Q.1. Please can you explain the mission of Concern Worldwide, and your role as Advocacy Adviser?

Concern Worldwide is an international non-governmental organisation, headquartered in Ireland, with an overall mission of ending hunger and extreme poverty. We work in 25 countries around the world, providing humanitarian and development assistance to people living in the most extreme vulnerability. We believe that no person should live with the fear that they won’t have a home to sleep in or enough food to feed themselves and their families.

Our advocacy aims to achieve changes to law, policy, and practice that will address the key drivers of poverty and hunger, with our main focus on conflict, hunger, and climate change. Most of the countries where we work are currently or recently affected by conflict which is, of course, the biggest driver of hunger worldwide.

That is why the focus of my role as Advocacy Adviser is on highlighting the links between conflict and hunger and proposing concrete steps to bring conflict-driven hunger to an end. I also represent Concern Worldwide in a number of global groups and networks that coordinate advocacy aimed at preventing famine and ending hunger.

Q.2. During your time with Concern, what trends have you witnessed in relation to conflict and hunger?

I joined Concern Worldwide in August 2021 when a global food crisis was already underway but receiving limited attention. Hundreds of NGOs had issued an open letter in April highlighting the precarious situation that millions of people around the world were living in. At the time, 270 million people were experiencing acute food insecurity, and 34 million were in emergency levels of food insecurity, which is just one level lower than famine.

The letter was followed by a Call to Action by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Food Programme, and both initiatives sparked a flurry of media attention, increased engagement by stakeholders including donors, and an increase in funding.

However, since then, multiple economic crises, the continued COVID-19 pandemic, and now the knock-on effects of the Ukraine conflict are worsening an already dire global picture. The number has increased dramatically to 50 million people at risk of experiencing famine without urgent intervention. Almost 900,000 people are already at the level of famine, meaning they are at risk of starvation.

Interruptions to the global supply chain is changing the dynamics of hunger around the world, leading to reduced availability of food and increased costs for humanitarian assistance. Increasing politicisation of the issue is a significant challenge for humanitarian actors that are trying to maintain services and supplies to those facing severe hunger and malnutrition.

Q.3. What does this mean for the people who are affected?

Conflict affected more than 100 million people in 2021 and 70% of people in crisis levels of hunger or worse live in conflict-affected areas. For people living in these conflict-affected areas, war and weapons are not only a threat to their lives but to their livelihoods and wellbeing, affecting every aspect of life from education and health to protection and prosperity.

Conflict destroys people’s ability to provide for their most basic of needs, including food. It restricts movement and access to markets, farmlands and employment. Conflict prevents people from accessing humanitarian assistance and denies humanitarian actors’ access to affected populations.

Both conflict and hunger tend to exacerbate existing inequalities and create new and life-changing dangers, leaving women and girls particularly vulnerable, but shouldering the weight of keeping their children alive and safe, with fewer resources and mechanisms to cope.

For civilians, old and young, who are forcibly displaced, the decision to leave home often comes at a time when they have lost everything, completely stripped of their capacity to remain on their land and provide for themselves and their families. This is a terrible injustice.

Q.4. What do you think are the main present and future challenges in addressing the issue of conflict and hunger?

Needs are growing year on year, but the demand for ever greater amounts of humanitarian funding must not come at the expense of investment in longer-term solutions. Nor should new emergencies divert attention to ones that have persisted over time. Without real commitment to address and resolve the drivers of conflict, these patterns will continue and the numbers will keep rising.

When we talk about hunger crises and famine, we can think about it in terms that are extremely technical or in ways that feel abstract and hard to grasp. This – and the risk that people mistakenly believe the problem is unsolvable – can make it difficult to sustain support.

On the contrary, we know what the root causes are, but efforts to address them are not as coordinated, sustained, and holistic as they need to be. Among many, these included economic inequality, political instability, poor investment in food systems and basic services, the emergence of conflict, and occasionally the positioning of food as a conflict driver itself.

Impunity is a persistent challenge, despite some important achievements to secure accountability in recent years, for example through universal jurisdiction cases that saw convictions for war crimes. The political cost of violating international humanitarian law is often too low, which very often results in greater harm to civilians who are caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted.

Q.5. How do you envisage addressing such challenges?

Responding to immediate need, at the heart of humanitarianism, is essential but it is simply not enough. Greater collective efforts are required to prevent needs from arising in the first place, something that may seem like common sense, but can be surprisingly difficult to achieve. With many competing needs, the priority is saving lives. This can leave little in terms of resources for the type of anticipatory action that it is within our power to take.

The hard reality is that we can often predict quite well where an emergency will arise and issue early warnings. Donors and governments need to ensure that there are reserve funds that can be released quickly and get to the front-line responders as quickly as possible – operating on a ‘no regrets’ basis.

A plethora of coalitions emerged from the UN Food Systems Summit last year, aimed at making those changes. A food systems approach means investing in local, gender- and climate-sensitive, and diverse food and seed systems using agro-ecological approaches to reduce dependency on food imports. Announcing initiatives is welcome, but governments must hold themselves accountable for delivering on those commitments.

Q.6. In 2021 Concern Worldwide launched the ‘Nothing Kills Like Hunger’ campaign. What is the motivation behind this campaign and what are its main objectives?

Concern Worldwide was founded in 1968, beginning with a response to famine in Biafra. Our mission has been influenced and supported by the Irish public, in large part inspired by our historical experience of famine. However, many people don’t necessarily realise that the single biggest driver of hunger worldwide is conflict, a completely human-made cause.

Our campaign, Nothing Kills Like Hunger, aims to raise awareness among the public of conflict’s role in hunger and to increase political pressure on governments to take action. Our open letter, which has already attracted more than 9,000 signatures, calls on global leaders to increase funding, address the roots causes, and tackle impunity for the use of hunger as a weapon of war.

With the support of Irish singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke, an empathetic scholar of the Irish famine, we have reached a whole new audience of concerned citizens. We have been impressed by the response of the Irish public to the campaign; the scale of conflict and in the world is overwhelming and people want to help and to feel hopeful that a better world is possible. It indicates that people want to understand, to do more, and put pressure in the right places to address hunger.

When we launched the campaign in 2021, the issue was less well-known than it has become since the outbreak of international armed conflict in Ukraine. Communities all around the world are feeling the impact of that conflict on their cost of living, but none more than those in fragile and conflict-affected countries. Through dialogues with young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Somalia, we are gathering their advice for governments to address the specific needs of youth.

Q.7. What can states do at the international level to address conflict and hunger?

Conflict-induced hunger is person-made, preventable, and political. Its presence indicates the absence of political will or, at worst – the desire to deliberately starve. Governments are the main stakeholders with the power to make a difference, holding the primary responsibility to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law and to pursue justice and accountability for victims of international crimes.

At the UN Security Council, political deadlock can paralyse progress and render the Council ineffective. The politicisation of debate on issues of peace and security is harmful to us all. Member States should support the suspension of the veto in the UN Security Council in cases of mass atrocities so that the Council can effectively respond to the world’s most severe crises.

While conflict is ongoing, it is critical that every possible measure is taken to protect civilians and reduce civilian harm and ensure unimpeded humanitarian access. This means demanding compliance with international humanitarian law, as well as developing new norms to meet the challenges posed by emerging methods of warfare, such as explosive weapons and autonomous weapons systems.

States must also take bold steps to bring conflict to an end. Communities themselves have a central role, as they understand the complexities of the situation, and must be supported and included in decision-making.

On conflict and hunger specifically, the UN Security Council should be more consistent and transparent in the way that they monitor, report, and raise attention to food-related violations. The use of White Papers to examine situations of conflict-induced hunger should be reliable and result in concrete action. Sanctions and counterterrorism measures should be carefully considered and designed in a way that does not prevent delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Q.8. Concern as an Irish organisation has advocated for Ireland to take strong action on conflict and hunger during their time in the UN Security Council. How can Ireland further the conflict and hunger agenda at the international level, and how can organisations like GRC and Concern support them?

Conflict and hunger was a clear priority for Ireland for their membership of the Security Council and this was welcomed by Concern. Together with Niger, the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN in New York played a key role in consistently raising the issue during relevant discussions, highlighting country situations where the issue was playing out, and holding special meetings when needed.

Ireland’s role need not finish when their Security Council membership is over. We hope they will commit to take on the Chairship of the Group of Friends of Action on Conflict and Hunger in 2023 and make best use of this platform to address conflict-driven hunger together with likeminded states. We also hope the Group of Friends will support a new initiative that Concern is part of, set up by InterAction and CARE International, to develop a set of practical measures to prevent armed conflict from resulting in hunger.

Local, national, and international NGOs all have a critical role to play in addressing conflict-driven hunger, whether with programming or through advocacy. Depending on their mandate, each organisation has a role to play. For example, operational humanitarian organisations are bound by the humanitarian principles including neutrality and impartiality, which guides their public statements, while other organisations, such as GRC, might have more scope to be outspoken on particular issues.

Together with other key players, such as UN agencies, governments, and private sector, we need to work collectively, each playing our part, to reform our systems and make hunger history.