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Begin New Search Topic Hunger Publication Year within 25 Years

1. Water-Driven Hunger: How the Climate Crisis Fuels Africa’s Food Emergency

Author:
Giuseppe Selvaggi and Elise Nalbandian
Publication Date:
04-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This paper calls for an integrated water and food security management in eight Eastern and Southern African countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These countries, identified as Hunger Hotspots for 2025 and among the 30 most water insecure globally, are also experiencing the severe impacts of climate variability. The paper strongly recommends that multilateral bodies, governments, donors, and the private sector implement sustainable adaptation and mitigation measures—such as strengthening national hydro-meteorological forecasting systems, increasing investment in anticipatory action, ensuring access to climate finance etc. to tackle the root causes of these crises. Furthermore, it also provides insights into effective water management practices that can help national governments and policymakers adopt comprehensive policies, ultimately improving governance to tackle the triple crises of water, food and climate.
Topic:
Climate Change, Water, Hunger, and Water Insecurity
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Food Wars: Conflict, Hunger, and Globalization, 2023

Author:
Marc Cohen and Ellen Messer
Publication Date:
10-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Most wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been “food wars”: food and hunger were used as weapons, food and food-related water and energy infrastructure were damaged intentionally or incidentally, and food insecurity persisted as a legacy of conflict destructiveness. Frequently, food insecurity, in turn, is a trigger or underlying cause of conflict. This paper analyzes 54 active conflict, refugee-hosting, and conflict legacy countries with populations in 2023 facing “crisis-level” acute food insecurity, i.e., at Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) 3 or higher. In total, nearly 278 million people in these countries faced crisis-level hunger in 2023, accounting for 99% of the global population at IPC 3+ (281.6 million people). Analysis indicates that war-displacement-hunger crises occur in countries that continue to rely heavily on primary product exports. Paradoxically, peacebuilding efforts have often assumed that economic liberalization offers the best or only pathway to sustainable peace. Yet struggle for control over fungible primary commodities can fund more violence, increased inequality, continued instability, and the risk of renewed conflict. Agricultural export commodities are important sources of revenue for smallholder farmers and governments in conflict-affected, food-insecure countries. The conflict implications of export- and food-crop value chains are therefore crucial for future food-wars policy discussions and actions. Some efforts seek to link export crops to efforts to achieve peace, sustainable livelihoods, and environmental restoration. Other proposed solutions focus on adopting more holistic national development strategies, including food-systems approaches that protect and promote the right to food and livelihood security, as well as policy approaches and frameworks that might more effectively consider conflict, globalization, and climate change in food and nutrition policy.
Topic:
Climate Change, Food Security, Hunger, Displacement, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Putting An End To World Hunger – The European Union’s role in transforming the global food system

Author:
Hanna Saarinen, Rebecca Varghese Buchholz, Bertram Zagema, and Chris Joseph
Publication Date:
12-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Farmers around the world produce more than enough to feed everyone on the planet, yet since 2017 hunger has increased sharply. Promoting food production and distribution that are socially equitable and environmentally sustainable is a necessity, in Europe and globally. This paper highlights the European Union’s role in addressing global hunger and supporting a sustainable and equitable global food system transformation. A new direction is needed and the EU can make a positive change. Smallholder farmers in the Global South offer enormous untapped potential for fighting global hunger but they must be better supported. The EU must also stand for climate justice by taking the climate change threat to food security seriously, limit the EU’s global land use footprint by stopping unsustainable and irresponsible land use that drives hunger and inequality, and balance the power in food systems by breaking corporate domination and enhancing equitable global food governance.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, European Union, Hunger, Land, and Farmers
Political Geography:
Europe and Global South

4. Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine: A Strategic Perspective

Author:
Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh and Rebecca Gould
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)
Abstract:
This publication is the first major transnational examination of prison hunger strikes. While focusing on Palestine, the research is enriched by extensive interviews and conversations with South African, Kurdish, Irish, and British ex-prisoners and hunger strikers. This study reveals in unprecedented detail how prison hunger strikes achieve monumental feats of resistance through the weaponization of lives. How do prison hunger strikers achieve demands? How do they stay connected with the outside world in a space that is designed to cut them off from that world? And why would a prisoner put their lives at risk by refusing to eat or, at times, drink? This research shows that sometimes prisoners’ need for dignity (karamah) and freedom (hurriya) trump their hunger pangs and thirst. Prison Hunger Strikes in Palestine evaluates the process of hunger striking, including the repressive actions prisoners encounter, and the negotiation process. It analyzes differences and similarities between individual and collective strikes, and evaluates the role and impact of solidarity actions from outside the prison walls. The work’s critical and grassroots understanding of prison hunger strikes fully centers the voices of hunger strikers. The analysis results in actionable takeaways that will be as useful to prison activists as they will be to their allies around the world.
Topic:
Prisons/Penal Systems, Hunger, Conflict, Repression, and Activim
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

5. Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World

Author:
Catherine Bertini, Peggy Tsai Yih, Roger Thurow, and Gloria Dabek
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Abstract:
During the 2022 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogues, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and The Rockefeller Foundation gathered experts and stakeholders from climate, agriculture, food security, and humanitarian backgrounds to discuss a bold vision for a 21st Century of zero hunger in a healthier and more equitable world. The white paper, “Defining the Path to Zero Hunger in an Equitable World,” reflects a summary of their views and offers a framework to reimagine a hunger-free world. The quickened pace of extreme weather events, disruptions to agricultural markets from the war in Ukraine and other conflicts, and a fragile post-pandemic international economy rattled the global food chain. A culmination of these realities is complicating the dual imperative to both nourish the planet and preserve it from environmental threats. According to the 2022 IPCC report, without immediate changes, extreme weather will likely render large areas of crop and livestock land unsuitable by 2050, potentially pushing millions of people into food insecurity. The newly outlined white paper tackles some of the greatest obstacles facing the nexus of food security, climate, and humanitarian spaces, and ultimately voices hope for a better food future. It amplifies this message by providing an analysis of three major obstacles—silos, myopic priorities, and top-down decision-making—in conjunction with catalyzing ideas that address these challenges.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Humanitarian Aid, Food, Food Security, Hunger, Equity, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Can the West Afford to Let the World Go Hungry? Overcoming Challenges to Establishing a Humanitarian Corridor in the Black Sea

Author:
Isak Runarsson
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
While economic interdependencies do not prevent war, witnessed most recently by Russia’s naked war of conquest in Ukraine, the costs of war in a globalised world spread far and wide. Russia has taken the world’s food markets hostage by blockading Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea. The resulting food price increases make a humanitarian crisis in the world’s poorest countries increasingly likely; this, in turn may lead to regime fragility and turmoil in the international system. The question of lifting the blockade by establishing a human corridor into the port of Odessa has recently been much discussed. There are challenges to any such effort, both strategic and operational. Yet a careful analysis reveals that the costs and risks of non-intervention are greater than the risks of intervening. An international naval force, co-led by the EU or its member states and Turkey is the best option for such a mission.
Topic:
Security, Food Security, Hunger, Maritime, Military, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Black Sea

7. World food crisis: between withdrawal and responsibility, Europe must choose

Author:
Emmanuelle Ducros
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Robert Schuman Foundation (RSF)
Abstract:
The profound destructuring of world food markets as a result of Russia's war on Ukraine is forcing all of the world's agricultural powers to question their place on the world stage of satiety - or hunger. This is primarily the case in Europe.
Topic:
Food, Hunger, Armed Conflict, and Economic Crisis
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

8. Combating Global Hunger as an American Foreign Policy Priority

Author:
Gloria Dabek and Emily Sullivan
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Abstract:
While not traditionally prioritized as a tool of foreign policy, combatting world hunger has high bipartisan support from the American public. Global hunger can often get lost in American foreign policy discussions amid concerns about military engagements, trade relationships, and international cooperation and competition. However, the 2021 Chicago Council Survey found that a majority of Americans believe that combating global hunger should be of some importance to US foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Agriculture, Food, Public Opinion, and Hunger
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

9. Global Food Security Act Reauthorization: New and Lingering Challenges

Author:
Gloria Dabek
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Abstract:
Amid new challenges to global food security, the Center for Global Food and Agriculture analyzes necessary changes to the Global Food Security Act Reauthorization. The Global Food Security Act (GFSA) authorizes the Feed the Future Initiative (FTF), the US government’s premier effort to address the root causes of hunger and poverty in lower- and middle-income countries. The GFSA must recognize how the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change wreak havoc on global food security efforts.
Topic:
Agriculture, Poverty, Food, Hunger, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
North America and Global Focus

10. Ending Hunger and Advancing Nutrition: Lived Experience Perspectives

Author:
Gloria Dabek, Samanta Dunford, Priya Fielding-Singh, and Peggy Tsai Yih
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Abstract:
Today, soaring costs of living and spiraling inflation have made accessing and affording healthy food a challenge for many Americans. In June 2022, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs partnered with World Central Kitchen and Auburn University’s Hunger Solutions Institute to conduct listening sessions in three locations across the country to inform policy recommendations for the 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. The sessions focused on learning directly from individuals with lived experiences of hunger and food insecurity to explicitly center and prioritize their voices and perspectives in policy conversations. This brief presents key learnings from the listening sessions and connects them with seven actionable policy recommendations. These recommendations include: Addressing root causes of hunger; Better coordinating federal resources; Reducing barriers to federal assistance; Adding federal benefits to address current challenges; Increasing affordability and availability of fresh fruits and vegetables; Improving food recovery; Supporting communities with targeted food assistance. Underlying all of these recommendations is the understanding that hunger, nutrition, and health issues are deeply intertwined with several key environmental and social determinants—including but not limited to poverty, structural racism, housing, healthcare, economic security, education, and transportation—that help drive significant disparities in individuals’, families’, and communities’ experiences of food insecurity, nutrition, and diet-related diseases.
Topic:
Food Security, Hunger, Nutrition, and Cost of Living
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America