How food is being used as a weapon in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine

“None of us would like to live in a world where for political reasons, someone can just starve innocent civilians,” says CFR Africa expert Michelle Gavin. “We’ve collectively decided that’s not acceptable. It’s a violation of humanitarian law.” 

Experts, physicians, and humanitarian workers point to an alarming pattern that spans across regions, countries, and conflicts: food is being weaponized. And that weaponization is evolving—shaped by technology, globalization, and the politics of power. The weaponization of food includes creating deliberate food shortages, restricting access to food, and using food as a political bargaining chip. CFR expert Michael Werz points to Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip, and how, in places such as Nigeria, that weaponization manifests as a recruitment and retention tool for insurgent groups. Perhaps the most frightening evolution, Werz says, is that food has become a long-range weapon in the war in Ukraine. As a result, he says that more people could die away from the Ukrainian battlefield than in the military conflict itself.

According to Gavin, the same pattern emerges in Sudan, where warring parties, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), block aid through bureaucratic obstruction, destroy food supplies, and attack humanitarian workers. That humanitarian crisis has resulted in a mass exodus into neighboring countries such as Chad, which now struggles to absorb the immense need.

Werz and David Scheffer, a CFR legal expert, further emphasize that using food as a weapon is illegal under international law. However, they explain that there are shortcomings in holding actors accountable for such violations. To address this problem, the experts argue that food security needs to be treated not just as a humanitarian issue but also as a geopolitical one that requires military and diplomatic leaders to think through this complex crisis scenario that will increasingly influence international affairs with great costs in human life and regional stability.