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Latest post: Wed 18 May 2022

Insights on the work of the UN Security Council

Conflict and Food Security: Ministerial-Level Open Debate

On Thursday (19 May), the Security Council will hold a ministerial-level open debate on conflict and food security under the agenda item “Maintenance of international peace and security”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will chair the meeting. Secretary-General António Guterres, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Director-General Qu Dongyu, and Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, are expected to brief. This is a signature event of the US Council presidency this month, which follows the open debate that it organised on conflict and hunger under the same agenda in March 2021.

Rising levels of conflict-driven food insecurity prompted the Security Council to adopt resolution 2417 in May 2018. This resolution recognises how conflict contributes to hunger—through the direct effects of war, such as displacement from farming or grazing land and the destruction of agricultural assets, or indirectly by disrupting markets and increasing food prices, among other things. The annual Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), released earlier this month, shows that global hunger, primarily driven by conflict, continues to worsen. During 2021, close to 193 million people faced crisis levels of hunger or worse across 53 countries and territories due to conflict and insecurity, economic shocks and weather extremes. Conflict was the primary driver of this hunger for 139 million people in 24 countries and territories. This was a marked increase from 2020, when conflict was the main driver of hunger for 99 million of the 155 million people then experiencing acute hunger.

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