The West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region faces a food security dilemma rooted in water scarcity, energy dependence, climate- and water-related shocks, conflict, and global market volatility.

As one of the world’s most land- and water-scarce regions, its capacity for domestic food production is constrained, contributing to heavy dependence on food imports, while several WANA countries also depend on imported oil and gas for electricity generation, transport, and energy-intensive water desalination (FAO 2022b; IEA 2025). These interconnected pressures affect people’s livelihoods and can undermine human, economic, and regional security.

Water scarcity is a particularly acute constraint. Average freshwater availability is approximately 480 cubic meters per person per year (World Bank 2025a), below the 500 cubic meter threshold for absolute water scarcity, while agriculture accounts for nearly 83 percent of available freshwater withdrawals (de Waal et al. 2023). Because agriculture consumes the vast majority of available freshwater, water scarcity directly constrains domestic food production and increases dependence on food imports.

Where water scarcity intersects with conflict and institutional fragility, its effects can extend well beyond food production. In Yemen, for example, long-standing groundwater depletion, combined with conflict and institutional collapse, has fueled local disputes over water and land, damaged critical infrastructure, reduced access to safe water, and deepened food insecurity and humanitarian need (Abo-Thrais et al. 2025). Energy dependence adds another layer of vulnerability. Imported sources supplied 74 percent of Jordan’s energy needs in 2024 (Jordan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources 2025), Morocco’s energy-dependency ratio stood at 87.5 percent (Kingdom of Morocco 2024) and Lebanon imports nearly 97 percent of the energy it uses (World Bank 2026b).

Together, water scarcity, energy dependence, climate shocks, and conflict shape food security across the region—not only in terms of availability but also accessibility, affordability, and stability. Food may be available, but it remains inaccessible and unaffordable to many due to inflation, instability, and conflict. In Syria, more than 7 million people, around 29.5 percent of the population, are acutely food insecure (WFP 2026d, FAO 2026g). In Lebanon, around 874,000 people, roughly 17 percent of the population, were estimated to face crisis- level or acute food insecurity between November 2025 and March 2026 (FAO 2026d).

The region’s food trade patterns reveal a broader dilemma for food security. Many WANA countries export fruits, vegetables, olive oil, dates, and processed food, while importing essential staples such as wheat, maize, vegetable oils, sugar, and animal feed. Morocco and Jordan illustrate this dilemma: despite exporting high-value produce—including tomatoes, citrus fruits, squash, cucumbers, eggplants, apricots, and berries—they remain heavily dependent on cereal imports (World Bank n.d.a, World Bank n.d.b, FAO 2025a, FAO 2026e). The risk emerges when dependence on staple imports is concentrated among a group of suppliers, currencies, or transport routes. Disruptions can then pass rapidly from global markets to domestic prices, dietary quality, and household deprivation. In conflict- affected settings, damage to farms, roads, ports, water systems, and power networks magnifies this exposure. Food security therefore becomes a matter of economic resilience, public trust, and regional stability.

Addressing this dilemma requires an integrated understanding of resource security. A water–energy–food–ecosystems (WEFE) nexus approach recognizes that the objective is not simply to produce more, but to produce more efficiently and generate greater nutritional, economic, and social value from every unit of water and energy.

Priorities include reducing water losses, enhancing water productivity, expanding safe wastewater reuse, improving irrigation efficiency, supporting drought-resilient crops, and powering water and food systems with renewable energy. Nature-based solutions, such as watershed restoration, rainwater harvesting, and soil conservation, should be treated as productive infrastructure.

These interventions must become embedded within national and regional security and resilience planning, with benefits measured across natural resources, livelihoods, ecosystems, and human well-being. Resilience does not mean producing everything domestically. Rather, it means managing dependency strategically, diversifying suppliers and trade routes, increasing resource productivity, strengthening local capacities, and protecting people from overlapping deprivation.

Linking WEFE planning with multidimensional deprivation indicators can help identify populations exposed to multiple overlapping risks and better target resources and support. In the WANA region, water and energy security are not only prerequisites for food security, but also fundamental to dignity, stability, and human security. Investing in resilient water governance is therefore not only an environmental or economic priority—it is a security imperative.

The recent convergence of climate shocks, geopolitical conflict, supply chain disruptions, financial instability, and democratic fragility has revealed that food security in Europe is inseparable from broader questions of national and regional security.

Recent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia- Ukraine war, and disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrate that even relatively wealthy regions remain vulnerable to cascading supply shocks affecting their food systems and food security.

Europe has so far weathered such disruptions better than many regions of the world because of its fiscal capacity, institutional strengths, and well-funded social protection systems. Resilience, however, should not be mistaken for immunity. European food systems depend heavily on global flows of fertilizers, natural gas, animal feeds, vitamins, minerals, and other strategic inputs (European Commission 2022). Disruptions to any of these key supply chains can rapidly affect food availability, access, affordability, consumer agency, and/or nutritional quality (European Commission 2025). These vulnerabilities have implications beyond food security, including for public health, economic performance, and wider social cohesion and resilience.

Unlike some other regions of the world, Europe is unlikely to face widespread food shortages given its high level of self-sufficiency in key agricultural products and stable food supply (European Commission 2023a). Its challenge is different: maintaining the continuity of complex food and nutrition systems during prolonged crises while ensuring that economically vulnerable households can continue to access adequate and nutritious food. In 2025, 92.7 million people—20.9 percent of the EU population—were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, underscoring that food insecurity in Europe is often a question of affordability and unequal access rather than overall availability (Eurostat 2026).

Europe depends on global supply chains for agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and protein feeds, but also for vitamins, medical nutrition products, infant formula, and other specialized foods required by vulnerable populations. Disruptions to supply chains can create risks for food production and access to nutritionally important products, with potential implications for nutrition and public health (European Commission 2025). In such circumstances, the issue is no longer simply whether enough food exists, but whether populations can maintain adequate nutrition over time. In an era of recurring and interconnected crises, Europe must therefore focus on nutrition continuity—the ability of societies to sustain nutritional adequacy throughout future food crises.

Here, nutrition continuity refers to continued access to calories, proteins, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals, as well as the maintenance of public nutrition services such as school meals, maternal nutrition programs, and clinical nutrition support. Importantly, it also recognizes that different population groups face different risks during crises and therefore, require different forms of protection.

Particular attention must be paid to vulnerable groups. Women, children, older adults, people with chronic illnesses, migrants, refugees, and low-income households can face heightened risks if food systems are disturbed (WHO 2020; WHO 2022). Disruptions in access to nutritious foods and specialized nutrition products can have serious consequences, particularly for people with specific nutritional and medical needs, even when overall food supplies remain adequate. School meal programs and food assistance systems can become particularly important safety nets during periods of crisis, such as during the COVID-19 crisis (Rossi 2020).

Nutrition Continuity is a Security Issue

When nutrition falters, the security implications are significant. Food insecurity and nutritional decline can erode trust in institutions, drive social tensions, undermine health outcomes, and amplify existing inequalities. From one side of Europe to the other, food and nutrition stress has fed political instability, migration pressures, and humanitarian emergencies. Siege-induced hunger in Bosnia contributed to the largest displacement in Europe since 1945 (UNHCR 2012). The 2022 price shock following Russia’s attack on Ukraine triggered export and import restrictions by several EU member states, briefly fracturing the single market in grain (European Commission 2023b). In the UK in 2023/24, record food bank demand has become a recurring feature of political debate over whether the social security system provides enough for people to afford essential goods (Trussell Trust 2024; UK Parliament 2024). Farmer protests across France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands in 2024 blocked roads, border crossings, and access to major cities, increasing pressure on the EU to weaken or delay several agricultural and environmental policies (Abnett 2024).

‟Resilience, however, should not be mistaken for immunity.”

Food systems should therefore be viewed not merely as structures requiring protection, but as strategic assets whose resilience directly affects local, national, and regional security by safeguarding nutrition. Maintaining adequate nutrition throughout a crisis underpins public health, social cohesion, and societal resilience.

Building a European Nutrition Security Strategy

Preparing for future crises requires moving beyond traditional food security planning to engage central banks and other financial actors from whom we can learn useful lessons.

Following the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, stress testing became a standard tool for identifying vulnerabilities and assessing the banking sector’s resilience to severe systemic shocks. Yet, no comparable process has yet been applied systematically to food systems.

European institutions and member states should establish regular food system stress tests that model complex, multi-hazard scenarios involving climate impacts, conflict, energy disruptions, supply chain failures, and financial shocks. These exercises should assess not only food availability and access but also nutrition continuity, with explicit attention to women, children, older adults, migrants, and other vulnerable populations. Results should inform contingency planning, strategic reserves, and emergency response mechanisms.

The recent Food Alert workshops organized in 2024 by partners including Sciences Po, Chatham House, and the European Policy Centre, involved European institutions and regional stakeholders and began exploring how food system stress testing can help policymakers anticipate and prepare for cascading disruptions. Such exercises offer a practical mechanism for identifying hidden dependencies, testing response capacities, and strengthening coordination among key sectors and governance institutions before a crisis occurs.

A European Nutrition Security Strategy should therefore place nutritional continuity at the center of resilience planning. It should ensure that food systems are prepared to supply sufficient quantities of food and safeguard adequate nutrition for all populations throughout future food crises. This may require some degree of stockpiling, logistical preparation, adjustments to procurement regulations, policy planning, and training at different levels of public administration—from Brussels down to local communities (schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.).

Achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) now requires a more holistic understanding of “security”. The challenge is no longer simply preventing hunger or starvation; it is ensuring that societies can maintain equitable access to adequate nutrition during periods of prolonged disruption. By treating food and nutrition systems as strategic security assets, Europe can strengthen resilience at home while supporting global efforts to realize the right to adequate food for all in the most vulnerable and crisis-affected regions.

Asia is highly exposed to climate-driven food insecurity, yet adaptation finance flows to the region remain inadequate relative to the scale of its exposure and needs.

The region is home to an estimated 292 million people who are facing chronic hunger in 2025 (FAO et al. 2026b). Among children under five, Asia accounts for a large portion of the global burden, with a wasting rate of 8.9 percent, against the 6.7 percent global average, and a stunting rate of 21.8 percent, heavily driven by South Asia (Global Nutrition Report 2026).

Climate change is accelerating these pressures on food security, reducing food production, undermining livelihoods, increasing poverty, driving migration, and weakening the resilience of rural communities. Without increased investment in adaptation, these risks will continue to grow.

Climate Change Is Placing Asia's Food Systems under Growing Pressure

Over the last few years, record-breaking floods, storms, and droughts have hit the region. China's Yangtze River basin—which produces about 70 percent of the country's rice—was hit by severe floods in 2020 (Wang et al. 2022) and then experienced historic drought conditions just two years later (Yu et al. 2024). Pakistan's 2022 floods left a third of the country under water and affected 33 million people (UN Pakistan 2022). In 2024, tropical cyclone Yagi destroyed crops in Viet Nam and southern China (UN Viet Nam 2024). In late 2025, a wave of cyclones and monsoon rains triggered catastrophic flooding and landslides across Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand (OCHA 2025a). Overall, these and other disasters have contributed to declines in food production, food shortages, and high food prices, heightening food insecurity, and increasing pressure on livelihoods.

These pressures are expected to intensify. The World Meteorological Organization finds that Asia is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Oceans are warming, glaciers are retreating, and extreme heat, drought, and flooding are becoming more frequent. Sea-level rise is encroaching on fertile deltas and coastal food production areas (WMO 2025). The implications for food production are severe. For example, studies of tropical rice systems have found that every 1°C rise in average nighttime temperatures during the dry season corresponds with a 10 percent yield loss (Peng et al. 2004). Yields decline even further when seawater intrusion, flooding, and storm damage are layered on top (Schneider and Asch 2020).

Asia's food systems are especially vulnerable due to their producer demographics. The region is home to nearly three-quarters of the world's smallholder farmers, who contribute about 60 percent of its agricultural production (Joshi 2024). Most rely on rainfed agriculture, lack crop insurance, and have little capital to absorb extreme weather damage (Raghavan et al. 2019; ASEAN 2025a, ASEAN 2025b). A single shock can trigger severe income loss, push households into hunger and poverty, drive migration that erodes farming communities and over time erode community resilience (Upadhyay 2024; Kalantari et al. 2024).

Fisherfolk face the same pressures. In parts of Asia, aquatic foods provide up to 50 percent of dietary protein (FAO 2022c). An estimated 52.7 million people in Asia were employed in the primary fisheries and aquaculture sector—representing 85 percent of the world total (FAO 2024b). Now, warming seas and acidification, along with increasing levels of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, are shrinking fish stocks. Storms are making fishing more dangerous and less viable. At the same time, inland waters are drying up or becoming more polluted (FAO 2024b). The livelihoods of coastal communities and the protein security of millions are increasingly precarious.

These impacts on production are coupled with food price inflation. In Asia, the median food price inflation rose from 1.9 percent in February 2019 to a peak of 7.9 percent in May 2022 (FAOSTAT 2026). Food inflation affects low-income households the most, which spend 40 to 60 percent of their income on food (UN ESCAP 2024). Persistent food inflation can erode trust in public institutions and increase the risk of social unrest, particularly where governments struggle to cushion vulnerable households. Sri Lanka's 2022 economic crisis demonstrated how rising food prices and shortages can reinforce wider economic grievances and contribute to widespread public unrest (OHCHR 2022).

The Southeast Asia Climate Outlook Surveys, published by the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, found that seven in ten Southeast Asians experience some form of food insecurity— up from six in ten in 2023 (Figure 1) (Seah et al. 2024). The survey also found that food insecurity does not only affect poorer households; one in ten respondents in the highest-income group also reported experiencing frequent food insecurity.

‶Without sustained investment, governments are left 'firefighting' food crises ...″

Despite these impacts on food security, the response to this accelerating crisis is inadequate. Globally, less than half of one percent of the finance farmers need for climate adaptation is being delivered (Bakhtary and Rodezna 2025). In South and Southeast Asia alone, the annual funding gap for agricultural adaptation is US$153 billion (CIIP 2026). This is due, in part, to the lack of government investment. For example, all Southeast Asian countries, except for Thailand, consistently spend less than 10 percent of their national budgets on agriculture (Ludher and Teng 2025), even as climate shocks become more frequent.

Without sustained investment, governments are left "firefighting" food crises instead of reducing future security risks through long-term adaptation. The cost of inaction is rising faster than the cost of adaptation. It is estimated that every US$1 invested in resilience today can generate up to US$10.50 in avoided disaster losses and economic benefits in the future (Brandon et al. 2025). Investments in climate adaptation are therefore not only an investment in food security, but also in regional resilience and long-term stability.

Adaptation Is an Investment in Food Security and Regional Resilience

Making production systems more resilient and adaptable will require funding to scale climate-resilient crop and aquaculture varieties, regenerative production models, applied R&D, and rural infrastructure that reduces post-harvest losses. This is where philanthropic capital and development finance institutions can co-invest most effectively, de-risking technology transfer to smallholders.

Crop and weather-index insurance, smallholder credit, and social safety net programs for both rural and urban poor also need to be brought to scale. Blended finance can mobilize private capital, but it must be matched by sustained government budget commitments.

Closing the gap will take more finance— but it will also require better coordination. A major obstacle is the fragmented governance of food security and climate resilience. Several regional bodies pursue similar objectives yet often work in parallel. Greater regional coordination could improve information sharing, emergency response, regional trade, and the deployment of adaptation measures. It would also ease pressure on funding, for example by having harmonized early warning systems, a common negotiating position on food-trade barriers, and blended finance instruments that complement rather than compete with one another for the same donors.

Adaptation is no longer simply an environmental issue. It is an investment in food security, livelihoods, and regional stability. Asia's experience demonstrates that closing the adaptation gap will be essential not only to protect food systems but also to prevent climate-related food insecurity from becoming a broader security challenge across the region.

The disruptions to trade unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz have rippled through the Horn of Africa (HoA)—here comprising Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda—further eroding the region's already fragile baseline of stability and food security.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war, this latest shock is not the primary driver of food insecurity or instability in the region.

Insecurity and instability have long shaped the development trajectory in the region, stretching from the famines in Ethiopia and Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s to the war-related hunger currently unfolding in Sudan. Crises originating in distant places are often transmitted through global markets and supply chains, placing additional pressure on regional food systems, vulnerable economies, and already strained governance structures. The Strait of Hormuz disruption is thus merely the latest entry in a long ledger, one that underscores a longstanding policy dilemma in the region, in which the relationship between food insecurity and instability perpetuates a reciprocal dynamic. Food insecurity can aggravate political instability and conflict, while insecurity further disrupts food production, markets, and access to food.

As the US-Israel-Iran war unfolded, the African Development Bank (AfdB) and UNDP cautioned in a joint brief that while the world focuses on oil and gas, fertiliser shortages pose a more urgent risk to African economies. (AfDB et al. 2026). Against a backdrop of protracted conflict, five consecutive years of worsening acute food insecurity through 2024, and dependence on imported food and agricultural inputs (FSIN and GNAFC 2024), the trade disruption is not an exceptional geopolitical event or an isolated challenge, but a structural reality best understood as a stress test of the region’s food security and political stability.

Food Systems as the Transmission Mechanism

To understand how these external disruptions translate into food insecurity, it is necessary to examine the structure of the region's food system.

Food systems in the Horn of Africa are closely connected to the Middle East through trade in food and agricultural inputs. Ethiopia and Kenya rank among Africa’s largest fertilizer importers (Ecofin Agency 2025); together with Sudan, they source fertilizers from suppliers across North Africa and the Gulf, including Egypt, Oman, and Saudi Arabia (World Bank 2026d).

At the same time, HoA countries export meat, pulses, dried and fresh fruits to Middle Eastern markets (World Bank 2026c). The region’s exposure therefore extends beyond imports: the current conflict has disrupted Kenyan tea shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and related Red Sea routes, while airspace closures and higher freight costs have sharply curtailed meat exports to Middle Eastern markets (Nzilani 2026; Hlatshwayo 2026). By reducing incomes for farmers, pastoralists, and traders, as well as foreign-exchange earnings for affected countries, these disruptions can further weaken households’ purchasing power and countries’ capacity to finance essential imports.

Structural Vulnerabilities

The ripple effects of the current crisis are reaching a region already facing multiple overlapping vulnerabilities, including conflict, displacement, climate stress, and restricted humanitarian access across Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan (OCHA 2026b; Gomo 2026). For Sudan, disrupted shipping routes added weeks to delivery times and increased the cost of humanitarian food supplies (WFP 2026c). These external pressures compounded conflict-related disruptions within the country, where fighting continued to restrict access to fields and inputs and limit agricultural production across Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan (IPC 2026f).

‟…while the world focuses on oil and gas, fertilizer shortages pose a more urgent risk to African economies.”

Ethiopia faces a different but related convergence of pressures. Ongoing conflict in Amhara and parts of Tigray continues to disrupt livelihoods (WFP 2026i). While southern and southeastern areas continue to face the effects of the severe 2020–2022 drought, marked by five consecutive below-average rainy seasons through the October–December 2022 season (FEWS NET 2023a). Recent fuel shortages have added another layer of strain, increasing transport constraints and disrupting market activity (FEWS NET 2026b). In Somalia, these external pressures are being absorbed by households already weakened by drought, insecurity, displacement, and declining humanitarian assistance, with higher fuel, transport, and imported food prices reducing what families can afford (IPC 2026d). Kenya illustrates yet another pathway: higher fuel and commodity prices have particularly affected urban households (World Bank 2026f) and spilled into public discontent, with fuel price increases triggering a nationwide public transport strike and protests (Reuters 2026a).

A Way Forward

While the crisis triggered by the US–Israel– Iran war will eventually come to some form of resolution, the structural vulnerabilities it has laid bare may not. Unless governments reduce excessive external dependency and strengthen the resilience of regional food systems, future geopolitical crises, wherever they originate, are likely to worsen food insecurity and heighten existing risks to political stability and security across the Horn of Africa.

Increasingly, governments in the Horn of Africa are moving beyond crisis response toward structural interventions designed to strengthen domestic stability and address persistent external shocks. Several recent initiatives illustrate this shift.

In Ethiopia, investments in domestic fertilizer production, agricultural transformation, and industrial development are intended to reduce dependence on imported inputs and strengthen economic self-reliance (Addis Standard 2026). Elsewhere, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania are discussing a joint regional refinery intended to reduce East Africa’s dependence on imported refined fuel and exposure to global supply shocks (Government of Kenya 2026; Reuters 2026c).

These national efforts must now be matched by regional contingency planning, coordinated through institutions such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the East African Community. Regional preparedness should encompass the prepositioning of essential agricultural supplies and strengthening of logistics capacity at strategic ports such as Djibouti and Mombasa. It should also safeguard agricultural production in key food-producing regions such as Kordofan, Darfur, Tigray, and Lower Shabelle. Early warning systems, including those of the African Union (AU), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the East African Community (EAC), should be linked to trade policies under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), so shocks trigger action before food insecurity worsens.

Food and nutrition security is particularly fragile in the Sahel region as it faces severe climatic conditions and an entanglement of economic, health, and security crises (Olivier de Sardan 2023).

This fragility is reflected in worsening food insecurity across the region. Over the past decade, the prevalence of severe food insecurity increased markedly in Western Africa, based on FAO’s regional grouping, from 11.2 percent to 19.6 percent (FAO et al. 2026b). The Cadre Harmonisé estimates that 47.4 million people, or 11.8 percent of the population across 15 countries, were facing high levels of acute food insecurity by mid-2025 (CILSS et al. 2025). Food insecurity hotspots are concentrated in areas such as the tri-border zone between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger and the Lake Chad Basin, which are also the territories highly affected by insecurity (CILSS and FSIN 2025).

The close geographical overlap between areas affected by food insecurity and those affected by broader insecurity illustrates the interconnected nature of these two challenges. In the Sahel, this relationship is not linear but circular: food insecurity contributes to insecurity, while insecurity further aggravates food insecurity. Understanding and breaking this vicious cycle is therefore essential for achieving both regional stability and lasting food security.

Recurring droughts and rainfall variability since the 1970s have contributed to persistent food insecurity across many Sahelian communities (IPCC 2021).

Food Insecurity can become a contributing factor to insecurity, particularly where it interacts with existing social, economic and political pressures (OECD 2022). Climate change can reinforce these pressures by affecting the natural resources on which agricultural and pastoral livelihoods depend and increasing competition over their use (Tarif 2022).

Food Insecurity as a Driver of Insecurity

For many farmers, the expansion of cultivated areas has become an important strategy (in the absence of innovation and transformative agricultural policies and practices) to increase agricultural production in a context of rapid population growth. In parts of the Sahel, agricultural extensification has expanded cultivation into pastoral areas and livestock corridors, while growing land pressure has shortened or eliminated fallow periods (Robert 2010). In parts of Burkina Faso and Niger, for example, changing livelihood strategies in response to drought have brought farming and pastoral activities into closer competition for land and water resources, increasing tensions and, in some contexts, the risk of conflict (Tarif 2022).

These dynamics have generated another form of insecurity: land insecurity linked both to the loss of land and to growing conflicts over land. In turn, these conflicts, together with recurring food deficits, have forced many households to deplete their productive assets, deepening poverty and increasing vulnerability.

Persistent poverty has created fertile ground for the spread of insecurity in recent years in the Sahel. Several factors have contributed to the spread of insecurity, including poor political and economic governance, weak states, and the rise of violent extremist movements. Those recruited by non-state armed groups are overwhelmingly rural young people with few prospects. As recent studies by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) highlight, motivations for joining armed groups are not solely ideological (UNDP 2023). For many, economic marginalization and limited livelihood opportunities are important factors shaping recruitment (Théroux-Bénoni et al. 2016).

How Insecurity Deepens Food Insecurity

Once insecurity becomes entrenched, the relationship reverses. Insecurity—whether linked to communal conflicts, armed groups, or state forces—deeply disrupts food systems. It restricts access to agricultural land, limits the mobility of pastoralists, disorganizes local markets, and disrupts supply chains. In addition, livestock theft, including cattle rustling linked to armed groups, and the taxes imposed by such groups on populations living in areas under their influence further aggravate the situation (Assanvo 2019; UNODC 2024).

Beyond the loss of productive assets suffered by farmers and pastoralists, insecurity also constrains humanitarian access and increases the risk of high levels of malnutrition, particularly among children and pregnant and lactating women (UNICEF 2024).

‟Insecurity—whether linked to communal conflicts, armed groups, or state forces— deeply disrupts food systems.”

This vicious cycle also undermines regional economic security. Indeed, the political fragmentation currently observed in the Sahel and the decline of economic integration can partly be attributed to insecurity. The withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), after accusing the bloc of failing to support their fight against insecurity, has deepened regional political and economic fragmentation (Asadu 2024; OECD 2025a, OECD 2025b). Political tensions between Sahelian and coastal countries have led to restrictions on pastoral mobility—essential for pastoralists’ food security—as well as trade disruptions caused by export bans on food products.

These measures disrupt regional trade and undermine the complementarities between countries, which are essential elements of the region’s food security (CILSS 2026).

The Sahel therefore faces multiple, intertwined forms of insecurity that mutually reinforce one another.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle

Discussions within the framework of the Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA), co-led by the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC/OECD) and CILSS under the auspices of ECOWAS and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), have highlighted the need to move beyond the current response paradigm (RPCA 2026). A new approach is needed that places food security at the center of the political agenda as a pillar of regional security. In this context, the humanitarian-development- peace nexus provides an important framework for addressing immediate needs while simultaneously strengthening resilience, livelihoods, and peacebuilding efforts. Reversing current trends will require significant investments in resilient food systems, rural infrastructure, agricultural productivity, education, and decent employment opportunities for young people. Such investments can strengthen livelihoods, reduce structural vulnerabilities, and diminish the appeal of armed groups (UNDP 2023).

At the regional level, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Chad have committed to accelerating sustainable irrigated agriculture as part of efforts to advance food and nutrition sovereignty and strengthen the resilience of food systems, through the 2025 Dakar+10 Declaration (World Bank 2025b). These commitments reflect a growing recognition that strengthening domestic food systems is not only an economic priority but also an investment in resilience and stability.

Global military expenditures to ensure security continue to reach record levels, yet hundreds of millions of people still experience hunger (Liang et al.2026; FAO et al. 2026b). This contrast raises a deceptively simple question: What security, and for whom?

From a Latin American perspective, this question has particular resonance. The region has long grappled with competing understandings of security: one centered on protecting the state, the other on protecting people. Despite producing enough food to feed its populations and supplying agricultural commodities to global markets, millions continue to experience food insecurity because of inequality, social exclusion, and unequal access to land, resources, and opportunities (Salazar and Muñoz 2019; FAO et al. 2024b). This paradox illustrates a broader global challenge: Security cannot be measured solely by military strength if people's most basic needs remain unmet.

In 1994, following decades of Cold War rivalry, the Human Development Report introduced the concept of human security, offering an alternative perspective (UNDP 1994). It shifted the focus of security from investing in arms to investing in human development, arguing that true security means enabling people to live free from fear, free from want, and with dignity. Three decades later, this vision remains partially realized. Although the number of people experiencing hunger declined modestly to an estimated 645 million in 2025, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO et al. 2026b), global military expenditure reached US$2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive year of growth and the highest global military burden since 2009 (Liang et al. 2026). As geopolitical rivalry once again dominates international politics, the persistence of hunger reminds us that lasting security cannot be achieved if people lack reliable access to food, livelihoods, and the resources they need to live with dignity.

Food Security and Structural Inequality

The 1994 Human Development Report identified seven interconnected dimensions of human security: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security (UNDP 1994). Food security is particularly salient because hunger rarely exists in isolation from social, environmental, and political events. It can undermine people's ability to earn a living, maintain their health, and participate fully in social and political life (FAO et al. 2024a; Pecorari and Cuesta 2023). Food deprivation marks the point at which human insecurity becomes most immediate and visibly linked to structural inequality. This understanding was anticipated by Amartya Sen's entitlement approach (Sen 1981), which demonstrated that famine is not primarily caused by food shortages but by people's inability to access food. Contemporary famines and large-scale food crises are rarely the result of scarcity alone; they are amplified by political decisions, institutional failures, and mechanisms of social exclusion. The consequences are especially pronounced among people already facing marginalization because of poverty, gender, ethnicity, or geographic location.

From a human security perspective, food systems can be seen as structures of power that determine access to food, distribute risks unevenly, and often exclude marginalized groups. Dependence on imports and agricultural inputs, exposure to volatile global markets, and limited capacity to absorb shocks create vulnerabilities that disproportionately affect poor households, rural communities, and women (FSIN and GNAFC 2024). Food insecurity therefore reflects political choices as much as agricultural production.

Although the region is a major agricultural exporter capable of feeding far more than its own populations, chronic malnutrition persists. Guatemala illustrates this paradox particularly well. An estimated 44.6 percent of children under five are affected by stunting, one of the highest prevalence rates in Latin America (see Appendix B, GHI 2026). Moreover, stunting is marked by pronounced subnational inequalities, with predominantly Indigenous and rural regions experiencing substantially higher prevalence than the national average (Gatica-Domínguez et al. 2019). In contexts where food insecurity intersects with historical exclusion, unequal access to healthcare and productive resources, and persistent gender inequality, Indigenous and rural women bear a disproportionate share of this burden (FAO 2025b). The region demonstrates Amartya Sen's observation that people often starve, not because there is no food but because they lack the socioeconomic entitlements to access it (Sen 1981).

‶Security cannot be measured solely by military strength if people's most basic needs remain unmet.″

Shift toward Human Security

Latin America's own history illustrates why a broader understanding of security matters. For decades, the National Security Doctrine, promoted throughout Latin America during the Cold War, framed security in terms of protecting the state against perceived internal and external threats (Buitrago 2003; de León-Escribano 2010). Within this framework, hunger and poverty were generally treated as social and development concerns rather than as security concerns. The democratic transitions of the 1980s and 1990s were accompanied by broader debates about security and development. As military rule receded across much of the region, greater attention was paid to issues such as poverty, inequality, governance, and citizen well-being. These shifts helped create space for human-security approaches that viewed social exclusion and unequal access to opportunities as important challenges to long-term stability (de León-Escribano 2013).

Today, Latin America continues to demonstrate what is possible with a human-security approach. Deep inequalities, violence, climate-related shocks, and economic volatility still undermine food security for millions (FAO 2025c). At the same time, the region has generated important policy lessons, as reducing hunger requires more than increasing food production. Conditional cash transfer programs pioneered in Latin America, such as Bolsa Família in Brazil and Progresa/Oportunidades/ Prospera in Mexico, have shown the importance of social protection in improving food access and dietary diversity. By combining income support with investments in health and education, such programs have sought to address longer-term dimensions of poverty and social inequality (Stampini et al. 2025). Latin America has become a global leader in the legal recognition of the right to adequate food, with at least 15 countries explicitly enshrining the right in their constitutions (FAO 2020). Together with the progressive recognition of the right to food, these experiences demonstrate that rights-based social protection is an essential component of both food security and human security.

What Security and for Whom?

The resurgence of security as a predominant concern on the global political agenda, marked by military rearmament, geopolitical rivalry, and escalating conflicts, has not been accompanied by a decline in global hunger. On the contrary, the progress toward Zero Hunger stagnates. This reality compels us to return to the fundamental question posed at the outset of this essay: What security, and for whom?

Latin America's experience demonstrates that lasting security cannot be achieved through military strength alone. Societies become more secure when they reduce inequality, strengthen resilient food systems, and ensure that everyone has access to adequate food. Food security and human security are therefore not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing objectives.

As long as considerable numbers of people continue to be deprived of the fundamental resources necessary to live with dignity, no society can be regarded as genuinely secure. The true measure of security is more than the capacity to defend territory; it is the ability to ensure that people can live free from fear, free from want, and with dignity.