A family with four children in Somalia was forced to abandon their farm after armed groups demanded payments to continue cultivating the land. They walked roughly 100 kilometers to a displacement camp, where tragically one of the children died along the way.

Carl Skau, acting head of the World Food Program (WFP), met the family during a visit to Somalia last week. Speaking at a United Nations Security Council debate on conflict and hunger on Tuesday, 25 August 2026, he described their experience as part of a broader "vicious conflict-hunger cycle," where war produces hunger and hunger, in turn, fosters further violence.

From Gaza to Mali and Myanmar, humanitarian workers face increasing barriers in reaching those in need. Food systems—including farms, ports, markets, storage facilities, and shipping routes—are increasingly caught in conflicts with economic impacts extending far beyond battlefields.

"Critical food systems – and the lives and livelihoods they sustain – are under attack," UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council at the debate's opening. He noted the world is experiencing its highest number of armed conflicts since World War II.

According to WFP, grain shipments through the Bosporus Strait have decreased by 40 percent compared to a year earlier. Skau added that basic food costs have risen almost 40 percent since February 2026.

Previous crises in 2017 and 2022 did not reach the current catastrophic scale partly because assistance was increased before famine conditions took hold.

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