/ Visit the related web page
	345 million people across 82 countries face acute food insecurity by Inter-Agency Standing Committee, agencies   Nov. 2022   The Global Humanitarian Impact of High Food, Fertilizer and Fuel Prices - Inter-Agency Standing Committee   The IASC is alarmed at the effects of a super-crisis driven by lack of accessible and available food and energy and coupled with economic shocks. As humanitarian agencies, our mission is to protect the lives and livelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable people, including refugees and the internally displaced. These messages are about what the crisis means for these people, and our efforts to help and advocate for them.   High food, fertilizer and fuel prices contributed to intensifying a global crisis that is driving up global humanitarian needs and costs and erasing hard-won development gains, particularly in countries affected by climate shocks, conflict, and economic upheaval including as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is due in part to the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine. Millions of people are being pushed into extreme poverty and hunger by rising inflation and interest rates.   The increased cost of living disproportionality affects the most vulnerable, among them refugees, the displaced, and women and children.   The international community must act now and at scale to save lives and invest in solutions that safeguard human rights and humanitarian principles and stability and peace for all.   * The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) is the highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system.   http://interagencystandingcommittee.org/deputies-group/iasc-key-messages-global-humanitarian-impact-high-food-fertilizer-and-fuel-prices   Sep. 2022   UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths remarks at UN Security Council briefing on conflict-induced food insecurity and the risk of famine:   "Four years ago, this Council made a connection between its responsibility to maintain peace and security and its commitment to address food insecurity and conflict-induced hunger.   You asked at that time to be swiftly informed when the risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity occurs. That risk, as we will hear and discuss today, is now upon us, and so, regretfully, we are here today.   Last month, we highlighted four contexts where this risk is clear: Ethiopia, north-east Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.   Of course, food insecurity has reached alarming levels in other situations that also demand our attention, such as Afghanistan and Somalia - and you may perhaps permit me to make reference to Somalia before I close - and the Secretary-General has recently written to all Member States to convey his concern.   In Somalia, more than 200,000 people were at risk of famine. And that number is expected to reach 300,000 very soon as we will hear from colleagues in FAO and WFP. Famine will happen in Somalia, and we fear it won’t be the only place either.   In the four contexts I mentioned, recent assessments have identified hundreds of thousands of people facing catastrophic levels of hunger, or phase 5 of the Integrated Phase Classification system, IPC-5, which monitors food security and food insecurity worldwide.   Phase 5, as we have all come to know, is the system’s ultimate, most devastating phase. It doesn't get any worse than that and it is rare for people to return from it.   This widespread suffering comes down to the direct and indirect impact of conflict and violence, and the behaviour of the warring, fighting parties. A similar pattern recurs in each context.   Civilians killed or injured. Families forcibly displaced from the land they depend on for their livelihoods and their food.   Explosive remnants of war disrupting people’s access to markets, agricultural production and income generation. Civilian infrastructure and equipment essential for people’s food security stolen, damaged or destroyed. Food stocks looted. Livestock killed.   Economic decline and rising prices have put sufficient food out of reach in these contexts for the most vulnerable.   In the most extreme cases, and most egregious of cases, fighting parties have deliberately cut off access to the commercial supplies and essential services that civilians rely on to survive. Hunger is sometimes used as a tactic of war.   Humanitarian organizations have extended relief lifelines to people in all these crises, working with local aid groups, the frontline responders, the first to deal with trouble, the first to understand the suffering of their people, and sometimes they are the only people there, on the ground.   But too often, we all face interference, impediments, harassment and attacks on our staff and our reputations, and looting or diversion of our assets.   This prevents us from reaching people in need, and it makes their suffering worse. Humanitarians will stay and deliver, but the conditions in some contexts are simply too difficult, too unacceptable.   Other drivers of hunger, including drought, I’ll come back to that, the effects of COVID-19 and rising global commodity prices, are also compounding food insecurity.   The secondary impacts of the war in Ukraine are also among the drivers of food insecurity in many armed conflicts, increasing food and fertilizer prices and contributing to spikes in energy prices.   Finally, although we are here to discuss the link between conflict and hunger, I would be remiss if I did not point out that in every single one of the countries I have mentioned, people are quite literally on the front lines of climate change.   People are feeling the impact first of climate change, and as the Secretary-General has been making clear recently in public and private statements, climate change is here and stalks the land. Madam President, if I may offer a brief snapshot of each of these countries and crises:   In Yemen, more than seven years of armed conflict, have wreaked havoc on people across the country. Some 19 million people – six out of ten of the population – are acutely food insecure.   An estimated 160,000 people are facing catastrophe, the IPC-5 that I mentioned, and 538,000 children are severely malnourished.   The situation may worsen there due to funding gaps for the humanitarian response and continuing economic instability.   Disruptions to commercial imports could also exacerbate food insecurity – a prospect that has become very real over recent weeks. I know we will hear more from other briefers, as lack of funding threatens the operations of the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism, which inspects all commercial imports, including food, to Yemen’s Red Sea ports.   We hope that that particular funding gap will be quickly addressed so that we can avoid a shutdown of the mechanism due on 1 October.   In South Sudan, 63 per cent of the population, or 7.7 million people, were projected to be in crisis or worse or catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity during the peak season this year. Assessments project that 87,000 people, mostly in Jonglei State and Greater Pibor Administrative Area, could face catastrophe, IPC-5.   South Sudan was, I should add, one of the most dangerous places to be an aid worker last year, with 319 violent incidents targeting humanitarian personnel and assets. Five aid workers, our colleagues, were killed in 2021, and five more have died since the beginning of this year doing their best to get people the help they need and deserve.   In Ethiopia, more than 13 million people need life-saving food assistance across Afar, Amhara and Tigray.   In June, 87 per cent of people surveyed in Tigray were food insecure, more than half of them severely so. I am sure David Beasley will speak to the World Food Programme’s assessment in February that also found extremely worrying food insecurity in parts of Afar and Amhara.   We saw some recent improvements in the delivery of humanitarian assistance in northern Ethiopia, but that’s done now. The resumption of hostilities in recent weeks is undoing that progress.   Elsewhere in Ethiopia, in parts of Benishangul-Gumuz and southern and western Oromia, food insecurity and malnutrition are also believed to be extremely high.   The prediction of famine in the Horn will not be limited to Somalia and the numbers at risk in Ethiopia dwarf even the level of stress that we see in Somalia.   Finally, north-east Nigeria, we project that 4.1 million people are facing high levels of acute food insecurity in the conflict-affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.   They include 588,000 people who already faced emergency levels between June and August, almost half of whom were inaccessible to our colleagues due to insecurity and therefore food security assessments could not be conducted in those areas.   But we can deduce, and we can fear, that some people may already be at the level of catastrophe and already dying.   Member States could take the following actions in all four of these places, and well beyond:   • First, leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of peaceful and negotiated resolutions to conflicts and other situations of violence. We may hope to see that in Yemen, we may plead to see that in Ethiopia, and we may hope to see that elsewhere.   • Second, remind and encourage States and armed groups to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law. They must not do that which threatens the survival of civilians, and they must ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. And I say that knowing full well how absurd that may seem to some people.   • Third, support an integrated response to address the underlying drivers of acute food insecurity, and this is about supporting the economies of countries facing severe, largescale hunger. The issues of economic collapse and economic shocks, also related to the climate, are ones which become more and more the agenda of humanitarian action.   • Finally, please sustain humanitarian financing for these crises. In all these countries, we are well below half of the funding required. And without those resources, we will do little.   I do want to highlight the issue which is central to peace and security and that is climate change.   I have just come back from Somalia and indeed attending the Secretary-General’s visit to Pakistan, and the absolute clarity of purpose expressed in those visits, by him in Pakistan, and I tried in Somalia, was that the impact of climate change is felt by those who have done little to create it, and the access to climate financing is as yet pitifully little. Somalia has received nothing.   Yet if we want to invest in resilience, if we want to shelter the peoples of these countries from a repetition of the shocks of this year, if we want Somalia to survive the famines that will come, late this year and into next year, we need attention from the climate community - from Member States who have pledged money, all of which has not reached its destination".   World Food Programme (WFP) chief executive David Beasley addressing the Security Council underlined the threat of growing mass starvation and famine, “we are facing a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude”.   And since the Ukraine conflict began, “a wave of hunger has turned into “a tsunami”, he said, noting that up to 345 million people in 82 countries are “moving towards starvation”.   “This is a record high – now more than 2.5 times the number of acutely food insecure people before the pandemic began”.   Mr. Beasley presented alarming statistics on the dire situation faced by hundreds of millions around the world.   As raging conflicts push millions of “blameless civilians ever closer to starvation and famine,” he called on the Council to “show the humanitarian leadership the world urgently needs right now and… break the vicious cycle of hunger and conflict, which is fuelling a global food insecurity crisis that threatens to spin out of control".   “The hungry people of the world are counting on us to do the right thing – and we must not let them down,” implored Mr. Beasley.   http://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1126771 http://reliefweb.int/report/ethiopia/under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-martin-griffiths-remarks-security-council-briefing-conflict-induced-food-insecurity-and-risk-famine http://www.wfp.org/global-hunger-crisis http://www.ipcinfo.org/   Sep. 2022   Acute hunger more than double pre-pandemic levels. (Associated Press, agencies)   An estimated 345 million people across the 82 countries where the World Food Programme operates face acute food insecurity -- a figure that has more than doubled since the pandemic began, warns WFP Executive Director David Beasley. The war in Ukraine and escalating violence and instability in Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen are driving hunger to catastrophic levels and the United Nations Security Council must "leave no stone unturned" in working to end the conflicts and increase funding for humanitarian aid, adds United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths: http://bit.ly/3DwWyaE   * Global Report on Food Crises 2022 - Mid Year Update (Aug.): http://bit.ly/3eWzlEv   * Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance. (Aug. 2022 Briefing): http://bit.ly/GCRG-BRIEF-03   * Sep. 2022   FAO: Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture   45 Countries in crisis require external assistance for food are expected to lack the resources to deal with reported critical problems of food insecurity. The list below covers crises related to lack of food availability, widespread lack of access to food, or severe but localized problems:   http://www.fao.org/giews/country-analysis/external-assistance/en/   June 2022   Conflict, weather extremes, economic shocks, the lingering impacts of COVID-19, and the ripple effects from the war in Ukraine push millions of people in countries across the world into poverty and hunger – as food and fuel price spikes drive nations closer to instability says new hunger hotspots report.   The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have issued a stark warning of multiple, looming food crises, driven by conflict, climate shocks, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and massive public debt burdens - exacerbated by the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine which has pushed food and fuel prices to accelerate in many nations across the globe. These shocks hit in contexts already characterized by rural marginalization and fragile agrifood systems.   The ‘Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report calls for urgent humanitarian action in 20 ‘hunger hotspots’ where acute hunger is expected to worsen from June-September 2022 – to save lives and livelihoods, and prevent famine.   The report warns that the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the already steadily rising food and energy prices worldwide, which are already affecting economic stability across all regions. The effects are expected to be particularly acute where economic instability and spiralling prices combine with drops in food production due to climate shocks such as recurrent droughts or flooding.   “We’re facing a perfect storm that is not just going to hurt the poorest of the poor - it’s also going to overwhelm millions of families who until now have just about kept their heads above water,” warned WFP Executive Director David Beasley.   “Conditions now are much worse than during the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2007-2008 food price crisis, when 48 countries were rocked by political unrest, riots and protests. We’ve already seen what’s happening in Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru, and Sri Lanka – that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have solutions. But we need to act, and act fast,” he warned.   “We are deeply concerned about the combined impacts of overlapping crises jeopardizing people’s ability to produce and access foods, pushing millions more into extreme levels of acute food insecurity,” said the FAO Director-General. “We are in a race against time to help farmers in the most affected countries, including by rapidly increasing potential food production and boosting their resilience in the face of challenges”.   The report finds that – alongside conflict – frequent and recurring climate shocks continue to drive acute hunger and shows that we have entered a ‘new normal’ where droughts, flooding, hurricanes, and cyclones repeatedly decimate farming and livestock rearing, drive population displacement and push millions to the brink in countries across the world.   The report warns that worrisome climatic trends linked to La Niña since late 2020 are expected to continue through 2022, driving up humanitarian needs and acute hunger. An unprecedented drought in East Africa affecting Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya is leading to a fourth consecutive below-average rainfall season, while South Sudan will face its fourth consecutive year of large-scale flooding, which will likely continue to drive people from their homes and devastate crops and livestock production.   The report also expects above-average rains and a risk of localized flooding in the Sahel, a more intense hurricane season in the Caribbean, and below-average rains in Afghanistan – which is already reeling from multiple seasons of drought, violence and political upheaval.   The report also emphasises the urgency of the dire macroeconomic conditions in several countries – brought on by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by the recent upheaval in global food and energy markets. These conditions are causing dramatic income losses among the poorest communities and are straining the capacity of national governments to fund social safety nets, income-supporting measures, and the import of essential goods.   According to the report, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen remain at ‘highest alert’ as hotspots with catastrophic conditions, and Afghanistan and Somalia are new entries to this worrisome category since the last hotspots report released January 2022.   These six countries all have parts of the population facing IPC phase 5 ‘Catastrophe’ or at risk of deterioration towards catastrophic conditions, with up to 750,000 people facing starvation and death. 400,000 of these are in Ethiopia’s Tigray region – the highest number on record in one country since the famine in Somalia in 2011.   The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, the Sahel, the Sudan and Syria remain ‘of very high concern’ with deteriorating critical conditions, as in the previous edition of this report – with Kenya a new entry to the list. Sri Lanka, West African coastal countries (Benin, Cabo Verde and Guinea), Ukraine and Zimbabwe have been added to the list of hotspots countries, joining Angola, Lebanon, Madagascar, and Mozambique which continue to be hunger hotspots – according to the report.   http://www.wfp.org/publications/hunger-hotspots-fao-wfp-early-warnings-acute-food-insecurity-june-september-2022 http://www.wfp.org/news/fao-and-wfp-warn-looming-widespread-food-crisis-hunger-threatens-stability-dozens-countries http://www.ipcinfo.org/ukraine http://www.ipcinfo.org/ Visit the related web page
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