NO BREAD, NO PEACE: FOOD SECURITY AS FOREIGN POLICY
The latest installment of the Pacific Council x World Affairs Global Leaders Series featured Ambassador Ertharin Cousin on how U.S. policy and global leadership can address food insecurity around the world. The event was moderated by Linda Calhoun, founder and CEO of Career Girls.
Hunger has generally been confronted as a humanitarian issue, and rightly so. But it must also be treated as an essential element of military or foreign policy, according to Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, former Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP). As she recently argued in Foreign Policy, conflict and hunger are intimately acquainted. Six out of 10 people struggling with acute food insecurity live in countries experiencing violent conflict, as do 80 percent or 122 of the world’s 150 million stunted children, who face a lifetime of physical and cognitive challenges. Now, the coronavirus pandemic risks making things even worse. Current WFP Executive Director David Beasley estimates that 270 million people globally will hover on the brink of starvation after the pandemic—most of them in countries suffering violent turmoil—up from the 135 million acutely hungry people pre-pandemic.
Syria and Yemen are just the latest examples of places where hunger and starvation are key ingredients in the recipe for conflict. Ambassador Cousin argues that addressing food insecurity should be a foreign policy tool for the elimination of global conflicts. How can U.S. policy and global leadership be better directed toward addressing food insecurity around the globe?
