UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has urged the United Nations Security Council to address the root causes of conflict-driven food insecurity, warning that lasting food security cannot be achieved without peace and effective implementation of international humanitarian law.
Speaking at a high-level Security Council debate titled “Food Under Fire: The Security Council’s Role in Mitigating Global and Local Food Crises,” Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, highlighted the growing connection between armed conflicts and acute hunger.
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Citing the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, Ambassador Ahmad said 266 million people faced acute food insecurity last year, while acute hunger had doubled over the past decade.
“Today, 70 per cent of acutely food-insecure people live in fragile or conflict-affected regions,” he said.
Pakistan Calls for International Law to Protect Food Security
Ambassador Ahmad stressed that international humanitarian law must be effectively implemented to ensure starvation and collective punishment are never used as military or political tools.
Referring to humanitarian crises in Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan and Haiti, he said conflict and deteriorating humanitarian conditions were increasingly intertwined.
“Nowhere has the failure to uphold these obligations been starker than in Gaza,” he said, highlighting deprivation of food and other essentials, restrictions on humanitarian assistance and destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Pakistan also warned that conflicts and food shortages disrupt economies, raise global food and freight costs and disproportionately affect developing countries already facing fiscal pressures.
Pakistan Backs Preventive Diplomacy
Ambassador Ahmad called for stronger accountability for deliberate obstruction of humanitarian assistance and stressed that aid should remain free from political or military calculations.
He said credible assessments by the UN Secretary-General, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization and other UN bodies should prompt timely preventive action before hunger develops into famine.
Pakistan emphasised that humanitarian assistance alone cannot replace political solutions, calling for diplomacy, dialogue and peaceful settlement of conflicts.
“Ultimately, there can be no lasting food security without peace,” Ambassador Ahmad concluded.
