The Imperative for Peace and Security Council’s Action against Conflict-Induced Food Insecurity

May 30, 2018 | Solomon Dersso
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In the preamble to the Protocol of the Constitutive Act Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU), AU member states’ lamented that ‘no single internal factor has contributed more to … the suffering of the civilian population [in Africa] than the scourge of conflicts within and between our states’. It is not merely the direct use of physical violence that results in civilian death, displacement and misery. In many of the conflicts that erupted since the 1990s, millions of people have perished not just from such direct attacks but more so from other causes largely made possible by such conflicts. Thus, in CAR and the Sahel millions of people displaced by conflicts have faced disease, hunger and malnutrition and in Somalia and South Sudan millions have similarly encountered imminent danger of perishing from famine.

The circumstances that precipitate these dire conditions of hunger and starvation and the scale of the resultant crises necessitate targeted approach to conflict induced hunger and starvation. Such approach should deal with the need for conflict parties to strictly adhere to human rights and international humanitarian law rules while engaging in hostilities, the provision of food assistance to conflict affected people and the need for ensuring secure and unfettered humanitarian access for enabling humanitarian agencies to deliver life saving assistance.