The Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series: Conflict and Hunger — Part II

May 5, New York — The Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN and Fordham University’s Institute for International Humanitarian Affairs held the 7th lecture of the series. Part II of this discussion on Conflict and Hunger is presented by Matthew Hollingworth, Country Director and Representative in South Sudan for the World Food Programme. This paper was co-authored by Anne-Laure Duval, Global Head of Protection for the World Food Programme. It reflects the views of the authors and not that of the World Food Programme. Part I of this discussion on Conflict and Hunger was presented by Dr. Caitriona Dowd, Assistant Professor in Security Studies at Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland, and is available for listening here.

Lecture:

This paper brings a practitioner’s perspective on the relationship between hunger and conflict. What follows are reflections and a few suggestions drawn from close to 20 years of field experience, serving the World Food Programme as the representative in Syria, Sudan and currently South Sudan.

We seek to highlight some of the challenges humanitarian practitioners face in addressing hunger in the context of conflict and suggest how we might improve the international community’s approach. Three potential avenues for action are identified:

● First, to consider how the international community might better harness collective knowledge and analysis to inform a more effective response;

● Second, to reflect how donors might reframe how their humanitarian and development assistance is premised and delivered; and

● Third, to consider how jurisprudence can give content to the political commitment of Security Council Resolution 2417[1]and the subsequent amendment of Article 8 of the Rome Statute,[2]elevating starvation from a weapon of war[3]to a war crime, including in situations of non-international armed conflict.

Hunger and Conflict

The Narrative

The international community is accustomed to thinking of hunger as a side effect of conflict. However, side effects are effects.The use of “side” distracts from the reality. In simple numerical terms, hunger is often more deadly than that inflicted by weapons, yet the drama and clamour of war obscure the quieter tragedy of famine and starvation. Wars and explicit violence capture the headlines, and our attention, in a way that hunger sometimes fails to do. Some examples, which are both familiar and yet unfamiliar: more Vietnamese died in the Tonkin famine of 1943–44 than in the terrible — yet far better known — conflicts that followed. During World War II, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, conflict-related deaths — just shy of 20 million[4] — were equalled, and perhaps eclipsed, by a similar toll from hunger. Alarming figures can also be found for contemporary or ongoing conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen.[5] These figures are startling, because for reasons that are unfathomable, deaths from famine are less visible, less newsworthy — less memorable than death by gun, bomb, or shell. The point, simply, is that war’s impact on food security is as deadly as war itself.

Reference is made to World War II because this is in our living memory and it brought together the international community to address its failures. It was in the wake of World War II that the United Nations was established. The international community wanted to ensure that the atrocities of that magnitude never happen again. Despite many shortcomings and failures, the UN system has alleviated the toll of some appalling crises and conflicts. The international humanitarian community evolved, and today is structured and funded on the premise of treating hunger largely as a side effect of conflict. Conflict creates the need; humanitarians respond accordingly.

In this context, the World Food Programme was established within the multilateral system as the food delivery operational arm of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).[6] It has always been perceived as the logistical engine that feeds the hungry. Yet from the outset of its creation, despite initially being an experimental three-year programme, WFP was mandated with first, saving lives; second, improving the nutrition and quality of life of the most vulnerable people at critical times in their lives, and third, helping build self-reliance of poor people and communities.[7] WFP now describes its role as “saving lives, changing lives.” Nevertheless, already in the sixties, it was acknowledged that peoples’ needs can vary, and thus, WFP assistance should adapt to those needs.

Increases in food prices do not affect all people equally. Thus, those most negatively affected by a food crisis are the poorest of the poor, as they are least able to purchase higher-priced food. When no other poverty indicators are available, WFP considers that the world’s most vulnerable who spend 60 percent of their income on food are inevitably priced out of the food market.[8] To be able to assist these people adequately, WFP needs to understand why these people are poor and not limit the analysis to expenditure on a food basket. Yet, the instruments and the definition of people in need have largely been grounded in calorific adequacy. To change lives meaningfully, a deeper understanding of social dynamics and power struggles is required.

The architecture of the humanitarian system is built on the premise of identifying need and responding accordingly. Our understanding of hunger must evolve and become multi-dimensional. In the case of conflict and hunger, this is more apparent. It has become inescapable that the relationship between hunger and conflict is far more complex and dynamic than the binary cause-and-effect schema outlined above. This complexity has not yet been adequately reflected in the humanitarian architecture, nor in the nature of the needs WFP is mandated to address.

Hunger is a direct result of conflict. Conversely, food security is a prerequisite for a state’s socio-economic security, and as such, food insecurity can intensify and, at times, cause conflict. The corollary for humanitarian actors, donors and practitioners, is that treating hunger simply as a side effect of conflict is inadequate, and ill-suited, to both the scale and the nature of the problem. It is therefore time for us, the international community, as academics, donors, and practitioners, to adapt our thinking, and our response, accordingly.

The Legal and Policy Framework

Hunger comes when the four elements of food security have disappeared — availability, stability, access and utilization, as defined in the 1996 World Food Summit.[9] Or within a rights framework, when the five elements of the right to food are missing, namely: availability, stability, accessibility, sustainability and adequacy[10] — acknowledged in WFP’s 2012 Protection Policy[11]and in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Centrality of Protection Strategy.[12] Inequalities, with disparities in income and wealth and access to basic needs, such as food, shelter and clothing, but also sanitation, education, healthcare, and justice are growing. The achievement of real, visible and long-lasting development is severely constrained. To understand the drivers of these inequalities, WFP strives to ensure that people of concern are central to all decisions and delivery related to its food security mandate, whether in humanitarian, development or protracted crisis settings.

The legal framework at the international community’s disposal gives the multilateral system the scope to examine the complexities of food insecurity in conflict. Some of the core components of hunger fall beyond WFP’s remit or mandate — the organisational DNA — but as the largest operational food security agency mainly responding in conflict and protracted settings, WFP must consider all aspects of hunger, mainly, why people are hungry.

By way of illustration: in Syria, it is now well established that the collapse of food systems was an underestimated and poorly understood element of both the long- and short-term unfolding of socio-political and humanitarian crises. Before the war broke out, over the period of 2010–2012, droughts had occurred across Syria displacing the rural poor to the urban areas. This rapid urbanization of people who were losing their livelihoods exposed the disparities in wealth and social inequalities, which should have served as an early warning for a potential conflict. When analysis of the unfolding situation eventually did occur, food security was a missing link. More specifically, food security was not factored as a key element driving displacement, urbanization, refugee outflow, economic and or social collapse. Yet, WFP in Syria was responding to people’s immediate need to be fed; it was not WFP’s role to question whether the lack of food or collapse of food systems was one of the origins of the tensions.

The Analysis

The case of Syria, and this understanding of the dynamic, interdependent relationship of hunger and conflict, has significant implications, not only for our understanding of the genesis of conflict, but also for the ways humanitarians and practitioners should respond.

A metaphor helps to illustrate.Like focusing only on the second and third acts of a three-act play, most conflict research focuses on conflict dynamics[13] already evolving in an ongoing conflict. Studying the first act — meaning understanding the setting, acquiring an understanding of who the actors are, what their everyday life is like, and what is important to them — rarely happens. Typically, the international aid community does not answer these questions. It skips that step and rushes into a response on the basis of urgent, existing and identifiable needs. Answering some of these questions through collective research would provide practical insights into Act II, which is typically the Confrontation, Rising Action, and Act III, the Resolution. Extending the metaphor, a focus on Act I could help inform responses and possibly help reduce the scale of conflict, through harnessing collective knowledge and using it to design creative “out-of-the box” projects and programmes. Identifying the reasons for inequality is a first step but then, we as a community should not just state them, but use them to design more creative ways of responding.

Deeper research and analysis would bring to light the fact that hunger is one of the factors that leads to civil unrest or conflict. While not the only factor, it is a key constituent in socio-political stability. This has been unmistakable in the last decade, in 2008, when food prices spiked, followed by a surge in civil unrest across a swathe of lower and middle-income countries. “Angry consumers took to the streets in at least 48 nations across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.”[14] Finally, some contend that the Arab Spring was linked to an increase in food prices.When people took to the streets in Egypt in 2011, they shouted: عيش حرية عدالة اجتماعية“Bread, Freedom and Social Justice.” [15]

The existing tools that the humanitarian community uses to determine humanitarian needs do not support analysis to inform decision-making. The resources given by the donor community and the measurement of the success of allocations are linked to quantities of food or medicines delivered and to the number of people who have received them over a short time period. Time to understand what has happened is not afforded to the humanitarian on the ground, and most of the time, it is not seen as his or her job. Additional expertise and data have not been brought to bear to examine and respond appropriately; accordingly, there is a need for suitably interdisciplinary, inter-agency research to help join the dots, followed by new programmatic models and designs. Accurate treatment follows from accurate diagnosis, and so too the reverse: in Syria, both the international response and programmes have been accordingly mismatched and ill-equipped to meet the nature of the challenge of Syria’s breakdown and collapse.

The Practice

Drawing from these and other examples from the field, we offer a few suggestions as to how WFP might tailor a more effective and appropriate response. The use of hunger as a weapon of war is probably as old as war itself. Examples abound today, such as besiegement of key logistics hubs (like ports) and communities themselves — cutting people off from access to food and markets. The shattering of livelihoods through scorched-earth tactics, inhibiting communities’ ability to cope and frequently causing destitution and displacement, is commonplace. The tactic of starving people is brutal and yet horribly effective, causing lasting and devastating impact. A week of war — or even just the perceived risk of danger — during the planting or harvesting season can bring a year or longer of hunger to a community. Such tactics frequently pass unnoticed due to the swiftness of their execution. This type of tactic is cheaper, but just as viciously effective as fighting a war with bombs and bullets.

To induce hunger in large civilian populations in sieges was a common tactic in Syria. The siege and starvation of Madaya received extensive media coverage. In February 2020, the assault on Idlib has featured restrictions on food assistance, burning crops and farmable land described as literally “burning all aspects of life.”[16] Through the course of the Syrian conflict many other locations have been subjected to the same destructive tactics. The main purpose is to exert pressure on an opposition group to force them to surrender, for example, by besieging locations.[17] The parties to the conflict are dissimulated among civilians who are “just” civilian casualties. In Syria’s Eastern Ghouta, the Government cut off water supplies, targeted communal kitchens and bakeries, and either restricted or even blocked food assistance. All these measures had had the sole purpose of inflicting incremental, and often, eventually complete deprivation.[18]

In South Sudan, by the end of 2015, nearly 1.5 million people and a further 730,000 had been forcibly displaced or fled across South Sudan’s borders.[19] Approximately ten percent of those seeking protection sought refuge in UN Protection of Civilians sites,[20]with much larger numbers displacing. In Unity State, “many hid in the swamps and cases of drowning were reported as people sought to collect water lilies for food or to hide from soldiers.”[21] Although there was disagreement over how such deaths should be recorded, it was decided that they could not be attributed to famine, as neither hunger nor hunger-related illness was their direct cause.[22]

In Syria, WFP’s approach was to “stay and deliver” — an approach which was criticized, as it was seen as only serving people in government-controlled areas where it had physical access. WFP was thus perceived as siding with one of the parties to the conflict. From the inside, the reality was much different. For one, the people, mainly civilians residing in government-held areas, were not necessarily affiliated with the government. From the outside, the humanitarian community was not seen as neutral. Nuances of what responders were dealing with were, however, not understood or perhaps poorly documented and communicated. In a theatre of operation, deliberate and conscious trade-offs are made. Syria, prior to the war, was well on its way to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The need for humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) was not existent, which means that aside from the Red Crescent, there were close to no partners on the ground who could effectively deliver humanitarian assistance. That was the reason WFP decided to “stay and deliver.” As a protection-mandated agency, it was also trying to support the delivery of medical supplies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) was allowed to distribute medicine, but was prevented from delivering much-needed surgical materials, which the authorities considered would be used for supporting combatants and thus politically motivated. There is no perfect answer, but these are the issues and tensions that a representative on the ground has to deal with and balance to make the best decision possible without always receiving the required support from Headquarters, often due to a misreading or lack of understanding of the nuances on the ground.

In another example, Sudan, in the months that led to the overthrow of President Bashir, the first riots in the streets of Khartoum were triggered by the lifting of the wheat subsidy, which resulted in a stark increase in the price of bread.People tend to assume that the poor, the hungry and the most vulnerable will riot. In the case of Sudan, the middle class commonly consumes bread and lives in urban settings where it is easier to congregate. The poor live off sorghum. The riots took place in urban Khartoum or Nyala (the second largest city in Sudan), where the standard of living is higher than in the rest of the country. This shows that unrest and riots can be linked sometimes mainly to what people feel entitled to rather than to a loss of material security. Earlier on in Sudan’s history in Darfur, Khartoum did not anticipate the uprising of Darfurians,contending that they were “too hungry to stage an armed revolution.”[23] The traders (the Zaghawa) across the Chad-Darfur border had built a considerable amount of wealth, which had gone unnoticed by the Government in Khartoum.[24]

There is no mechanistic or inevitable relationship between conflict and hunger. Spikes in food prices frequently, but not inevitably, lead to unrest. The immediate response of a government can be to draw from its National Grain Reserve or call on WFP to strengthen its food assistance programme. This approach is only a redistribution and does nothing to solve the underlying issue of supply and eventual equitable distribution. In the case of Sudan, the government turned to its neighbour the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to provide financial support — again a temporary fix. Worse, these temporary solutions can sometimes detract from addressing the root causes of the problem. They were, as the media terminology puts it, “band-aids,” not solutions. In Sudan, WFP’s approach at the time was to try and address both the immediate needs of those who were hungry and advocate for heightened attention to the country, which is a forgotten crisis in comparison with Syria, Yemen or South Sudan.In Sudan, the international community’s role was to advocate for international support. Concessional finance was unavailable from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as Sudan was in arrears on account of bearing the debt of South Sudan. Sudan’s continued presence on the United States State Sponsors of Terrorism list[25]made it difficult to achieve debt relief and restart International Financial Institution grants and loans. Many traditional donors limited their assistance to humanitarian support, while others used partners to deliver aid outside of government systems. Consequently, there were few incentives, or conditions, to encourage or help the government to engage in sufficient macro-economic reform.

The United Nations Country Team in Sudan with donors had offered an interimarrangement to support the economy and prevent more people from falling into poverty as well as potential civil war. While economic reforms were, and remain, necessary irrespective of the availability of external financing, the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, the United States Agency for International Development(USAID), and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) in Khartoum worked on a proposal for a facility to help Sudan deliver a managed programme of reforms and address their social and economic impact. This facility would have been governed by an agreement between the international community and the Government of Sudan. The proposal asserted a number of pre-conditions that stipulated the necessary macro-economic reforms and the political reforms agreed between the international community and the Government of Sudan accompanied by continued and re-focused support from traditional partners with increased humanitarian assistance and social safety nets to provide immediate respite to the poorest during the reform period. This initiative never materialised despite being creative and forward thinking. The lack of willingness to expose difficult choices, the need to be creative, coupled with the effort and energy to achieve results, can often slow down a practitioner in the field. A country representative will no doubt suffer from advocacy fatigue meaning that despite efforts to deliberately weigh decisions and consider the best options, practitioners inside a theatre of operations are possibly heard but not listened to.

Leveraging the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus

The first part of this paper has considered some of the complexities practitioners face at the field level. These challenges range from understanding a context to being equipped by the international community with the necessary financing and measurement tools to address the problems even when they have been identified and understood.

This section of the paper examines the humanitarian-development-peace nexus and how it can be leveraged to respond effectively to some of these complexities. “The nexus focuses on the work needed to coherently address people’s vulnerability before, during and after crises.”[26] It is supposed to provide the link between development projects and humanitarian activities. To date, humanitarian funds typically have been stretched to cover development projects, particularly in protracted crises, inadequately assisting the people in the most vulnerable situations.[27]

Both WFP’s mandate and the definition of the right to food support the development of a richer and more effective understanding of the relationship between conflict and food. The Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action,[28]followed and reinforced by the Busan partnership for effective development cooperation[29]require that donor countries ensure that their investments are focused on results — that they have a lasting impact on eradicating poverty and reducing inequality, on sustainable development, and on enhancing developing countries’ capacities, aligned with the priorities and policies set out by developing countries themselves. These agreements also call for inclusive development partnerships and the recognition of the different and complementary roles of all actors. The content of these declarations and action plans show that the international community understands the multi-faceted issues a practitioner deals with and their localisation or contextualisation.

Yet, bridging the humanitarian-development-peace nexus remains an elusive goal because of the current aid architecture, because, without achieving a transition from humanitarian action to development, including peace building assistance, fragile situations do not improve. It is time for the international community to adapt to maintain its relevance. The International Network on Conflict and Fragility[30](INCAF) created nearly ten years ago is a good example of attempting to bring about change. One of INCAF’s welcome efforts has been to work hand-in-hand with partners through the g7+ and in the International Dialogue. Political leadership and advocacy through INCAF and the g7+ helped ensure that conflict and fragility concerns were integrated into the SDGs, as manifested in Goal 16. WFP has recognised that it can contribute to this discussion by bringing to the table ways to integrate operational reality into policy. In this way, WFP can support donors to change behaviour, particularly in having a coherent approach to humanitarian-development-peace and security outcomes.[31]

The 2030 Agenda, grounded in the principle of leaving no one behind, and the Grand Bargain Commitments are further manifestations of the international community’s understanding of the fact that issues cannot be dealt with in isolation. The nexus merely reaffirms what has been known for years, that there is a continuum — international assistance is dynamic. The purpose of these commitments is mainly to confine humanitarian funding to finance humanitarian action. As illustrated by the Sudan example, development is an area that practitioners — particularly in conflict settings — tend to shy away from, for the simple reason that development must be aligned to national priorities and initiatives. Often development actors are working with a government that is a party to a conflict, which in a nexus setting, will compromise the humanitarian principle of neutrality.

These challenges are serious, but not — certainly not always — insurmountable. There is momentum thanks to the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, but the thinking behind the nexus has not sufficiently matured. The triple nexus is a way to recall the three pillars[32]the UN is built on: human rights, peace and security, and development. Attention and investment should be given to each component, yet today, only three percent of the UN’s budget is devoted to human rights. Similarly, investment is made in humanitarian assistance, which by nature is punctual and supposed to be short-term. Different mechanisms should be designed to support longer-term objectives. If flexible financing mechanisms were in place with realistic time frames to show progress built in, some of the difficulties laid out above could be overcome.

With adequate resourcing and time, WFP could conduct more comprehensive analysis on food insecurity, detailing the threats faced by populations to physical, material and legal safety beyond vulnerability to food insecurity. Robust context analysis that is regularly updated will enable protection- and people-centred responses to evolve as situations change. As a result, through its programmes, WFP could contribute to reduce, and where possible, prevent people’s vulnerability to food insecurity, inequality and exclusion. This approach would also allow WFP to integrate mechanisms that ensure the long-term sustainability of its programming. Such analysis would also determine when WFP’s role should be advocacy, rather than direct operational engagement — i.e. when WFP should and can leverage its size and scope to support and partner with other actors that have other specializations to ensure a coordinated and complementary approach.

Opportunities for Accountability

May 2020 will mark the two-year anniversary of the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2417.[33] This protective resolution was the result of years of lobbying, coupled with the concern about the increase in duration and number of conflicts. It offers the practitioners on the ground an opportunity to hold the international community accountable for taking action, when deprivation of access to food is occurring. Under the umbrella of the protection of civilians, according to the guidance on the resolution, the Secretary General must report to the Security Council on the risk of famine and food insecurity in countries with armed conflict, as part of his regular reporting on country specific situations.

The guidance on the implementation of the resolution requires reporting on incidences of destruction of objects necessary for life — food production, processing or distribution, as well as incidences of humanitarian agencies being denied access to populations that are in need of life-saving assistance by warring parties, either directly (e.g.roadblocks) or indirectly (e.g.through bureaucratic impediments). This new obligation to report requires WFP to understand food insecurity in a broad sense and to be able to determine from patterns and trends when there is intent to deprive populations from access to food. The reporting guidance provides an avenue that did not exist at the start of the Syrian war to support the protection-mandate agencies such as WFP to take a decision to stay and deliver.

Currently, WFP is using the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) as the tool to determine levels of food insecurity. It examines three different scales: acute food insecurity, which threatens lives or livelihoods; chronic food insecurity, which focuses on quality and quantity of food consumption for an active and healthy life; and acute malnutrition. The IPC was developed to provide an understanding of the severity of food security against which funding would be sought. The IPC has five phases: Phase 1: Normal; Phase 2: Stressed; Phase 3: Crisis; Phase 4: Emergency; and Phase 5: Famine. To reach the stage of Famine within the IPC, at least 20 percent of the population have no access to food; at least 30 percent of children under five years are moderately or severely wasted; and two or more people/10,000 are dying per day due to famine related causes. Or more colloquially put, famine is distinct from the other phases by conditions of destitution — a collapse in coping mechanisms and a large increase in mortality. As such, famine, or Phase 5, is equated with starvation, when in fact, people may die of hunger or related causes in other phases, particularly phases 3 and 4. This means “starvation” related deaths are not clear.[34]

A recent analysis[35]of the IPC explains that while the IPC is a good tool, it is restrictive, because it focuses mainly on severity and is heavily quantitative. In South Sudan, when famine was declared in February 2017 in two counties, and subsequently declared ended in those counties three months later, the IPC phase 3 had risen from 4 million to 5.5 million people across the country. This shows that severity is important, but duration, magnitude and geographic locations are also qualitative dimensions that need to be considered at granular levels to paint a more accurate picture. The argument here is also that WFP and the wider community’s analysis requires sharpening, with an “early warning” lens in mind at all times, to both prevent and better respond.

WFP and FAO have published two reports based on the IPC to inform the update of the Secretary General to the Security Council on the 2417 Resolution.[36] However, these reports offer an opportunity to bring in deeper analysis. For example, there may be food, but no money to buy food; there is a breakdown of the banking system/non-payment of salaries (e.g.Yemen, where the Central Bank was closed, resulting in civil servants and others who received government payments, such as pensioners, not being paid.[37] There is danger in taking refuge in the “shelter of numbers.”[38] It can only paint a partial picture.

There are other key shortcomings with the IPC. For one, the IPC is negotiated with, and at times chaired by, the government, which can often be a party to the conflict, thus potentially compromising the principle of neutrality. IPC assumes access — yet, the reality on the ground is that denial-of-humanitarian-access incidents are not overlaid on IPC maps which can distort the picture. IPC is a snapshot that is not a substitute for a qualitative narrative that reflects trends and patterns. It is the latter that is also required, using the 2417 reporting guidance, to support the element of intentionality necessary for prosecution under the Rome Statute. The intention and/or knowledge of wrongdoing, i.e. the mens rea, is for a litigator to establish. By documenting and reporting to the Security Council, WFP is providing the information necessary for the membership to decide whether it should unilaterally refer a case to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It provides a mechanism to inform member states who can then engage and are obliged to address a situation. The amendment of the Rome Statute was a significant achievement in recognising the destruction of the means for survival as a war crime. Yet it can only be used if a country has ratified the amendment.

WFP can and should support a collective analysis of a situation in line with the Human Rights Up Front[39]initiatives and the Secretary General’s Prevention strategy.[40] In addition to the 2417 Resolution, WFP can contribute to the protection of civilians by investing time in the reporting to the Security Council. This can be done through the reports of the Secretary General in integrated mission settings.

Conclusion

The issues at play are complicated and dynamic, and the tools and structures available are not fully utilised. We recommend better analysis, with both qualitative information and quantitative data, of the settings we work in. The relationship between hunger and conflict is complex and dynamic. There are no simple mechanisms or rules. However, one constant lesson from conflicts and countries as diverse as Syria and Sudan is that we need to avoid thinking in terms of a simple binary, a simple cause and effect of hunger following on conflict. Food security is a vital constituent of socio-political security. We ignore this fact to everyone’s peril, and the effectiveness of humanitarian response will suffer as a result.

There is a mismatch between the nature and architecture of existing delivery systems and the underlying nature of the need. We recommend that the aid industry rethink its financing, and enable work within a more multilateral framework. To an extent, the tools already exist, e.g. multi-partner trust funds.

Existing and evolving juridical frameworks provide means to eliminate the use of hunger as a weapon of war. Accountability mechanisms should be invested in and used, while new accountability frameworks should be seen as opportunities to advocate for support, to better understand the role of food insecurity in the context of the conflict and society concerned, and commit member states to address the use of hunger as a weapon of war.

To end on a positive note, we can do better; many of the challenges outlined above, however diabolical, can only be addressed through a multilateral approach. In the wake of the Rome Statute amendment,[41]there are new accountabilities; just as the means and opportunities exist to take more effective action. This is an urgent task for all concerned by the issue — donors, academics, practitioners alike.

Learn more about the Ireland at Fordham Humanitarian Lecture Series here.

About the Authors

Matthew Hollingworth, Country Director and Representative

Matthew Hollingworth has worked for the United Nations World Food Programme for 19 years and in August 2019 has taken up the position as Country Director and Representative in South Sudan, where he leads one of WFP’s largest operations in the world.

Previously, Matthew served as the Country Director and Representative in Sudan, where he led the transformation of food assistance programmes to focus on building self-reliance, resilience and capacity strengthening for men and women, while ensuring that WFP maintained its hallmark emergency response capacity. Before joining the Sudan operation in August 2016, Matthew served as the Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on supporting country offices facing large-scale and complex emergencies. From 2013 to 2015, Matthew was the Country Director and Representative for WFP operations in war-torn Syria.

Throughout his WFP career, Matthew has served in many challenging settings, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Pakistan. He built his experience as a logistics officer, emergency coordinator, deputy country director and latterly as a WFP Representative. Matthew also led the ALITE emergency response team at our Headquarters tasked with deploying to sudden onset disasters, natural and man-made, to establish food assistance programmes and to support the inter-agency response with logistical cluster planning and service-provision.

Matthew holds a Master of Science degree from Cranfield University (UK) in Supply Chain Management, a Bachelor of Arts from Southampton University (UK) in Philosophy and Politics and completed the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance course 1 in 1997. Matthew is married with three children.

Anne-Laure Duval, Deputy Head of the Regional facility in Amman

Anne-Laure Duval joined the World Food Programme in 2015 in Jordan as the Deputy Head of the Regional facility in Amman where she led on strategy and programme for the Syria operation. In 2017 Anne-Laure moved to Khartoum as the Chief of Staff of Sudan Country Office, where she helped to strategically shift the organisation from humanitarian assistance towards development. Last year, Anne-Laure took up her new position as the Global Head of Protection based in WFP Headquarters in Rome.

Prior to joining the World Food Programme, Anne-Laure held various international positions over a 10 year period. At the outset of her career, Anne-Laure worked for the Council of Europe with a focus on post-Soviet States, then joined the United Nations, building her experience both in the field, as Protection Cluster Coordinator and Head of a Sub-Office (Haiti and Chad, Department of Peace Keeping Operations) as well as in UN Headquarters (UNDG, DOCO, New York). A subsequent move to New Zealand allowed her to draft the Humanitarian Policy for the New Zealand Aid Programme, and work for the Human Rights Commission as an Advisor, after which she joined World Vision, broadening her experience with the NGO world. For World Vision New Zealand, she was in charge of Public-Private Partnerships and Asia Pacific leading emergency response, deploying regularly to the field (Philippines and Solomon Islands). Directly before joining WFP, Anne-Laure was the World Vision Head of Programmes and Quality Assurance for their Syria Operation, based in Jordan.

Anne-Laure read law in Paris (Patheon-Assas) and at the University of Oxford, St John’s College from where she graduated on a merit scholarship. She subsequently obtained a second Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics. She has co-authored a number of publications related to human rights and protection issues for the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

[1]UN Security Council Resolution 2417 Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict (2018). Last accessed on 2 April 2020, http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/2417.

[2]Last accessed 2 April 2020, https://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf.See also last accessed 2 April 2020, http://opiniojuris.org/2019/12/07/the-rome-statutes-flawed-amendment-regime-starvation-in-niac-edition/.

[3]See International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), Rule 53. The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited, Customary International Law Database (applying to both international and non-international law contexts).

[4]Last accessed 15 January 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/01/world-war-food-hunger-million.Lizzie Collingham, (2011) in The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food(Introduction — War and Food).

[5]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://sites.tufts.edu/wpf/famine/.

[6]WFP was established in 1961 after the 1960 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Conference, when George McGovern, director of the US Food for PeaceProgrammes, proposed establishing a multilateral food aid programme. The WFP was formally established in 1963 by the FAO and the United Nations General Assembly on a three-year experimental basis.In 1965, the programme was extended to a continuing basis.

[7]Last accessed on 2 April 2020,https://www.wfp.org/history.

[8]Josette Sheeran, Executive Director, United Nations’ World Food Programme, the Economist, November, 2007.

[9]World Food Summit 1996, Food security is “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food references for an active and healthy life.”Last accessed on 2 April 2020, http://www.fao.org/3/y4671e/y4671e06.htm.

[10]United Nations Human Rights Committee, General Comment 12 on the Right to Food (1999). Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.refworld.org/docid/4538838c11.html.

[11]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.wfp.org/publications/wfp-humanitarian-protection-policy.

[12]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/protection-priority-global-protection-cluster/documents/iasc-policy-protection-humanitarian-action.

[13]Paul F. Diehl, Just a Phase?: Integrating Conflict Dynamics Over Time, Conflict Management and Peace Science, 23:3, 199–210,(2006). Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/07388940600837490

[14]Food Security & Sociopolitical Stability, at 4, (2016) (Christopher B. Barrett, ed.)

[15]Phonetically: Aish horriah Aadaleh Igtimaeiah; last accessed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Re4zJkoQM.

[16]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/out-movie-idlibs-farmers-find-themselves-victims-scorched-earth-campaign.

[17]Indicated throughout the report of Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A-HRC-37-72_EN.pdf.

[18] See Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley, The Purposes of Starvation: Historical and Contemporary Uses at 710 in the Journal of International Criminal Justice 17 (2019), 699–722. Also noting that “mass starvation is a process of deprivation that occurs when actors impede the capacity of targeted persons to access the means of sustaining life.”, at 699.

[19]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2015/7/559bdb0e6/225-million-displaced-south-sudan-across-its-borders.html.

[20]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://odihpn.org/magazine/protection-civilians-poc-sites-impact-broader/.

[21]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, para. 27 https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Accountability%20for%20Starvation-South%20Sudan.pdf.

[22]Ibid.

[23]Alex de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, at 54 (2015).

[24]Ibid.

[25]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/.

[26]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/humanitarian-development-peace-nexus-what-does-it-mean-multi-mandated-organizations.

[27]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, See: https://www.agendaforhumanity.org/initiatives/3861.

[28]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.pdf.

[29]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/49650173.pdf.

[30]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.oecd.org/dac/conflict-fragility-resilience/incaf-network.htm.

[31]See e.g. WFP’s contribution on peace and conflict prevention through its in diverse situations, including outright violent conflict and transition from violence to sustainable peace, INCAF, DAC Meeting, 18 November 2019 Last accessed on 2 April 2020, http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=DCD/DAC/RD(2019)9&docLanguage=En.

[32]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.un.org/un70/en/content/videos/three-pillars/index.html.

[33]UN Security Council Resolution 2417 (2018), supranote 1.

[34]Famine early warning and information systems in conflict settings: challenges for humanitarian metrics and response.

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102836/Daniel Maxwell, (2019) Famine early warning and information systems in conflict settings: challenges for humanitarian metrics and response. Conflict Research Programme, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

[35]Determining famine: Multi-dimensional analysis for the twenty-first century (Daniel Maxwell, Abdullahi Khalif, Peter Hailey and Francesco Checchi), 2020.

[36]Last accessed on 2 April 2020,http://www.fao.org/3/ca3113en/CA3113EN.pdf.

[37]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/files/2019/09/Accountability-for-Starvation-Crimes-Yemen.pdf, at 5.

[38]Last accessed 29 March 2020, http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/hunger-the-ugly-truth-about-the-world-s-oldest-problem-1.4178375?mode=amp.

[39]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/overview_of_human_rights_up_front_july_2015.pdf.

[40]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, https://www.un.org/sg/en/priorities/prevention.shtml.

[41]Last accessed on 2 April 2020, see https://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/govman/wfp268162.pdf.