The Right to Food in Armed Conflicts: When Hunger Becomes a Battlefield

Fotos by FAO 

For many decades, discussions about the right to food were largely situated within the fields of development policy, food security strategies, agricultural transformation, and poverty reduction. Hunger was generally understood as a structural problem related to inequality, economic exclusion, weak governance, or environmental stress. Armed conflict, while recognized as an important driver of food insecurity, was often treated as one factor among many.

Today, this perspective is increasingly inadequate. Contemporary conflicts are revealing a much deeper and more troubling dynamic: the systematic disruption of food systems has become a central feature of warfare. In many contexts, hunger is no longer merely a consequence of violence but a direct outcome of strategies that target the systems through which people produce, access, and consume food.

Agricultural lands are destroyed or rendered inaccessible, irrigation systems and storage facilities are damaged, markets collapse, transport routes are blocked, and rural populations are forced to flee their livelihoods. These disruptions reverberate across entire food systems, undermining not only food production but also distribution, access, and stability. The result is a profound erosion of the conditions necessary for the realization of the right to adequate food.

Understanding these dynamics requires moving beyond a purely humanitarian lens. It requires recognizing that food systems themselves have become arenas of conflict.

The Legal Foundations: The Right to Food in Times of War

From the perspective of international law, the right to adequate food remains fully applicable during armed conflicts. The obligations derived from international human rights law do not simply disappear in times of war. Rather, they continue to operate alongside the rules of international humanitarian law, creating a complementary framework for the protection of civilians.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to adequate food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger. These obligations apply to states at all times, including during situations of armed conflict and occupation. States are required to respect existing access to food, protect populations from actions that undermine that access, and take steps to ensure that food is available and accessible to those who cannot secure it for themselves.

At the same time, international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions,  establish clear prohibitions that reinforce these protections. The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited. Parties to conflict are forbidden from attacking, destroying, removing, or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including crops, livestock, drinking water installations, and irrigation systems.

Taken together, these legal norms form a powerful framework. They affirm a simple principle: even in the midst of armed conflict, the basic conditions necessary for human survival must remain protected.

The Weaponization of Food Systems

Despite the clarity of these legal standards, the reality of modern conflicts often tells a different story. Across multiple conflict settings, the destruction and manipulation of food systems has become a recurring feature of warfare.

Food production systems are frequently disrupted through the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, the contamination of land, or the occupation of fertile areas. Market systems are weakened or dismantled through blockades, restrictions on movement, and the fragmentation of supply chains. Humanitarian access is often limited or obstructed, preventing assistance from reaching populations in need.

These dynamics create cascading effects that extend far beyond immediate food shortages. Rural livelihoods collapse, families lose their primary sources of income, and entire communities become dependent on humanitarian aid. Local markets shrink or disappear, further reducing access to food even when it is physically available.

In many situations, the erosion of food systems contributes directly to displacement and instability. When people lose the means to sustain themselves, migration becomes not only a survival strategy but often the only available option.

This is why the concept of the “weaponization of hunger” has gained increasing attention in international debates. Hunger, in these contexts, is not accidental. It becomes embedded within the broader logic of conflict.

Beyond Emergency Response: Protecting Food Systems

Ensuring access to food during armed conflicts is not only a matter of quantity but also of quality, safety, and nutritional adequacy. In many conflict situations, the collapse of food systems is accompanied by a sharp deterioration in food safety standards and dietary diversity. Disrupted supply chains, damaged storage facilities, lack of clean water, and weakened regulatory oversight can increase the risks of food contamination and foodborne diseases. At the same time, populations often become dependent on a narrow range of emergency food sources that may meet immediate caloric needs but fail to provide the nutrients required for healthy development and long-term wellbeing. This has particularly severe consequences for children, pregnant and lactating women, and other vulnerable groups.

 Integrating food safety and nutrition considerations into humanitarian responses and recovery strategies is therefore essential to ensure that the right to adequate food is fully realized even in contexts of conflict.Addressing hunger in conflict situations cannot be limited to the delivery of humanitarian food assistance. While emergency aid remains indispensable for saving lives, it is not sufficient to address the deeper structural dynamics that drive food insecurity in conflict zones.

A right-to-food perspective encourages a broader approach. It focuses on protecting the functioning of food systems even in the midst of crisis. This includes safeguarding agricultural production, maintaining access to land and natural resources, protecting markets, and supporting the resilience of rural livelihoods.

It also requires strengthening legal and institutional frameworks that protect the rights of affected populations. Access to justice, mechanisms for dispute resolution over land and natural resources, and the recognition of customary tenure systems can play critical roles in preventing conflicts from escalating into deeper food crises.

Equally important is the recognition of the knowledge and capacities of local communities. Pastoralists, smallholder farmers, and indigenous communities often possess sophisticated systems for managing land, water, and mobility under conditions of environmental variability. When these systems are disrupted by conflict, the consequences for food security can be severe.

Protecting these forms of local governance and knowledge is therefore an essential component of safeguarding the right to food.

Accountability and the Future of Food Security in Conflict

One of the most significant implications of framing hunger through the right to food is the question of accountability. When hunger is treated merely as a humanitarian problem, responses tend to focus on relief and recovery. When it is understood as a violation of rights, the focus shifts toward responsibilities and legal obligations.

States and other actors involved in conflicts have clear duties under international law. They must refrain from actions that undermine food systems, protect civilians’ access to food, and allow humanitarian assistance to reach those in need. Violations of these obligations are not simply unfortunate outcomes of war; they can constitute serious breaches of international law.

Strengthening monitoring mechanisms, improving documentation of violations, and enhancing international cooperation are essential steps for ensuring that these norms are respected in practice.

Reaffirming a Fundamental Principle

Ultimately, the right to food in armed conflict is about reaffirming a fundamental ethical and legal principle. Even in the most extreme circumstances of violence, the basic conditions necessary for human survival and dignity must remain protected.

Food is not merely a commodity or a development objective. It is a human right and a cornerstone of social stability. When food systems collapse, societies themselves begin to unravel.

Recognizing and protecting the right to food during armed conflicts is therefore not only a humanitarian imperative but also a critical element of building pathways toward peace, resilience, and recovery.

In a world where conflicts are increasingly complex and prolonged, ensuring that hunger is never used as a weapon remains one of the most urgent challenges for the international community.

Feeding Justice: Challenges and Progress in the Right to Food

      (Fotos by FAO)

Aisha Saleh, a mother of five in Yemen’s Hajjah governorate, struggles every day to feed her family amid a crisis that offers no respite. “We eat only once a day, and sometimes not even that. I skip meals so my children can have something,” she says. Prolonged war, economic collapse and dwindling humanitarian assistance have pushed millions into critical conditions. Her story is not an exception; it is a portrait of the present for millions.

According to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, between 638 and 720 million people experienced hunger in 2024. One in eleven people worldwide. One in five in Africa. These figures have not improved in three years. They have stagnated. They demand reflection.

Hunger is not a natural disaster. It is the result of human action—and a blatant violation of the right to food, enshrined in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and further developed in the Voluntary Guidelines adopted by the UN Committee on World Food Security. This right goes beyond caloric intake: it entails physical and economic access to adequate, nutritious, culturally appropriate, safe and sustainable food. To eat, yes—but with dignity.Yet this right continues to be denied in multiple ways.

Climate and hunger

Climate change, driven by our socioeconomic model, has ceased to be a future threat and has become a destabilizing force of the present. The 2023 floods in Pakistan submerged more than four million hectares of arable land. In Central America, prolonged droughts have triggered mass displacement. In South Sudan, sorghum production—a staple crop—has been cut in half due to erratic rainfall. When the climate falters, hunger takes root.

Hunger as a weapon of war

Compounding this is the alarming rise in food crises induced by armed conflict. Violence has disrupted food production and distribution in regions such as Sudan, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen, parts of Ethiopia and Haiti. In the Gaza Strip, the situation reached unprecedented proportions in contemporary international law. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently stated, “Gaza has become a place of death and despair. The norms of international humanitarian law are being systematically violated, and the world cannot look the other way.”

Inequality and the right to food

Women and girls are consistently the most affected by food insecurity. Women are often the last to eat and the first to sacrifice their portion for their children. In emergency contexts, the likelihood that a woman or girl suffers from malnutrition is more than twice that of a man.

International cooperation in retreat

The protection of the right to food is also being eroded by the retreat of international cooperation. The United States has drastically reduced funding for international development assistance. Several European countries are also significantly cutting back. The effects are already visible. The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced reductions in food rations for refugees and other vulnerable populations in more than forty countries. According to WFP data, in Yemen three million people have been removed from assistance lists; in Chad, families now receive less than half of the minimum recommended caloric intake.

Concentration of power

One of the most persistent structural obstacles to the right to food is corporate concentration within the agrifood system, where a handful of companies dominate the global food chain. Four groups control more than 70 percent of the global grain trade. Three corporations lead the global seed market. Five major retailers determine what does—and does not—reach supermarket shelves.

This model reduces the decision-making power of small-scale farmers and consumers, drives dietary homogenization and fuels the expansion of ultra-processed foods. In the United States, these products account for 57 percent of caloric intake; in Mexico, Brazil and Chile, they exceed 30 percent. This influx of cheap, calorie-dense and nutritionally poor products has contributed to rising rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, particularly among vulnerable populations.

Reasons for hope

Amid this landscape, there are signs of progress. In Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a significant resolution last November urging Member States to recognize and protect the right to adequate food. This political and legal foundation could translate into tangible advances across the continent and beyond, given Europe’s global influence through trade, investment and development cooperation.

Spain has also taken important steps. Parliament recently approved a law against food waste requiring supermarkets to donate surplus food and obliging all companies in the food chain to implement prevention plans. In addition, a recent government decree mandates that at least 45 percent of fruits and vegetables served in school canteens be seasonal, promoting healthier diets, supporting local producers and reducing environmental impact.

In Latin America, several governments are consolidating public policies that place the right to food at the center of strategy. Brazil has revived its public procurement program from family farmers to supply schools, hospitals and social canteens, while actively promoting agroecology. Chile has implemented one of the world’s most advanced policies to combat obesity, particularly among children, pioneering front-of-package warning labels for ultra-processed foods.

Africa also offers compelling examples. In South Africa, more than nine million students receive a daily school meal, improving attendance, child health and links with local farmers. Uganda has launched programs to strengthen the role of rural women in agricultural production and food-related decision-making. These are policies that work—policies that distribute, that nourish justice.

Globally, FAO advances the right to adequate food through technical assistance, training and legal and institutional support. In Nepal, it supported the inclusion of the right to food in the Constitution. Across Latin America, it has accompanied parliamentary processes and trained public officials and civil society actors. In countries such as Sierra Leone and Georgia, FAO has provided technical support to design food policies grounded in human rights principles.

The Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, launched by Brazil during its 2024 G20 presidency, co-led by Spain and technically coordinated by FAO, seeks to mobilize concrete efforts by dozens of partner countries to eradicate hunger. By strengthening public policies, sustainable investments and South–South cooperation, it directly contributes to the realization of the human right to adequate food.

These initiatives demonstrate that where there is political will and social participation, the right to food can move from abstract principle to living policy.

As long as hunger persists, justice will remain incomplete. And where bread is lacking, conflict will flourish.

Starvation as a Choice

Hunger in war is often described as inevitable. As if starvation were a tragic but unavoidable consequence of violence, instability, or logistical failure. International law says otherwise. 

Starvation is not collateral damage. It is not a technical malfunction. It is the foreseeable outcome of human decisions—decisions governed by law, prohibited by law, and yet too often tolerated by the international community. 

What we witnessed in Gaza or in Sudan is not a legal grey zone. It is a collapse of legal protection.

 International law is unambiguous. The right to adequate food applies at all times, including during armed conflict. It is grounded in human dignity and anchored in binding obligations. States must respect existing access to food, protect populations from interference by third parties, and fulfil the right when people cannot feed themselves. Above all, they have an immediate obligation to ensure that no one suffers from hunger. 

These obligations do not disappear in war. On the contrary, they are reinforced.

International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare. It forbids the destruction of objects indispensable to civilian survival. It requires humanitarian access. International criminal law goes further, establishing individual criminal responsibility when starvation is intentionally inflicted on civilian populations. 

Together, these legal frameworks form one of the clearest and most consistently articulated prohibitions in international law. 

The problem, therefore, is not the absence of norms. It is the failure to apply them. 

 In Gaza, the right to food has been vulnerated across all its dimensions. Food availability has collapsed with the destruction of agricultural land, livestock, fisheries and food infrastructure. Physical and economic access has been systematically undermined by restrictions on movement, destroyed markets, mass unemployment and extreme prices. Diets have become dangerously inadequate, stripped of nutritional diversity and safety. Livelihoods and food systems have been rendered unsustainable, with no realistic path to recovery. 

These conditions did not emerge overnight. They are the result of sustained actions and omissions that progressively eroded the foundations of survival with dignity. 

Too often, famine is treated as a threshold that must be crossed before responsibility begins. This is a profound misunderstanding. Famine is not a trigger for concern; it is evidence that multiple, sustained violations have already occurred. From a legal perspective, responsibility arises much earlier—when access to food or humanitarian assistance is deliberately blocked, when food systems are destroyed, or when civilians are exposed to harm in order to eat. 

The continued use of hunger as a tool of war is not a failure of international law. It is a failure of enforcement. It reflects a lack of political will to uphold the very norms States have collectively created. 

By the time starvation becomes visible to all, the law has already been broken—repeatedly, systematically, and at scale. 

 The question we must confront is therefore simple and deeply unsettling: what does international law mean if it cannot prevent, stop, or remedy the deliberate starvation of civilians in full view of the world?

    Foto- FAO