Esther Salifu
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has urgently called on the global community to reject the use of starvation as a weapon of war, stressing that depriving civilians of food in conflict zones such as Gaza and Sudan is a grave violation of humanitarian principles.
Speaking via video at a UN conference in Ethiopia, Guterres painted a stark picture of the growing global hunger crisis, intensified by conflict and climate disruption.
Climate change is disrupting harvests, supply chains, and humanitarian aid,” he warned.
“Conflict continues to spread hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond.”
He emphasized the moral imperative facing nations stating that “Hunger fuels instability and undermines peace. We must never accept hunger as a weapon of war.”
The Gaza Strip remains at the epicenter of one of today’s most severe humanitarian emergencies. After more than 21 months of war and a months long blockade that choked off aid deliveries, the territory faces critical food shortages.
Even as Israel imposed a “tactical pause” to facilitate aid access, the World Health Organization cautioned that malnutrition is reaching “alarming levels.”
Meanwhile in Sudan ravaged by a brutal power struggle between rival factions humanitarian needs remain vast and widely ignored. Othman Belbeisi, regional director for the UN’s migration agency (IOM), spoke to the crisis’s overshadowed scale: “Sudan is the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered.”
