New York, USA, 3 August 2023 —   

It is an honour to speak today on behalf of 40,000 IRC employees and volunteers working in 40 countries around the world.  Our mission is defined by conflict and its consequences, so this debate means a lot to us and our clients.

Every day, our staff live out a simple mantra: focus on the solutions, not the suffering.

So my briefing takes the form of a plea to this council: follow my colleagues, and focus on the solutions not the suffering.

Five years ago the Council “recognised the need to break the link of armed conflict and food insecurity” in Resolution 2417.

Five years later, however there is more armed conflict, more famine, more malnutrition and more and more food insecurity. Food insecurity the euphemism that is used for hunger and starvation.

So today our call is for action to help the 375,000 people facing famine-like conditions at the end of last year, a number that has only risen and the 35 million on the brink.

We have more than enough analysis.

There is consensus that conflict is the primary driver of food insecurity today.  Exacerbated by the climate crisis.

Consensus too on the line of causation from conflict to hunger. Planting is disrupted. Prices are driven up.  Combatants block supplies. Food storage is targeted. Coping capacities are depleted. 

We also know the countries. Every assessment has the same list. Somalia.  Afghanistan. Yemen. Nigeria. South Sudan. Sudan. Burkina Faso. Mali. Haiti.

The analysis is not in dispute.  But analysis is too often followed by paralysis.

So we need new muscle in the international system. Not the muscle of debating strategies and plans. But the muscle of taking action.

Today, I present to the Council five current problems matched by five immediate solutions.

Problem 1. My colleagues on the panel will rightly draw attention to the impact of last year’s funding increases, but the year on year statistics show that 80% of the world’s acutely malnourished children are not getting any treatment at all. I repeat: 80% of acutely malnourished children have been getting no help. 

The reason is the divided approaches between moderate and severe acute malnutrition. Different treatment and diagnosis protocols; different UN agencies; different products; and complicated measuring systems ill-suited to situations of conflict.

The solution however is staring us in the face: a simplified system, in the hands of parents and community health workers, who use a simple upper arm circumference tape to diagnose acute malnutrition, and administer one or two doses of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) per day depending on whether the case is severe or moderate.

Our own impact evaluation shows that this approach is not a pipedream of 27,000 children in Mali we showed a 92% success rate, with a cost saving of 30%, so more children can be reached for the same money.

This should be made the norm, the default form of provision, in humanitarian settings, with delivery and funding to match and it could be done now.

Problem 2. There is a proliferation of different global initiatives on famine and food insecurity.

The solution is an empowered body to galvanise collective action and drive change. Fortunately we do now have the High Level Task Force on Preventing Famine chaired by Ms. Ghelani and given new focus and a new mandate. But frankly Reena needs support.

Support for national famine action plans in the country’s most at risk.

Support from national and local authorities in developing those plans.

Support for engagement of regional and global financial institutions in funding and financing those plans.

Support in diplomacy to unlock barriers on the grounds to scale up a response.

And support in turning delivery plans into action. Starting at the September meetings in this city.

Problem 3. The UNDP reports that the more fragile a context, in other words the more amount of conflict, the less money is spent on climate adaptation. Yet our clients represent a disproportionate amount of climate risk. They are highly vulnerable and lack investment and resilience.

The solution is to give climate finance a humanitarian face, addressing the finance gap and the delivery gap. 

The finance gap arises because adaptation is under-funded - it is only 8% of all climate finance - and adaptation is geared towards richer countries. So we argue that a set percentage of every adaptation fund should be directed to fragile and conflict states.  We also argue that donors need to increase the ratio of grants to concessional funding, (because fragile and conflict affected states don’t want to take on new loans) for example trebling the World Bank’s International Development Assistance funds as the G20 panel recommended just two weeks ago.

However there is a delivery gap too. The money will not be spent in fragile and conflict affected states unless the delivery gap is addressed. In conflict situations, that means making it the norm not the exception for funding to be directed through civil society and not just through governments.  This would be real “localisation”.

Problem 4. The rise of impunity in conflict. Combatants attack civilians, deny humanitarian aid, and destroy farms and food warehouses. All illegal as well as immoral.

The solution is that perpetrators should be held to account. We do not need new resolutions, but we need resolution to uphold the existing ones. The next time this Council is presented with evidence of hunger used as a weapon of war it must trigger action.

Also, all nine countries at risk of famine this year, rank high, very high or extreme in levels of humanitarian access constraints. That’s another euphemism for stopping humanitarian aid workers reaching people in need. We propose an independent Office for the Protection of Humanitarian Access which would ensure that when combatants deny aid, this information is reported without fear or favour to this Council, supporting efforts to drive accountability and diplomacy.

Problem 5. NGOs usually start with a need for more money, but I will end with it. The WFP is cutting its life saving food assistance - sometimes up to half - because it does not have enough money to do its job.

The solution to this Mr. President is not complicated.

Humanitarian Response Plans in the nine countries at risk of famine were on average only 58% funded in 2022. Yet if these countries' response plans were funded to the same proportion as Ukraine’s last year, there would be another $5 billion in the system to address the most acute needs just in those nine countries.

We need to address the threat of famine by looking through the windshield not through the rear-view mirror. Once famine is declared, it is too late for too many. We know from the 2011 famine in Somalia that half the people who died, died before the famine declaration was made. Phase 3 of the IPC system - the Crisis phase - is triggered when one in five families, are so desperate to find their next meal, they are considering marrying off their children or sending them out to work. All too often, when families face these difficult decisions, it is the women and girls in a community who suffer the worst consequences. Anticipating crises and acting in advance can prevent families from being forced into these lose-lose choices. But anticipatory action depends on cash being available and today, it is not.

I want to end Mr President by quoting the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen whose landmark work on famine 50 years ago starts with these words: “Starvation is the characteristic of not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there not being enough food to eat.” In other words, it’s a political problem.

Fifty years later however, the world is four times richer.  But there is more famine, not less. That is not fate. It’s a choice. And it’s a choice that will only be changed by action.

We in civil society do not lack ideas for which actions to take.  What we need is the will to enable them to happen.