We Know How to End Famines

Conflict drives food insecurity at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels.

While interstate wars can disrupt food production and trade globally, civil wars often threaten food security more directly by turning access to food into a weapon. Civil wars also affect food security by limiting agricultural production. Farm labor is reduced as governments and militias recruit agricultural workers as soldiers, while militaries and militias provision their troops with food confiscated without compensation from local farms, reducing farmers’ incentives to produce. Conflict can also make farmland unusable, as land mines and unexploded ordnance render agricultural areas inaccessible.

Such conflicts are at the root of the forced migration crisis, in which more than 118 million people have been driven from their homes. Once people leave their homes and communities—which function as support systems in times of crisis—they become much more vulnerable to nutritional crises and epidemics, with malnutrition weakening the body’s resistance to disease. And in famine, disease and malnutrition reinforce one another.

In his book Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, Alex de Waal attributes the decline in famine-caused deaths over the past 150 years to a combination of economic growth and reduced poverty, improvements in agricultural production and public health, political change, and the development of the international humanitarian response system. However, by 2017, mass starvation crises had reappeared in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This reappearance has continued in the past few years, most recently in Gaza and Sudan. The resurgence is due in no small part to conflicts that constrain food delivery and supply, as well as the lapse in support from countries such as the United States for key humanitarian systems.

The Collapse of the International Order

The world food system depended on the liberal, rules-based international order created after World War II. With this order now collapsed, it has become more difficult to manage the volatility of food markets, and to respond to failed and fragile states (perhaps 20 failed states in 2026 by my count) and interstate wars.

According to a Chatham House study, 25 percent of the food consumed by the world’s population is traded internationally, with 55 percent of internationally traded maize, wheat, rice, and soybean traveling through at least one of the world’s eight maritime choke points. Three of these choke points have been closed in recent years: the Bosphorus Strait and commerce on the Black Sea during the early stages of Russia’s war in Ukraine; the Suez Canal for six days when a ship became lodged, stopping traffic; and, most recently, the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran war. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has affected not only roughly 30 million metric tons of annual grain imports into Persian Gulf countries, but also approximately 16 million metric tons of fertilizer trade, equivalent to about one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade.

The US government historically provided between 40 to 60 percent of the food aid delivered by the World Food Programme (WFP), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and local civil society organizations, with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) coordinating the operational response to emergencies. The dismantling of USAID’s emergency-response infrastructure and cuts to US foreign aid in 2025 closed all 60 USAID missions, eliminated most of the agency’s approximately 10,000 staff, and severely damaged the implementing-partner system through which USAID supported international and local NGOs, civil-society organizations, contractors, and United Nations agencies. The cuts have caused mass aid worker layoffs, and damaged infrastructure needed to care for those affected by these conflicts.

This year, the reorganized State Department shifted its remaining budget away from secular INGOs and is now concentrating its humanitarian resources on faith-based INGOs and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has been given just $3.8 billion total for emergency aid.

Responding to the Resurgence

The resurgence of famines is due in no small part to conflicts that constrain food delivery and supply, as well as the lapse in support from countries such as the United States for key humanitarian systems. Thus, I propose the following course of action: Invest in private mediation INGOs to help end civil wars; intervene in local food markets during conflict-driven price spikes; reestablish USAID emergency employment programs; and support “spot reconstruction” in stable areas before a political settlement is reached.

• Invest in private mediation INGOs. “America First” ideology is increasingly shaping US foreign policy, a trend other countries are also following, making it unlikely that the great powers will devote substantial political and diplomatic capital to ending local conflicts. The United Nation’s role in peacemaking also appears to be in decline as the United States and other great powers provide less financial and diplomatic support for its operations. Because conflict undermines food security through multiple channels, reducing conflict itself is an important part of preventing famine. However, great powers appear uninterested in ending civil wars, despite the claim by US President Donald Trump that he has ended six wars (a number he later increased to eight). 

  My recommendation is that donor governments that do not wish to spend the political and diplomatic capital to engage directly in mediation efforts might instead invest in private mediation INGOs. There is evidence for the efficacy of private mediation. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson published a book of scholarly essays, Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft, on efforts of religious leaders to act successfully as mediators to end civil wars. The most famous case involved the end to the civil war in Mozambique negotiated in 1992 by the Community of Sant’Egidio, an Italian lay Catholic order focused on ending conflict. Donor governments and foundations might invest in these organizations to support conflict resolution and successfully reduce conflict-driven food insecurity.

• Intervene in local food markets during conflict-driven price spikes. One of the major food aid reforms of the George W. Bush administration, later embraced by the Obama administration, was to allow USAID to purchase food aid locally to speed up emergency response, save money on transportation, and stimulate local agriculture production. While the Trump administration has awarded large block grants, including one of $235 million to Catholic Relief Services and is reportedly negotiating similar grants with other faith-based INGOs such as World Vision, the “America First” conditionality prohibits these organizations from using US government funding to purchase food locally in the countries where emergencies are occurring.

  My recommendation is to develop the capacity to intervene in local markets through micro-auctions when price spikes take place during conflict, reducing the number of families driven into severe food insecurity. This could be developed as a tool by the WFP, perhaps funded through special accounts by donors. It would require UN field staff through the WFP to monitor food price increases in conflict areas and coordinate with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

• Reestablish USAID emergency employment programs. The third proposal is to reestablish USAID emergency employment programs. Economist and philosopher Amartya Sen argues in Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation that the collapse of labor entitlements is one of several that result in famines. When USAID was shut down, the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) was also effectively dismantled. 

  The OTI was created by USAID Administrator Brian Atwood during the Clinton administration to address the gap between humanitarian relief efforts and long-term development. The program could, in a matter of weeks, employ 50,000 people at roughly $5 a day to engage in rehabilitation programs such as rubble or rubbish removal, road construction or reconstruction, and irrigation system repairs, putting money in people's pockets so they could buy food. Such efforts maximize the use of labor, help get markets functioning again, and contribute to the stabilization of the economy. The US government should reestablish and operationalize OTI. If cash is unavailable, food-for-work vouchers managed by INGOs and WFP could be substituted.

• Support “spot reconstruction.” The fourth proposal draws on American humanitarian Fred Cuny’s concept of “spot reconstruction,” developed in an article published in the 1990s, which argues that reconstruction can begin in relatively stable areas even before a political settlement is reached. USAID did so successfully in the Western Equatoria province in South Sudan between 1993 and 2000 during the Sudanese civil war, initiating a program that supported returning farmers through high-yield seed and tool distribution and broader agricultural rehabilitation, as well as with the transition from bartering to cash-based purchasing. Over a four-year period, this initiative generated at least 25,000 tons of surplus crops which did not have to be imported either by road or air from outside South Sudan. This not only helped to restore the economy but provided the foundation for the administrator's agricultural initiative for South Sudan under the theme, “Preparing Southern Sudan for the Transition to Peace.”

If we do not return to mediating wars, supporting the aid systems that mitigate their effects, and engaging more broadly in the international system, conflicts will continue to drive food insecurity. We know how and what to do to end famines because we did it before. We should do it again and not leave the world to descend back to the jungle.