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.