More than 21,400 documented incidents of deliberate food-related violence have been recorded across 15 countries since 2018, highlighting hunger’s growing role as a tool of warfare. African nations feature prominently, with Sudan recording 1,605 strikes on food systems—including a drone attack on a crowded market that killed 28 people just this week—and Mali logging 1,415 incidents as its military government battles armed insurgencies. Women and children bear a disproportionate burden, with over 10,300 people killed or injured trying to access aid between October 2023 and the end of 2025. The weaponization of food grants armed actors—state and non-state—tactical leverage through starvation at the expense of civilian populations and humanitarian workers. If the weaponization of food is not addressed, the consequences include entrenched hunger, generational developmental damage, and the continued erosion of international humanitarian law as UN Resolution 2417 goes routinely unenforced.
The Guardian
