MANIFESTO
Hunger Is a Political Choice
266 million people do not have enough food. The world knows. The world stays silent. · 2026
Manifesto — Hunger Is a Political Choice
266 million people do not have enough food. This is not a natural disaster. It is a decision.
The data does not lie
In 2025, 266 million people across 47 countries face acute hunger. Its prevalence has nearly doubled since 2016. For 2026 the World Food Programme projects 318 million — more than double the 2019 figure. This is not fate: it is a choice.
Hunger as a weapon
«Food has become a weapon»: not a slogan, but the UN Deputy Secretary-General before the Security Council. Conflict is the leading cause in most hotspots. In Sudan, more than 24 million people go hungry; in Gaza, as in parts of Sudan, famine is confirmed. Where hunger is used as a weapon, every starving child is evidence of a crime.
The legal foundation
Starving civilians as a method of warfare is not a tragedy: it is a crime, written in black and white. UN Security Council Resolution 2417 (2018) unanimously condemns the use of starvation as a weapon and demands accountability. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Art. 8) classifies the intentional starvation of civilians as a war crime — in international conflicts and, since 2019, in internal ones too.
The excuses don't hold
«There's no money.» No: there are no priorities. In 2025 world military spending reached 2,887 billion dollars (SIPRI). Ending hunger by 2030 would cost, according to the World Food Programme, less than 1% of what the world spent on weapons in a single decade. The choice is not between the possible and the impossible: it is between tanks and bread.
«The climate has gone mad.» Yes — but droughts and floods kill because adaptation plans are missing, because debt strangles the most vulnerable countries, because grain is speculated upon while harvests burn.
«Conflicts are complex.» Complexity is the refuge of the complicit. Hunger in conflict, when deliberate, is a war crime. Full stop.
Inaction has a name
It is called a Security Council paralysed by crossed vetoes. It is called aid cuts while weapons budgets grow: in 2025 official development assistance is set to fall, and the World Food Programme will reach only a fraction of those in need. It is called the normalisation of emergency — hearing «famine» as an abstract word. It is called indifference: the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction.
What to do
It takes little, and everything. Break the silence: share the numbers, don't let hunger become a headline that slips away. Demand political action: ask governments to fund the World Food Programme and to honour the 0.7% of GDP for aid. Prosecute the crime: hunger used as a weapon is not an inevitable consequence of war; it must be investigated and punished. Look: the first step to stopping inaction is refusing to look away.
The world stands still. We do not. Every day that passes without food arriving, someone dies — not of hunger, of indifference. Do not look away.
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