Deputy Secretary-General’s remarks to the Safety Council – on Food Insafety [as delivered] | Secretary-General

Thank you for convening this debate. I commend the Republic of Sierra Leone for putting conflict-related meals insecurity squarely the place it belongs: on the centre of this Council’s agenda.

Sierra Leone brings profound understanding to this debate. When you have got lived by way of battle’s devastation, you understand with absolute readability that conflict destroys greater than infrastructure, it destroys the power to feed your youngsters.

Excellencies,

War and starvation are sometimes two faces of the identical disaster.

The lived actuality for lots of of thousands and thousands trapped in battle zones bears this out with brutal readability. 

Bullets and bombs obliterate the fields the place meals grows, the markets the place folks commerce, the roads that join farmers to households. 

And starvation strikes again with equal drive. 

Empty bellies gasoline desperation, desperation fuels displacement and violence, and the result’s instability and sometimes the destruction of the very techniques that produce meals. 

This Council’s mandate is upkeep of worldwide peace and safety, and there will be neither peace the place individuals are ravenous, nor safety the place starvation drives battle.

The proof is irrefutable: 

Armed battle drives acute meals insecurity in 14 of 16 starvation hotspots worldwide.

Last yr, 295 million folks confronted acute starvation – 14 million greater than the yr earlier than. 

The variety of folks experiencing catastrophic starvation have greater than doubled to 1.9 million. 

In Sudan, the world’s largest starvation disaster, violence is perpetuating famine throughout Darfur and Kordofan. In Gaza, the place famine was confirmed in August, the state of affairs stays extreme. Across Haiti, Yemen, the Sahel and the Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands and thousands stay trapped in a vicious cycle of starvation and battle. 

Borders provide no safety from these penalties.

We dwell in an interconnected world the place battle in a single area sends shockwaves throughout continents. The conflict in Europe disrupted grain exports that triggered meals crises throughout Africa, Latin America, and Asia. 

Markets panicked, inflation soared and thousands and thousands went hungry. 

As we noticed on this occasion as soon as and once more, the poorest pay the last word worth.

This is the brand new arithmetic of battle: when meals techniques are attacked, weaponized, the affect is international. 

Food itself has change into a weapon. Through deliberate hunger techniques, which we’re seeing all too usually, together with not too long ago in Gaza. 

But additionally by way of the systematic destruction of agricultural techniques. 

Through blockades that strangle provide. 

Through the calculated disruption of commerce flows that leaves total areas susceptible.

The mechanics are devastating and a violation of worldwide humanitarian regulation. 

Arms are looted and wells are poisoned. 

Grain shops are burned and processing amenities destroyed. 

Roads that join farmers to markets are blocked. 

Nomadic communities disrupted as livestock is rustled and sometimes destroyed. 

The infrastructure that makes meals techniques work is focused.

And in a spiral of dying, we proceed to put money into navy expenditure fairly than placing an finish of starvation. 

The world’s whole navy expenditure over the previous decade, estimated at $21.9 trillion, but ending starvation by 2030 prices a lot much less – $93 billion per yr.

Then there may be local weather change, accelerating this disaster with lethal drive. 

Floods wash away harvests, droughts flip fields to mud, and rising temperatures devastate grazing lands. 

The predictable seasons farmers relied on for millennia are gone.

Many of the nations most susceptible to local weather stand within the shadow of battle, and this isn’t a coincidence.

I noticed this firsthand as Nigeria’s Minister for Environment. 

When Lake Chad started drying up, what we confronted was by no means simply an ecological nor financial disaster. 

It was a governance and safety disaster that helped give rise to Boko Haram. When inhabitants development and concrete sprawl intensified tensions between farmers and herders over shrinking assets, the difficulty was by no means merely about water entry, it was about meals techniques underneath stress and communities pushed to breaking level. 

When I met ladies strolling hours every day to fetch water, lacking college within the course of, it turned clear to me that the problem went far past assets, it touched gender inequality, training, and the way forward for total communities, placing your complete Agenda 2030 in danger.

Excellencies,

We can’t and should not settle for these examples as the brand new regular.

The hunger-conflict nexus is a strategic and existential menace, and this Council should deal with it as such.

We want motion on 4 fronts.

First, humanitarian entry should move, ceasefires should maintain, and worldwide humanitarian regulation have to be upheld.

The obstruction, delays, and excuses which have characterised too many conflicts should finish.

We see the results in Sudan and Gaza, the place humanitarian entry stays severely restricted whilst famine takes maintain. Food techniques that ought to maintain civilian populations have change into battlegrounds.

Humanitarian employees should attain folks in want, and meals techniques have to be protected because the civilian infrastructure they symbolize: the farms, markets, transport routes, and storage amenities that function lifelines fairly than professional targets.

Resolutions 2417, and 2573, which this physique adopted in 2018 and 2021 respectively, give us the framework – by condemning hunger as a technique of warfare, demanding safety for civilians, and requiring unimpeded humanitarian entry. 

Years later, crises are extra devastating than ever. 

What we’d like is enforcement.

That means broadening engagement past governments to incorporate civil society organizations that witness circumstances on the bottom, regional actors who perceive native dynamics, and nationwide companions who possess the leverage the worldwide neighborhood lacks. We should work with all of them to drive implementation and demand accountability for violations.

Ceasefires and humanitarian pauses function strategic requirements for shielding the meals techniques folks rely upon. When events facilitate entry as a substitute of weaponizing denial, they create area for restoration and construct pathways to lasting peace.

Second, the trail from fragility to resilience runs by way of sustainable meals techniques.

Building them requires a elementary shift from short-term aid to long-term transformation, and from emergency response to strategic funding as I not too long ago strengthened within the Call to Action popping out of the UN Food Systems Stocktake +4 in Ethiopia

Achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals calls for this transformation, and we can’t finish starvation, construct resilient communities, or safe peace with out it.

While starvation fuels violence and displacement, resilient meals techniques can break that cycle.

When smallholder farmers thrive, native economies develop. 

When meals techniques hook up with well being, training, and social safety, they change into the muse for stability.

This means strengthening native markets so communities can entry inexpensive, nutritious meals. 

Building storage amenities that defend harvests and processing infrastructure that provides worth. 

Ensuring ladies and younger folks have possession and decision-making energy over the techniques that feed their households.

The African Union’s CAADP framework, renewed simply this yr by way of the Kampala Declaration, demonstrates this dedication in motion – with African nations pledging to extend agrifood output by 45% and triple intra-African commerce whereas constructing local weather resilience.

This leads me to my third level: local weather motion stands as a vital pillar of each meals safety and peace.

As the Secretary-General advised world leaders at COP30: conserving temperatures beneath 1.5 levels is slipping from our grasp. 

Even a short overshoot dangers pushing pure techniques previous the purpose of no return, exposing billions to worsening starvation whereas intensifying the very threats to peace and safety this Council is charged with stopping.

Ensuring early warning techniques attain each individual can be non-negotiable. 

We should ship adaptation finance at scale so communities can handle assets, construct resilience, and forestall local weather stress from igniting battle.

When farmers have drought-resistant seeds and water administration techniques, when communities have the instruments to adapt, they will climate shocks as a substitute of breaking underneath them.

Investing in local weather adaptation right this moment prevents starvation tomorrow.

Fourth, peace is the one sustainable answer.

Humanitarian motion saves lives right this moment, but it surely can’t finish conflict. Only political options can do this.

Achieving lasting peace requires treating meals, agriculture, and humanitarian entry as strategic imperatives.

That means governments, donors, and implementers working throughout the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus to sort out root causes of conflicts, not simply their signs.

Prevention calls for early funding. If we watch for famine declarations to mobilize assets, we’ve got already failed. People have already died. Early motion saves lives, protects livelihoods, and prices far lower than disaster response.

But prevention additionally requires addressing exclusion, inequality, and the systemic absence of state companies that create circumstances for battle. 

When governments can’t ship primary companies, when marginalization deepens, when folks lose hope, grievances multiply and meals insecurity turns into yet one more accelerant on the fireplace.

This is the place the nexus strategy turns into important. 

We can’t deal with meals safety with out addressing the basis causes of battle. 

We can’t construct peace with out making certain folks can feed themselves. 

We can’t obtain sustainable growth with out tackling each on the identical time.

Excellencies,

As an previous East African proverb teaches us, “When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”

Today, the “grass” — the harmless civilians of Sudan, Gaza, Haiti, Yemen, the Sahel, the DRC and so many different locations — are struggling past measure. 

They are paying the value for conflicts they didn’t select, and for choices by which they haven’t any voice.

This Council has each the authority and the accountability to behave.

Let us select to construct a future the place meals isn’t once more used as a weapon, the place no youngster goes hungry due to conflict, and the place meals techniques change into engines of peace, resilience and hope fairly than casualties of battle.

Thank you.