Conflict has become the leading driver of acute hunger worldwide, with food systems increasingly targeted in war zones from Sudan and Gaza to Somalia and Haiti, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council on 25 August 2026, according to United Nations (UN). At least 266 million people faced acute food insecurity last year, as the world recorded its highest number of armed conflicts since World War II. For the first time this century, famine was confirmed simultaneously in two places, Sudan and Gaza. Conflict and violence are now the primary drivers of hunger in 12 of the 13 hunger hot spots considered of greatest concern by the United Nations. Officials warned that the “vicious conflict-hunger cycle” is destroying farms, markets and supply routes.
Carl Skau, the acting head of the World Food Program, opened his Security Council briefing by recounting a family with four children that abandoned its farm in Somalia after armed groups demanded payments to continue cultivating the land. They walked roughly 100 kilometers to a displacement camp, and one of the children died along the way. In Sudan, markets have been struck by drones and missiles. In Haiti, gang violence has isolated entire communities. From Gaza to Mali and Myanmar, humanitarian workers have been prevented from reaching people in need.
A battlefield stretching across oceans
The geography of hunger is changing, as strikes on ports and cargo ships raise food prices thousands of miles away. Grain shipments through the Bosporus are down 40 per cent from a year earlier, according to WFP, as attacks disrupt Black Sea trade between Russia and Ukraine. Attacks on commercial vessels have also disrupted trade through the Red Sea, while the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies and one-third of fertilizer trade, has faced restrictions and closures. In Sudan, basic food costs have risen almost 40 per cent since February. Disruptions to fertilizer exports threaten planting seasons across Africa and Asia.
When hunger feeds the next war
In Somalia, six million people – about a third of the population – face acute hunger or worse, while nearly two million children suffer from acute or severe malnutrition, Mr. Skau said. Yet WFP is assisting roughly 600,000 people, about one in 10 of those facing acute hunger. Last week, fighting in Baidoa prevented the agency from reaching about 5,000 children with nutritional assistance. Somalia’s 2010-12 famine killed nearly 260,000 people, roughly half of them children, while later crises in 2017 and 2022 were mitigated by earlier assistance. In 2018, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2417 on conflict and hunger.
Mr. Guterres urged the Council to protect farms, water systems, markets, storage facilities, ports and supply routes, and to act before hunger crosses into catastrophe.
“We cannot wait for famine or catastrophic conditions to be formally confirmed,” the UN chief said. “I call on this Council to act when the warning lights are flashing.”
Humanitarian agencies are confronting more wars, more displaced people and more disrupted trade routes with fewer resources. Eight years after Resolution 2417, Mr. Guterres said, “the vicious cycle rolls on.”