Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths Remarks at Security Council briefing on conflict-induced food insecurity and the risk of famine

Thank you, Madam President.

Four years ago, this Council made a connection between its responsibility to maintain peace and security and its commitment to address food insecurity and conflict-induced hunger.

You asked at that time to be swiftly informed when the risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity occurs.

That risk, as we will hear and discuss today, is now upon us, and so, regretfully, we are here today.

Last month, we shared a White Note to highlight four contexts where this risk is clear: Ethiopia, north-east Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

Of course, food insecurity has reached alarming levels in other situations that also demand our attention, such as Afghanistan and Somalia - and you may perhaps permit me to make reference to Somalia before I close - and the Secretary-General has recently written to all Member States to convey his concern.

In Somalia, more than 200,000 people were at risk of famine.

And that number is expected to reach 300,000 very soon as I imagine we will hear from colleagues in FAO and WFP.

Famine will happen in Somalia, and we fear it won’t be the only place either.

In the four contexts I mentioned, recent assessments have identified hundreds of thousands of people facing catastrophic levels of hunger, or phase 5 of the Integrated Phase Classification system, IPC-5, which monitors food security and food insecurity worldwide.

Phase 5, as we have all come to know, is the system’s ultimate, most devastating phase.

It doesn't get any worse than that and it is rare for people to return from it.

This widespread suffering comes down to the direct and indirect impact of conflict and violence, and the behaviour of the warring, fighting parties. A similar pattern recurs in each context.

Civilians killed or injured.

Families forcibly displaced from the land they depend on for their livelihoods and their food.

Explosive remnants of war disrupting people’s access to markets, agricultural production and income generation.

Civilian infrastructure and equipment essential for people’s food security stolen, damaged or destroyed.

Food stocks looted.

Livestock killed.

Economic decline and rising prices have put sufficient food out of reach in these contexts for the most vulnerable.

In the most extreme cases, and most egregious of cases, fighting parties have deliberately cut off access to the commercial supplies and essential services that civilians rely on to survive.

Hunger is sometimes used as a tactic of war.

Humanitarian organizations have extended relief lifelines to people in all these crises, working with local aid groups, the frontline responders, the first to deal with trouble, the first to understand the suffering of their people, and sometimes they are the only people there, on the ground.

But too often, we all face interference, impediments, harassment and attacks on our staff and our reputations, and looting or diversion of our assets.

This prevents us from reaching people in need, and it makes their suffering worse.

Humanitarians will stay and deliver, but the conditions in some contexts are simply too difficult, too unacceptable.

Other drivers of hunger, including drought, I’ll come back to that, the effects of COVID-19 and rising global commodity prices, are also compounding food insecurity.

The secondary impacts of the war in Ukraine are also among the drivers of food insecurity in many armed conflicts, increasing food and fertilizer prices and contributing to spikes in energy prices.

Finally, although we are here to discuss the link between conflict and hunger, I would be remiss if I did not point out that in every single one of the countries I have mentioned, people are quite literally on the front lines of climate change.

People are feeling the impact first of climate change, and as the Secretary-General has been making clear recently in public and private statements, climate change is here and stalks the land. Madam President, if I may offer a brief snapshot of each of these countries and crises:

In Yemen, more than seven years of armed conflict, I know it well, have wreaked havoc on people across the country.

Some 19 million people – six out of ten of the population – are acutely food insecure.

An estimated 160,000 people are facing catastrophe, the IPC-5 that I mentioned, and 538,000 children are severely malnourished.

The situation may worsen there due to funding gaps for the humanitarian response and continuing economic instability.

Disruptions to commercial imports could also exacerbate food insecurity – a prospect that has become very real over recent weeks.

I know we will hear more from other briefers, as lack of funding threatens the operations of the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism, which inspects all commercial imports, including food, to Yemen’s Red Sea ports.

We hope that that particular funding gap will be quickly addressed so that we can avoid a shutdown of the mechanism due on 1 October.

In South Sudan, 63 per cent of the population, or 7.7 million people, were projected to be in crisis or worse or catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity during the peak season this year.

Assessments project that 87,000 people, mostly in Jonglei State and Greater Pibor Administrative Area, could face catastrophe, IPC-5.

South Sudan was, I should add, one of the most dangerous places to be an aid worker last year, with 319 violent incidents targeting humanitarian personnel and assets.

Five aid workers, our colleagues, were killed in 2021, and five more have died since the beginning of this year doing their best to get people the help they need and deserve.

In Ethiopia, more than 13 million people need life-saving food assistance across Afar, Amhara and Tigray.

In June, 87 per cent of people surveyed in Tigray were food insecure, more than half of them severely so.

I am sure David [Beasley] will speak to the World Food Programme’s assessment in February that also found extremely worrying food insecurity in parts of Afar and Amhara.

We saw some recent improvements in the delivery of humanitarian assistance in northern Ethiopia, but that’s done now.

The resumption of hostilities in recent weeks is undoing that progress.

Elsewhere in Ethiopia, in parts of Benishangul-Gumuz and southern and western Oromia, food insecurity and malnutrition are also believed to be extremely high.

The prediction of famine in the Horn will not be limited to Somalia and the numbers at risk in Ethiopia dwarf even the level of stress that we see in Somalia.

Finally, north-east Nigeria, we project that 4.1 million people are facing high levels of acute food insecurity in the conflict-affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.

They include 588,000 people who already faced emergency levels between June and August, almost half of whom were inaccessible to our colleagues due to insecurity and therefore food security assessments could not be conducted in those areas.

But we can deduce, and we can fear, that some people may already be at the level of catastrophe and already dying.

Madam President, our White Note recommends specific steps for each country.

Member States could take the following actions in all four of these places, and well beyond:
• First, leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of peaceful and negotiated resolutions to conflicts and other situations of violence. We may hope to see that in Yemen, we may plead to see that in Ethiopia, and we may hope to see that elsewhere.
• Second, remind and encourage States and armed groups to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law. They must not do that which threatens the survival of civilians, and they must ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. And I say that knowing full well how absurd that may seem to some people.
• Third, support an integrated response to address the underlying drivers of acute food insecurity, and this is about supporting the economies of countries facing severe, largescale hunger. The issues of economic collapse and economic shocks, also related to the climate, are ones which become more and more the agenda of humanitarian action.
• Finally, please sustain humanitarian financing for these crises. In all these countries, we are well below half of the funding required. And without those resources, we will do little.

Finally, as I have said Madam President, I do want to highlight the issue which is central to peace and security and that is climate change.

I have just come back from Somalia and indeed attending the Secretary-General’s visit to Pakistan, and the absolute clarity of purpose expressed in those visits, by him in Pakistan, and I tried in Somalia, was that the impact of climate change is felt by those who have done little to create it, and the access to climate financing is as yet pitifully little.

Somalia has received nothing.

Yet if we want to invest in resilience, if we want to shelter the peoples of these countries from a repetition of the shocks of this year, if we want Somalia to survive the famines that will come, late this year and into next year, we need attention from the climate community - from Member States who have pledged money, all of which has not reached its destination

Thank you.