UN Experts Warn Shift Toward War Economies Threatens Global Right to Food

GENEVA — United Nations experts issued a statement on World Food Day warning that a global transition toward war economies presents a critical challenge to realizing the right to food, pointing to the growing use of starvation as a weapon of conflict and increasing corporate control over natural resources.

According to the experts, armed conflict and corporate concentration are mutually reinforcing, as instability facilitates the capture of land and resources while concentrated food networks remain susceptible to shocks and weaponization. The statement noted that rising concentration of land and nature commodification has worsened the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples, rural women, peasants, fisherfolk, pastoralists, and rural workers.

The experts stated that although the total number of hungry individuals may have declined in 2025, the proportion of people experiencing famine or famine-like conditions has risen. They attributed this trend to an increase in starvation used as a method of warfare, alongside weakened international cooperation and global governance.

According to the statement, war economies involve attacks on critical food infrastructure, tariff weaponization, unilateral sanctions, blockades, and the redirection of public funds toward military spending rather than food system reforms. These issues are further compounded by humanitarian funding cuts, economic shocks, and the environmental impacts of El Niño.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the first UN General Assembly resolution on the right to food, the experts called on UN Member States to take specific actions, including:

• Working to end wars, occupations, and conflicts to prevent hunger and famine;
• Enacting laws that recognize collective, mobile, and customary land tenure alongside private property rights;
• Restructuring global financial systems to provide debt relief and support food system transformation;
• Directing resources toward food sovereignty and small-scale peasant agriculture;
• Enhancing territorial food networks through agroecology while safeguarding the rights of rural workers, Indigenous Peoples, and marginalized groups; and
• Guaranteeing non-discriminatory access to food for vulnerable demographics, including low-income urban populations, women, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities.

The experts affirmed they will maintain their focus on issues such as land rights, corporate accountability, agroecology, water, fisheries, and the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

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