Starvation Is Spreading as a Weapon of War, UN Expert Warns and Calls for Accountability

Monsalve Suárez begins her mandate amid a looming food crisis shaped by El Niño, ongoing wars and conflicts, cuts to humanitarian assistance and economic shocks linked to geopolitical instability.

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war with growing frequency, and the international response has failed to bring those responsible to account, a UN expert has warned. For people cut off from food by conflict, the consequences reach beyond an empty plate to the loss of health, dignity and the means to survive.

Presenting her first thematic report to the UN General Assembly's 81st session on World Food Day, Sofía Monsalve Suárez, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, described an unprecedented moral challenge. Famine is returning after decades of decline, she said, with an alarming lack of accountability allowing the deliberate use of hunger to continue.

Famine grows as overlapping crises threaten food supplies

A possible fall in the overall number of hungry people in 2025 does not tell the full story. The share facing famine or famine-like conditions is rising rapidly, exposing the severity of deprivation among those in the greatest danger.

Monsalve Suárez begins her mandate amid a looming food crisis shaped by El Niño, ongoing wars and conflicts, cuts to humanitarian assistance and economic shocks linked to geopolitical instability. Economies increasingly organised around war add to these pressures, making it harder to protect access to food.

"All this explains the return of famine and the intensification of hunger as a weapon of war," she said. She warned that the erosion of international rules and standards is weakening global governance and accountability, leaving institutions less able to respond to abuses or hold those responsible to account.

War and economic pressure reach into the food system

Attacks on food supplies and infrastructure are part of the warfare and geopolitical competition described in the report. Economic coercion through tariffs, sanctions and debt also affects the conditions in which people obtain food and countries provide for their populations.

Rising military spending draws resources away from the changes needed to make food systems fairer and more resilient. The growing treatment of nature as a financial asset adds another pressure to a system already shaped by concentrated corporate power.

Monsalve Suárez's concerns extend to the food system itself. She describes an agro-industrial model built around extracting from nature, turning it into a commodity and maximising profits through global markets.

That model, she argues, contributes substantially to the triple planetary crisis, leaves many people behind and threatens both present and future wellbeing. Her report sets out a vision and a practical path towards transforming food systems, placing human rights at the centre of that work.

Ending conflict and easing debt must be priorities

The Special Rapporteur called on every UN Member State to guarantee the right to food, with particular attention to people whose access to adequate food is systematically denied. "I am calling on all Member States to guarantee the right to food and preserve human dignity for all," she said. Stopping wars, illegal occupation and conflicts must be the immediate priority, she stressed, describing this as the most direct and effective way to prevent famine, hunger and malnutrition.

Her recommendations also address the financial constraints that can prevent countries from changing how food is produced and distributed. She called for a rethink of the international financial architecture, including debt relief and restructuring mechanisms that give countries the room to transform their food systems. The report links that transformation to a basic responsibility: ensuring people can feed themselves in dignity, supported by international rules and institutions capable of protecting their rights.