The Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series: Conflict and Hunger — Part I
April 30, New York — The Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN and Fordham University’s Institute for International Humanitarian Affairs held the 6th lecture of the series. In Part I of this two-part discussion of Conflict and Hunger, Dr. Caitriona Dowd, Assistant Professor in Security Studies at Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland draws on her research and experiences to explain the several pathways through which conflict drives hunger. She highlights the role Ireland has played in an international effort to combat food crises, noting the lessons learned, and proposing a roadmap for future humanitarian and political action. Dr. Dowd also reminds us that such a path forward must address the unequal burden placed on women during periods of conflict and hunger.
Dr. Caitriona Dowd’s research concerns the dynamics of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular attention to the targeting of civilians in humanitarian crises, and the use of new and emerging methodologies for violence monitoring. In her previous role as a peace and conflict specialist in the humanitarian sector, Caitriona worked in Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan, among others.
Lecture:
Transcript:
A dhaoine uaisle,
I would like to begin by thanking the Permanent Mission of Ireland and Fordham University, for the opportunity to take part in this distinguished lecture series. I am honoured to follow in the footsteps of such an extraordinary series of speakers from across the humanitarian and policy communities.
This series has seen no shortage of esteemed speakers issue calls to action and for renewed attention on some of the most pressing challenges our world faces. Today, I want to speak to you about what I consider a defining challenge of humanitarian action in the 21st century: conflict-driven food crises.
This is first and foremost an urgent moral outrage. For food crises to be on the rise again in an era of global food abundance is morally unacceptable and must be politically unacceptable as well. This is a challenge for which we have no lack of technical responses. Humanitarian organisations have long had the technical capacity to address acute hunger — programme delivery has evolved and advanced over decades to be more targeted, efficient and effective than ever before. As a global community, we have made enormous strides in addressing hunger. What we have failed to address, however, is conflict and its devastating impacts. We do not lack the technical capacity to get to zero hunger, we lack the political will to prevent and resolve the conflicts that drive it.
Conflict-driven food crises are also at the intersection of many other, interconnected crises. Chief among these is the global climate crisis, which evidence suggests will have complex and unpredictable impacts on cooperation and conflict across the world, while putting pressure on sustainable food systems. Wider humanitarian crises, too, that we might think of chiefly as displacement or health crises, often entail the targeting of food systems. In 2018, for example, the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights concluded that tactics of “forced starvation” had been employed in the violent campaign against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, leading more than 800,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.[1]Lastly, conflict-driven food crises are linked to a subject I want to discuss in greater detail today: the gendered nature of war and humanitarian emergency.
Overview
Today, both global conflict and acute hunger are increasing. By almost any metric, the world is more insecure in 2020 than it was a decade ago. Violent conflict is becoming both more prevalent, and more complex. Today’s conflicts are often of lower intensity in terms of casualties, but are highly fragmented, multi-actor, and often protracted crises.
These crises are driving an increase in acute hunger. In recent years, after decades of improvement in levels of world hunger, we are seeing a sustained increase in hunger globally. In an era some believed might have heralded the end of famine, not only are we not making progress on the Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger but, as Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed noted recently, we are going in reverse.[2]
And make no mistake, violent conflict is the cause. Conflict is the largest single driver of severe food insecurity worldwide and the main driver for over two-thirds of people in food crises. By the most recent count, there are 74 million acutely food-insecure people in 21 conflict-affected countries.[3]
Beyond being the primary driver globally, violent conflict is the defining characteristic of the world’s worst food crises. In Yemen, for example, the World Food Programme has launched its largest-ever emergency response. On average, the proportion of under-nourished people is almost three times as high in countries in conflict and protracted crisis than in other low-income contexts.[4][5]Countries in Africa, where historically, much of Ireland’s development cooperation has been focused, remain disproportionately affected by food crises.
In other words, it is not just that conflict is hunger’s most significant driver and is therefore central to the ambition of getting to zero hunger. But, reaching the furthest behind first depends on addressing hunger in conflict-affected contexts, where these crises are worst and where people are most vulnerable.
In 2017, the UN warned of the imminent risk of famine in four countries (South Sudan, Somalia, north-east Nigeria and Yemen), all devastated by violent conflict. The announcement resulted in UN Member States mobilising to draft, and ultimately unanimously pass, UN Security Council Resolution 2417 on the protection of civilians placing a central focus on the prohibition of food as a weapon of war. UNSCR 2417 is a clear indication that the international community is outraged by the tragedy of preventable famine in the 21stcentury and galvanised into effective action when the prospect of food crisis at this scale arises. The coordinated action and momentum in responding was extraordinary. On the ground, humanitarian teams worked tirelessly to scale-up efforts, save lives and draw attention to deteriorating conditions.
Since that time, further progress has been made on the World Bank’s Famine Action Mechanism seeking to tie early warning of future food crises to the timely dispersal of funds. At the International Criminal Court, the Assembly of States Parties endorsed an amendment to the Rome Statute recognising, for the first time, starvation as a war crime in non-international armed conflicts. However, it should not require the spectre of four famines to mobilise global action. Nor should this scale of suffering be required to ensure vital momentum is maintained in the aftermath.
Pathways
Before I speak about the way forward and future action, I want to dedicate some time to discussing the pathways through which conflict produces hunger. This is important for three reasons.
First, from the perspective of a social scientist, I want to be accurate in diagnosing the challenge we face. Without understanding the precise mechanisms through which conflict causes hunger, we cannot hope to fully understand them. Second, from the perspective of a humanitarian, I want to expedite effective response. Without identifying clear mechanisms, we cannot meaningfully address root causes, target prevention and support recovery. And third, from the perspective of an advocate to policymakers, I want to be clear that there is nothing natural or inevitable about conflict causing hunger. Conflict does not automatically lead to food crises: they can and must be prevented and made both morally — and politically — unacceptable.
The first pathway — often the most extreme and visible — is the use of food as a strategic weapon of war. This includes the deliberate targeting of food supplies, agricultural land and livestock, and food storage infrastructure by parties to a conflict. It can also include preventing or restricting the movement of food supplies, and wilfully impeding humanitarian relief. The work of groups like Global Rights Compliance and the World Peace Foundation in documenting instances of this point to the use of this tactic in high-intensity, large-scale and often regionalised conflicts, such as in Yemen, South Sudan and Syria.[6]
The second pathway — which is not entirely independent from the first — is through smaller-scale, often localised conflicts. We know that conflicts are becoming more diffuse and characterised by greater fragmentation. A more diverse constellation of state and non-state actors pose a greater risk to civilians and create a more challenging environment for humanitarian negotiation, coordination and access. Conflicts between livelihood groups, centring on natural resources or livestock, can fall into this category, as can relatively low-intensity violence that disrupts food and market systems. Critically, we know that national crises and local-level conflict systems often intersect and fuel each other, with sometimes devastating effects. Even where large-scale conflict is driven by wider, geopolitical factors, food and food systems can become flashpoints of violence in local livelihood systems. This means that this pathway is widespread across insecure and fragile contexts.
The third — and often the least visible — pathway is through social mechanisms. Here, I am indebted to Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s development cooperation funding, which supported research conducted as part of Concern Worldwide’s work in South Sudan. That work highlighted the ways in which conflict causes hunger far from the frontlines of fighting, and often in hidden ways.[7]This research revealed ways that social solidarity mechanisms are transformed and disrupted by conflict. Where once, loans of food, sharing of available supplies, or mutual support in times of stress might have buoyed vulnerable households, collective support systems — between community members, neighbours, and even family — can collapse in conflict. This can occur through a breakdown of trust, the upheaval of displacement, and pressure on limited resources.
This has particular implications for those already at the margins of social networks even before crises set in, such as the elderly, or people living with disabilities or conditions that are stigmatised. As before, this is a reminder of the sharp meeting points between the reality of conflict and hunger, and our ambition of reaching the furthest behind first. This also has starkly gendered dimensions, including through the unequal distribution of food within the household — with men and boys receiving more, better or earlier food than women and girls; an increased risk of intimate partner violence and violence in the household in a context of wider social strain; and gendered violence through distress coping strategies like child marriage. In many rural contexts, women also carry greater responsibility for household food security and manual agricultural labour, while at the same time, enjoying disproportionately fewer land rights than men.
These mechanisms are no less important to the discussion of conflict and hunger for being less direct, and sometimes less visible. They are also a vital reminder of the different entry points available to the international community in seeking to address this crisis.
The way forward
In 2008, in the wake of the global food price crisis, Ireland’s Hunger Task Force produced a report aimed at identifying the specific contribution Ireland could make to tackling the root causes of hunger, particularly in Africa. A decade later, the world faces another food crisis, this time driven by violent conflict. Today, what does an ambitious agenda to address conflict-driven hunger look like?
Against the backdrop of a mounting crisis, it is important that Ireland recognise its own experience of conflict and hunger and become a powerful advocate for crisis-affected communities on the global stage. In two short years, Ireland will commemorate the 175th anniversary of the Great Famine. An tUachtarán Higgins spoke in this very lecture series of how “this memory of our past has shaped and has continued to shape our values and our sensibilities today, instilling in us a moral calling to help others in need.”[8]
In its report, the Hunger Task Force identified a failure of governance at national and international levels for ongoing global hunger, specifically citing an apparent willingness to live with the current extent of global hunger.[9]Ten years later, little has changed globally in this regard, and reversing this, first requires a shift in thinking. Member states, and the international community as a whole, must recognise severe food crises as the pressing security issue that they are. Hunger is not incidental to contemporary violent conflict: it is a tactic employed by warring parties, a product of localised conflict systems, and a deep-rooted consequence of conflict’s social impacts.
In responding, Ireland and other member states should focus action in three key areas:
● Supporting humanitarian response tailored to conflict contexts;
● Strengthening reporting and accountability at the UN Security Council and beyond; and
● Leveraging policy synergies of existing agendas, particularly in relation to the gendered dimensions of conflict and hunger.
Tailored humanitarian programming
As a donor, and a key partner to communities in the midst of, and emerging from, violent conflict, Ireland can support principled humanitarian response to food crises in several ways.
First, there is a clear need for greater investment in conflict-sensitive livelihood and food security responses. Livelihood and food security programming must be tailored to the conflict context in order to reduce pressure on natural resources and food systems, build and reinforce often depleted social capital, and support the capacity of crisis-affected communities to better anticipate, adapt to, and recover from conflict shocks and their impacts on their food security.
Conflict analysis needs to be undertaken, fully resourced and regularly updated and monitored as a central part of humanitarian response. We cannot work in conflict, and ensure we are having a positive impact, if we do not understand conflict dynamics. But too often, humanitarian systems are overstretched and actors lack the space, time, and resources needed for in-depth analysis and critical reflection. We should not consider conflict analysis as outside the core functions of humanitarian organisations: it must inform humanitarian response so we know which livelihood systems make people more or less vulnerable to attack, which assets can generate more or less competition in communities, and which systems of participation selection and vulnerability analysis have greater or lesser legitimacy.
This is important at every level: during conflict, even far from armed fighting, the potential for localised tensions to result in significant humanitarian suffering should not be under-estimated. And long after war is officially over, violence continues for many in their communities, families, and homes. Considering that most people in conflict-affected countries depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, it is particularly important that transitions out of conflict take better account of sustainable and conflict-sensitive livelihood strategies for the re-integration of former combatants, their families and communities, and displacement-affected populations. Livelihood resilience programmes especially adapted to conflict contexts — to anticipate, adapt, and recover from conflict — are a vital part of this transition. We know that national peacebuilding processes cannot consolidate peace unless there is local buy-in and ground-up participation and leadership. Without responses tailored to local peace and conflict dynamics, we may continue to see localised devastation of livelihoods and nutrition outcomes even where national-level peace is established.
More evidence and learning in this area would be valuable; and key global platforms and fora, such as discussions surrounding the FAO Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises, Tokyo’s Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2020, and New York’s Food Systems Summit in 2021, can all provide opportunities to share expertise and deepen global action in this area.
Existing legal instruments, reporting, and accountability
At a global policy level, we have no shortage of laws and policy instruments in which the right to food is enshrined. This right is recognised in international humanitarian law, which explicitly prohibits the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, including the wilful impediment of relief supplies. It is also codified in multiple provisions of international human rights law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Individual UN Resolutions — both global in scope, such as UNSCR 2417, and country-focused, such as resolutions on Syria, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and DRC — have also served as important mechanisms for drawing attention to the scale of conflict-driven food crises and mandating action.
We do not lack provisions and instruments of international law. What we lack is robust monitoring, effective reporting, and political commitment to conflict prevention and resolution. Member states can make better use of existing monitoring and reporting systems to draw attention to the importance of food in these fora and mechanisms. For example, member states can draw attention to the right to food through the Human Rights Council’s Universal Period Review; and through country-specific and thematic reviews by the Peacebuilding Commission. Leveraging these existing mechanisms is vital to reinforcing the norm that conflict-driven food crises are not inevitable or natural, but avoidable and unacceptable.
Existing frameworks, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda
Related to this, I want to draw your attention to a particular opportunity for the international community to make progress on addressing conflict-driven food crises: the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. This year, we are marking the 20thanniversary of UNSCR 1325. We know that there is still a long way to go before we can claim to have arrived at a full understanding of the gendered nature and impacts of insecurity, the most effective actions to prevent and reduce gendered violence in conflict in all its forms, and the transformative potential of women’s leadership in conflict resolution and peacebuilding. But of those issues that have generated political momentum and begun to translate into global, national, and local action, UNSCR 1325 and associated resolutions have had extraordinary success.
And effective advocates find strong allies. I want each of you to ask yourselves, where is hunger in the WPS agenda? I propose that meaningful progress in addressing conflict and hunger can come through a greater attention to WPS in two ways:
Frist, as I have outlined above, and many studies have documented, both conflict and hunger are profoundly gendered. It is vital that in considering the gendered drivers of conflict, the gendered impacts of humanitarian crises, and the potential for gender-transformative peace, that we consider access to, control over, and utilisation of food. For example, humanitarian and development programmes aimed at advancing gender equality can do more to engage with food security and livelihood obstacles that differentially affect women, men, girls, and boys.
Further, reporting at national and global levels on initiatives, frameworks, and action plans to protect, support, and empower women in conflict can consider in more detail how women’s right to food has been affected by insecurity, and where conflict’s legacy produces and maintains gendered gaps in the full enjoyment of this right. Ireland’s Third National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security explicitly recognises that,
Conflict and hunger are inextricably linked. Food can also be used as a weapon of war. Women and girls are frequently responsible for agricultural production and feeding families and are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity.[10]
But it is in the minority. In a review of a database of National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security compiled by Caitlin Hamilton, Nyibeny Naam and Laura J. Shepherd,[11]of the 59 NAPs published in the last five years, just over one-third specifically mentioned food, hunger, or starvation. That means that in the five-year period since the world made getting to zero hunger, and achieving gender equality, global goals, only one-in-three NAPs have explicitly recognised the link between these two. Even among those that do, the majority mention food only in passing. Far fewer reference hunger, fewer still mention starvation, even though we know this is a long-established, profoundly gendered, and devastating tactic in contemporary warfare.
Second, as I have mentioned, the WPS agenda has been remarkably successful in mobilising action and focusing political attention. So even beyond the specific gendered dimensions of food security in conflict, we can learn from the lessons of WPS for any global initiative.It seems to me that there are several key lessons to highlight that have important parallels in how we address conflict and hunger.
The first is that while UNSCR 1325 was a watershed moment, it was not an isolated one. It took incremental change over decades to build up a body of resolutions and global policy that meant real progress on this issue was launched and sustained. This should serve as an important caution that if we want UNSCR 2417 to be impactful, we must look ahead to the complementary and targeted instruments required to consolidate and strengthen it in the years to come. And we must identify the member state champions who will show the political leadership and initiative to safeguard this progress.
The second lesson is that although the WPS agenda is localised through National Action Plans, we still too often see a disconnect between global rhetoric and national action. For too many women in crisis, the aims of UNSCR 1325 remain too remote to make a meaningful difference in their lives, and their voices have been too marginal in high-level discussions. This should be a lesson to us all that crisis-affected communities must be at the centre of any policy or response. We must avoid the trap of thinking of populations whose right to food has been violated merely as passive recipients of global policy, and as too vulnerable to claim ownership and lead in its development. Real progress will rest on centering crisis-affected communities and supporting complementary food and conflict resolution systems that are best-suited to their needs, aspirations and recovery.
The third lesson is that we must expand our understanding of the dimensions of violent conflict. Although abhorrent, a narrow focus on the most direct elements of gendered violence can serve to obscure the many complex social systems that prevent true gender equality and wider social transformation. We must recognise that even in conflict, for example, women are often more vulnerable to violence in their own homes than outside of them. Similar patterns are becoming clear in relation to food crises: the targeted use of food as a weapon of war is legally prohibited, morally unacceptable, and devastating in impact. Beyond this, the complex ways that local conflict systems and social power relations in crisis interact with food availability, access, utilisation, and stability are too often overlooked and yet continue to undermine food security and recovery for millions of people.
Lastly, the success of the WPS agenda can point us to responses that should be explored in relation to conflict and hunger. This will be valuable in building a more central gendered perspective into our response to food crises, introducing the question of hunger and food security more prominently in the WPS agenda, and better leveraging synergies between the two.
At a global level, member states should consider specialised training for peacekeeping troops on conflict-driven food crises, and the deployment of specialist hunger technical staff in missions, mirroring the vital investment in gender capacity across UN forces. The creation of a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on conflict and food crises would complement the vital work of the outgoing Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and help to draw attention to the issue globally. The open, annual debate on Women, Peace and Security at the UN has been vital in setting a global agenda, and may have parallels in high-level discussions on food security that could provide a focal point for diverse action and advocacy efforts in this area.
In supporting peace processes bilaterally and multilaterally, member states should place greater emphasis on food security, hunger, and starvation, which remain relatively neglected. WPS advocates have monitored the inclusion and leadership of women in peace processes, in part by drawing attention to their exclusion in delegations, and the silence of official peace agreements on gendered provisions of disarmament, reconciliation, reintegration, and recovery. That silence is also found in relation to food security: in a database of over 1,800 peace agreements compiled by Christine Bell and others at the University of Edinburgh,[12]the term ‘food’ appears in the texts of only 160 agreements (fewer than 10% of all agreements coded). ‘Hunger’ appears in the texts of only 11 agreements, ‘famine’ in only seven, and ‘starvation’ in only two. Many of these records concern multiple agreements in the same conflict, meaning the actual number of member states that have explicitly recognised the right to food or freedom from hunger, and mechanisms to prevent and recover from famine or starvation in peace processes, is even fewer still.
Ultimately, much more must be done to bring together advocates of women’s protection and equality, and those focused on bringing an end to conflict-driven food crises, whose goals are so clearly aligned. While formal, written inclusion in policies and frameworks such as resolutions, peace agreements, and National Action Plans alone is insufficient to ensure meaningful change; it is almost impossible without it.
Conclusion
It may occur to you in reflecting on what I’ve shared, that Ireland is already leading in many areas critical to progress on conflict-driven food crises. Our role in the SDG development and commitment to reach the furthest behind first means that we have an obligation to not only address hunger, but focus our efforts in responding to the greatest and gravest food crises — those driven by conflict.
Our technical leadership in global nutrition and hunger policy, coupled with our own experience of conflict and famine, lend us an authentic voice and national experience in this area, at a time when there is all too often a retreat from global multilateralism and a perceived disconnect between domestic policy and international development cooperation.
Lastly, our leadership in the Women, Peace and Security agenda demands that we ask — what are the gendered dimensions of conflict and hunger? And beyond that, as a leading voice at the UN on this topic, what are the lessons from the significant progress in the field of Women, Peace and Security that might help us forge the path to zero hunger?
Go raibh maith agaibh.
Learn more about the Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series here.
[1]UN (2018) ‘“No other conclusion,” ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas in Myanmar continues — senior UN rights official,’ 6 March 2018, available at <https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/03/1004232> accessed 25 March 2020.
[2]UN (2019) ‘Collective drive to end hunger, malnutrition “in reverse” since 2015, Deputy Secretary-General says at event on transforming food systems,’ 25 September 2019, available at<https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/dsgsm1342.doc.htm> accessed 25 March 2020.
[3]FSIN (2019) Global Report on Food Crises.
[4]FAO (2017) The Future of Food and Agriculture: Trends and Challenges.
[5]FAO (2016) Peace and Food Security: Investing in Resilience to Sustain Rural Livelihoods amid Conflict.
[6]See Starvation Accountability, ‘Mass Starvation Expert Report’ available at <https://starvationaccountability.org/resources/expert-report> accessed 25 March 2020.
[7]Concern Worldwide (2018) Conflict and Hunger: The Lived Experience of Conflict and Food Insecurity in South Sudan, https://www.concern.net/insights/conflict-and-hunger-lived-experience-conflict-and-food-insecurity-south-sudan.
[8]President Michael D. Higgins (2019), Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series, available at <https://medium.com/humanitarianpulse/president-of-ireland-michael-d-c88a98e1a72b> accessed 25 March 2020.
[9]Hunger Task Force (2008) Hunger Task Force Report, https://www.irishaid.ie/news-publications/publications/publicationsarchive/2008/september/hunger-task-force-report/, p. 6.
[10]Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2019) Ireland’s Third National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security https://www.dfa.ie/media/dfa/ourrolepolicies/womenpeaceandsecurity/Third-National-Action-Plan.pdf.
[11]Caitlin Hamilton, Nyibeny Naam and Laura J. Shepherd (2020). Twenty Years of Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans: Analysis and Lessons Learned, database at <www.wpsnaps.org> accessed 29 March 2020.
[12]Bell, Christine, Sanja Badanjak, Juline Beujouan, Robert Forster, Tim Epple, Astrid Jamar, Kevin McNicholl, Sean Molloy, Kathryn Nash, Jan Pospisil, Robert Wilson, Laura Wise (2020). PA-X Codebook, Version 3. Political Settlements Research Programme, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Available at <https://www.peaceagreements.org/> accessed 25 March 2020.
