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Baroness Brown of Silvertown
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of starvation as a weapon of war globally, and what steps they are taking to ensure that international humanitarian law is upheld in this regard.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My Lords, I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to raise an important issue that affects millions of people around the world. Today is World Food Day, and this year’s theme calls for global collaboration to create a peaceful, sustainable, prosperous and food-secure future. Yet we live with the devastating reality where last year, over 295 million people faced acute hunger. In armed conflicts, both intranational and international, hunger is increasingly used as a deliberate strategy of warfare and control.
Conflict-related food insecurity affects over 140 million people. Humanitarian aid is restricted, aid workers and journalists are killed, cities are blockaded and starved, agricultural land is destroyed and vital food infrastructure, like bakeries, is bombed. Starvation and malnutrition do not only kill people; they destroy the very fabric of societies, making it so much harder to achieve peace, and lock countries and communities in a never-ending cycle of conflict and insecurity.
The use of starvation as a weapon of war in international conflicts is recognised as a war crime in the Rome statute, including starvation through wilfully impeding relief supplies. An amendment in 2019, which the UK has not yet recognised—it would be very good to know where the Government currently stand on this—extends this recognition to non-international conflicts. The UN Security Council has also unanimously adopted Resolutions 2417 and 2573, which condemn the starving of civilians and the deprivation of objects indispensable to survival as methods of warfare.
Yet this abhorrent tactic is increasing in prevalence throughout the world. It is often undertaken with impunity, and we are seeing it across nations such as South Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia and Syria. Children are most at risk of death, whether from starvation itself or from preventable diseases that turn deadly because of the way malnutrition weakens our bodies. To quote a doctor,
“Basically, the body just”
shuts
“down … it pulls energy from other organs just to keep the brain going”.
If a child does not die from the conflict or from an infection, eventually, the heart gives out.
“It is a very cruel, slow death”.
The generals’ war against the people of Sudan is a blight on humanity. These generals use their forces to enact a brutal campaign of terror, using mass executions, sexual violence and starvation as inhumane tools of war, with devastating consequences. Over half the country—more than 24 million people—is now in acute food insecurity. Famine was confirmed in 2024 in North Darfur’s Zamzam region and is now present in 10 regions of the country. Some 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year.
There are grave concerns about the RSF siege of El Fasher, where 260,000 civilians have been trapped for more than 500 days. There have been indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and a blockade on aid is being used as an attempt to starve the city into submission. Diseases like cholera are increasingly prevalent as critical infrastructure is targeted and vital supplies diminish. Both the SAF and the RSF use starvation as a deliberate strategy to break the civilian population through hunger, fear and exhaustion. A doctor based in El Fasher said:
“The children of El Fasher are dying on a daily basis due a lack of food, lack of medicine. Unfortunately, the international community is just not watching”.
We cannot afford to let this crisis unfold: there needs to be a greater international effort to stop this brutal war. The UK is the UN penholder for Sudan. Is the Minister confident that we are using all our influence on the international stage and within the UN to build a coalition of the willing against those generals, and to protect the people of Sudan?
I very much welcome the doubling of UK aid to Sudan, but within Sudan there are many local actors and organisations that could be used to save lives and distribute humanitarian aid. They have an undaunted spirit, and a hope that a Sudan free from the generals and their catastrophic war is achievable. The recent report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact has highlighted that the UK struggles to provide direct funding for these local organisations. Can the Minister assure me that the department can address this going forward?
Sudan is a hidden war in which the generals’ forces continue to act with impunity, but that has not been the case in Gaza. We have seen the conflict constantly play out on our TV screens and news feeds. We have followed the flotillas, and millions of us have marched throughout the country to campaign for an end to this war.
Aid has not been allowed into Gaza—except the pittance the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was permitted to distribute—with often disastrous consequences. More than 12,000 children are acutely malnourished, and more than 150 have died as a result of starvation. A mother in Gaza city wept: “We fast for days, just to leave something for the children. Sometimes, there is nothing—only water. At night they cry, saying, ‘Mama, we’re hungry’. I hold them and say, ‘You’ll eat in heaven’, and then I cry when they fall asleep.”
Given the peace deal, we must now ensure that this truce turns into lasting peace and that humanitarian aid can flow unrestricted into the area. Deliberate starvation of civilians not only kills people; it undermines the very fabric of society, normalises these crimes for future conflicts and weakens the international legal order.
I close with a call for action. We need a united and urgent response to ensure the upholding of international legal norms, and we need accountability for those who have deliberately starved populations as a method of war and control. I hope that by next year’s World Food Day, we will have seen an end to this abhorrent use of hunger—I am not holding my breath—but for this to begin to happen, we need action now.
Baroness Helic (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate. In my own family’s memory lies Sarajevo and the siege, when starvation was wielded as a weapon and for more than 1,400 days, civilians were cut off from food, water, medicines and power. Some starved, surviving on nettles, grass and animal feed; others died as snipers and shells struck queues for bread and water. During that time, 11,500 civilians were killed, including more than 1,600 children.
The UN airlift later known as Operation Provide Promise flew 160,000 tonnes of aid into Sarajevo across more than 12,000 missions. It was far from perfect. Aid was often intercepted and spoiled by the besieging militias and forces, but it prevented famine and sent a message that the world would break the grip of siege designed to starve civilians into submission.
In Sarajevo today, you can see a monument shaped like a vast tin can and printed on it is the brand name ICAR, the canned food distributed to surviving civilians during the siege. It is a gritty reminder of indignity, but also of survival and international resolve. The monument stands not only for what was given but for what should never be withheld: the basic necessities of life. Sadly, the siege is not ancient history. The forced hunger and deprivation that we have seen in Syria, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sudan and Gaza follow the same tactics. Civilians are reduced to begging for scraps or denied access to humanitarian relief convoys, even as they wait only a few hundred metres away—even as they can see them.
Sudan and Gaza are the most recent examples of this inhumanity. Gaza has been subject, on and off, to full or partial blockade since October 2023. Its civilians were starved, denied basic medical support and stripped of dignity and hope. A cruel collective punishment was inflicted on them, which resulted in a manmade famine. This lack of humanity spreads across countries and into our social media feeds. Only yesterday I was reading about Google’s recent facilitation of false advertising that starvation was taking place in Gaza. Today, it has said that it is not going to remove those posts from Instagram and so on. This week, the withdrawal of aid from Gaza was again used as a threat.
As has been mentioned, using hunger and starvation as tools of warfare is prohibited by international law: the Geneva conventions and additional protocols, the Rome statute and UN Security Council Resolutions 2047 and 2573. We have the legal framework. Yet, despite that legal framework and despite all the promises, outrage and condemnation, starvation is now used just as sexual violence is: not as a tragic by-product or a breakdown of discipline or an incident, but as a premeditated weapon designed to inflict pain and death. Blocked air corridors, denial of relief and seizure or destruction of supplies all contribute to catastrophic hunger and often amount to collective punishment, with consequences lasting generations. As we have heard, an often overlooked aspect is the dire impact that malnutrition has on the brains and bodies of young children. Those who survive never recover.
We do not lack legal means. What is missing is consistent enforcement, political courage and accountability. What we are missing is shame that this is happening on our watch. We in the United Kingdom should always be absolutely clear that there are no circumstances under which the withholding of food to a civilian population—no matter where they are, no matter the colour of their skin and no matter their religion—should ever be tolerated. It should never be allowed.
With this in mind, I ask the Minister to answer a few questions. First, how will His Majesty’s Government ensure that, wherever starvation is used as a method of war, it is systematically investigated and prosecuted? Secondly, with our foreign aid commitment set to fall to 0.3% by 2027—critically, programmes are already being closed in Sudan and elsewhere—will the Government consider ring-fencing resources for starvation prevention as a core humanitarian priority? Finally, what steps will the Government take to embed compliance with international humanitarian law not only in our Armed Forces’ training, but with partners trained here? Can the Minister confirm that proportional defence and military training is allocated under international humanitarian law compliance, so that the forces we train never become perpetrators of these crimes?
The legal tools and precedents exist; moral and political courage must follow. As the president of the ICRC has said:
“International humanitarian law is only as strong as leaders’ will to uphold it”.
I finish by reminding us all that our duty is not merely to condemn starvation as warfare; it is to ensure that starving civilians are protected, not as an afterthought, but as a legal, enforceable and moral imperative.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. It is a huge privilege to follow that very powerful speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, for securing this debate and for her eloquent words which laid bare the scale and devastating consequences of the increasing use of starvation as a weapon of war.
I will focus on two issues: first, how we ensure accountability and meaningful consequences for state and non-state actors that use starvation as a weapon of war; and, secondly, the role that malnutrition plays in destabilising societies and contributing to conflict.
Recent years have seen an explosion of conflict and of what the World Food Programme describes as the
“increasing ‘instrumentalisation’ of humanitarian aid”.
Humanitarian access is frequently denied. Humanitarian workers are targeted and often killed. Crops, livestock and food storage facilities are destroyed and, as the Mines Advisory Group notes, agricultural land is often rendered unusable as a result of mines or contamination with other ordnance. Action Against Hunger draws attention to how critical infrastructure, such as water systems, markets and transport routes, is frequently attacked, denying communities access to the resources that they require to survive.
Some years ago, I had the privilege to visit Sudan on several occasions, working with the civilian democratic parties before the outbreak of the war. I watched with horror as the fighting created one of the world’s greatest humanitarian catastrophes. Famine is now ongoing in at least five areas, and there is a risk of famine in 17 additional areas. Warring parties have imposed sieges and attacked food infrastructure, leaving over half the population facing acute food insecurity.
In Gaza, there has also been a deliberate policy to deny access to food, fuel and water, contrary to international humanitarian and criminal law. Before the recent ceasefire, which we hope will allow food to get in and alleviate the situation, 95% of the population was in acute food insecurity, 1 million were in emergency levels of food insecurity and famine conditions existed for 500,000 people. In both cases, ostensible allies of the United Kingdom are either imposing such policies directly or supporting armed groups that are. Despite the obligation of third parties to take all measures necessary to ensure that parties to conflicts respect the provisions of international humanitarian law, we and our international partners have done far too little to impose real consequences for these actions and to enforce accountability.
As Action Against Hunger and others have argued, the UK needs to ratify the amendment to Article 8 of the Rome statute, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, so that non-international conflicts are covered. We need to put UN Security Council Resolutions 2417, 2573 and 2730 at the heart of our diplomatic efforts to prevent starvation being used as a weapon of war and to protect humanitarian workers. Where these resolutions are violated, we should be willing to impose meaningful economic and other sanctions.
We need also to look at how we can best support efforts to prevent conflict in the first place. There is a good understanding of how conflict drives malnutrition, but much less well understood is the role that malnutrition plays in destabilising societies and giving rise to conflict. A research study carried out in north-eastern Nigeria by experts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, CGIAR and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture found strong links between malnutrition and conflict, and demonstrated that acute malnutrition is an early warning signal of social breakdown in fragile settings.
People who are not getting the food they need may increasingly be inclined to support, or be recruited by, armed groups to ensure food security, shelter and physical protection. This cycle will not be broken without tackling malnutrition, because nutrition is so foundational to individual, societal and economic development, and indeed to global prosperity. We need to look again at the false economy of the huge cuts that we have made to our development budget; there was a cut of more than 60% to the budget for combating malnutrition in 2020-21 alone.
The numbers impacted by deliberate policies to use food as a weapon of war in Afghanistan, DRC, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere are immense, but figures so large can numb us to the real meaning of these actions. That reality was brought home to me by a faded picture of a young boy that my colleague at United Against Malnutrition and Hunger, Roh Yacobi, carries with him always. It is of his younger brother, Mohammad. Roh says this:
“When I was a child, living under a brutal Taliban blockade, thousands starved to death, including my little brother Mohammad. I was the last person to see him alive. He was buried in a small grave in the village graveyard at dawn, and soon joined by more children”.
That is the brutal cost of what happens when parties to conflict use starvation as a weapon of war. Millions of people have been subject to similar blockades, with similar horrific consequences. Such actions will continue with increasing frequency and impunity unless we, with our international partners, are willing to impose meaningful consequences on perpetrators, whether they be our friends or our foes.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, for securing this timely and profoundly important debate. I also support wholeheartedly the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and my noble friend Lord Oates, powerful as they were.
Today is World Food Day, when we commemorate the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945, born out of the ashes of the Second World War. It stands as a reminder that access to food is not a privilege but a fundamental human right, one that the international community vowed to protect when it said “never again” to the suffering and cruelty of total war. Yet across the world, right now, rights are being violated and weaponised. Food, water and even humanitarian aid are being turned into instruments of war and tools of political coercion.
In Sudan, as we heard earlier, more than 24 million people face acute food insecurity. We also heard earlier about Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of famine, declaring that almost every child under five is suffering from nutrition. In both places, civilians have been deliberately deprived of food, medicine and clean water, not by accident but by design. This is not a tragic consequence of conflict; it is a method of war, and it is expressly prohibited under the Geneva conventions, the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, and UN Security Council Resolutions 2417 and 2573, yet impunity reigns. The law exists but the will to enforce it has withered.
Food is not the only weapon. We are witnessing the growing weaponisation of water through the destruction of infrastructure, the blocking of access or the manipulation of rivers that sustain entire nations. Water is life itself, yet it too is being politicised and withheld. The recent decision by India to suspend co-operation under the Indus Water Treaty and divert flows from the northern rivers that feed Pakistan should concern us all. For decades, that treaty has stood as a model of cross-border co-operation, even in times of tension. To undermine it for political leverage is to risk regional instability, deepen food insecurity and erode a vital humanitarian norm: that access to water must never be used as a weapon.
This is where the United Kingdom must rediscover its voice. After the horrors of the Second World War it was the UK, with its allies, that helped to forge the rules-based international order: the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva convention and the principle that the strong are bound by the same laws as the weak. These were not abstract ideas; they were the moral foundations of a world rebuilt from ruins. That legacy places upon us both a moral duty and a strategic obligation to defend those principles today, to uphold the rule of law when others abandon it and to lead by the strength of our example.
So, what should the Government do? First, the Government should ratify the 2019 amendment to the Rome statute, extending the prohibition of starvation as a weapon of war to all conflicts, whether international or internal. Secondly, the UK must deploy every diplomatic, legal and economic tool available to hold violators to account—whether state or non-state actors, allies or adversaries—including targeted sanctions, as we heard earlier, against those who obstruct humanitarian access or manipulate essential resources such as food and water.
Thirdly, as we heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, we must restore our commitment to international development in nutrition, food security and climate resilience. The cuts to aid in recent years have not only cost lives but diminish our nation’s moral authority. Reinvestment in those programmes is not charity but a reaffirmation of who we are and what we stand for.
Finally, our voice must be consistent and principled. International law cannot be applied selectively. We cannot condemn war crimes in one region while turning a blind eye in another. Our credibility and our conscience demand that we speak with one standard, guided by law and humanity. Starvation and the denial of water are not tactics of war; they are crimes against humanity and an affront to the conscience of the world. The United Kingdom, as one of the architects of the post-war order, must not stand silent as these norms are eroded and these crimes repeated.
Let us, on this World Food Day, reaffirm that no person anywhere should ever be starved or denied water as a weapon of war. Let us stand for the principles our forebears fought to defend: for the rule of law, for human dignity, and for the belief that the measure of a nation is found not in its power but in its moral courage to uphold what is right.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, given the gravity of the events that are the subject of today’s proceedings, while it is not exactly a pleasure to contribute to this debate, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, and to thank him for his powerful contribution, and to have the opportunity to thank my noble friend Lady Brown of Silvertown for securing this debate and for a clear-eyed, informed, impressively analytical and forensic speech. I shall not repeat the appalling statistics and data that show the extent to which starvation as a weapon of war is deployed globally, but I will focus on a limited number of issues.
Like all noble Lords who are contributing to this debate, I received briefing notes from INGOs. They are, independently and collectively, both comprehensive and helpful. Helpfully, they include recommendations of questions to my noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury, whom I am delighted to see speaking from the Front Bench on this issue. I hope that he and his office have had the opportunity to review the briefing notes we all received.
I have in the past suggested that your Lordships’ House should find a way of publishing with the Hansard record the briefing notes that we receive to complement the debate. I am convinced that, if they are moderated before publication, such briefing notes will show the degree to which, in its deliberations, your Lordships’ House is engaged with and connected to the outside world and values the knowledge and experience of those who have expertise in particular policy areas. However, and sadly, publication in this case would have detrimental repercussions on the very authors of these notes because they require humanitarian access, and it would only get worse if they are known to have been doing this. So I will not press the issue in this debate but will focus on three issues.
First, on the Rome statute amendment, the UK has long prided itself on being a global leader in upholding international humanitarian law, yet it remains one of the few countries not to have ratified the 2019 amendment to the Rome statute. This amendment criminalises the deliberate starvation of civilians in non-international armed conflicts, closing a critical loophole in international law. It puts the legal framework in place for the ICC to pursue investigations and prosecutions of starvation crimes when they occur. By ratifying it, the UK would send a clear signal that starvation—whether in Gaza, Sudan or elsewhere—can never be an acceptable tactic of war. Ratification would cost us nothing but would show that we mean what we say about accountability and the protection of civilians. It is time for the Government to take that simple but powerful step. Will the Government commit to ratifying the 2019 Rome statute amendment and ensure that the necessary co-operation and enforcement mechanisms are in place so that this vital legal reform has real effect?
On ODA spending and conflict prevention, we cannot separate famine prevention from conflict prevention. Yet, as my Government have reduced UK ODA to 0.3% of GNI, they have also drastically cut spending on peacebuilding and conflict resolution—the very areas that prevent conflict and humanitarian crises before they start.
If the UK wants to help to break the cycle of conflict-driven hunger, it must reinvest in its tools of diplomacy, mediation and early warning. Restoring ODA levels is part of that, but so too is ensuring that our remaining aid is directed towards reducing violence and protecting civilians, not simply responding after catastrophe strikes. Can my noble friend, whom I greatly admire and who has the ear of your Lordships’ House, confirm what proportion of UK ODA is currently allocated to conflict prevention and resolution, how this compares to previous years and what rationale underpinned those reductions?
Finally, on Israel and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, in Gaza today almost the entire population faces acute food insecurity and more than half a million people are in catastrophic conditions. It is a famine in all but name. Access to food, fuel and water is being systematically restricted in direct violation of international humanitarian law. The Government must be clear that the deliberate deprivation of food as a method of warfare is prohibited under international law. We must press Israel continuously to comply with those obligations and ensure that humanitarian access is immediately and unconditionally restored. The UK cannot champion international law abroad if it applies it selectively. What representations have the UK Government made to Israel regarding the use of starvation and the obstruction of humanitarian access and what response has been received from the Israeli authorities? In the words of Justa Hopma, research fellow at the University of Sheffield, writing in the Conversation:
“Famine doesn’t just ‘happen’ - and those who cause it must be held to account”.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silverton, for this debate and I am grateful for all the powerful speeches that have been made, all from perspectives of people who know, care and are involved in this issue. Each one of them has added a different aspect of the dimension, which we should all appreciate.
As people will know, I spent 10 years as chair of the International Development Committee watching what the UK could and did do in humanitarian aid and I am appalled that we are no longer able to do that. There is a really important point here. Not only did we do stuff, but we were witnesses to what was going on. The plea that has come from every speech about ensuring that consequences flow from imposing starvation as a weapon of war means something. If there is nobody there to see it happening, it is surely much harder to promote successful prosecutions, so the absence of aid workers is an issue. It is probably the reason why so many aid workers are killed by protagonists—325 last year, as the World Food Programme has identified.
Of course, it is odd to have rules for war. War is a terrible thing and terrible things happen, but we have created rules. Many players in the past have attempted to take account of them, but the actors who are playing now are not interested in the rules; they have total disregard for the rules. They are state and non-state players and they think that there is no accountability. That is the problem. The message from everybody seems to be, “What are we going to do about it?”
On Article 8, first, it should be ratified, but, secondly, we need to clarify what the intention is. Nearly all the speeches identified situations where it should not be difficult to prove the intention—that starvation and deprivation of water and food was a deliberate act to intimidate people, put them into a desperate situation and subjugate them. The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, is right that Sudan is the worst situation and is on an almost unprecedented scale. Hopefully, the situation in Gaza is about to become better, but let us not hold our breath. Other places, such as Mali and Haiti, are in pretty desperate straits. There is no doubt at all that hunger is increasing. Not all of it is caused by conflict, but more of it is conflict-related than anything else and more of it is being deliberately perpetrated rather than being just an incidental consequence of the conflict.
I want to make a suggestion that may not be appreciated by everyone. We have a very real concern in this country about migration—desperate migration—but what drives this migration is exactly this. If you are in a situation where you are trapped, then of course you cannot get out, but if you are in a situation where there is no food or water, your family are threatened and you are under attack, what are you going to do? You get as far away as possible if you have half a chance.
A point that many of us made about why the aid cuts were such a mistake is that one of the things that aid did was help to reduce and remove some of the pressures of migration for desperate people. I therefore make no apology for saying that in my view the Government got it badly wrong. They can do it differently, and that is fine. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, said the cuts brought the aid budget down to 0.3% but, when you take out the handling of refugees in the UK and the consequence of that, it is about 0.1%. In other words, it has gone—it hardly exists. I genuinely think that Ministers such as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, care about this and I regret that they have to perpetrate a government policy about which I am sure they are as appalled privately as I am. I hope that they will use their voices inside to make clear how strongly people feel about this and how it is connected to the domestic agenda.
One of the reasons why it was possible to rip up the aid budget was that the consensus broke down and opportunist politicians started to denigrate its achievement: “Oh, it was just charity. It was a waste of space. It wasn’t effective”. I know how effective it was because I saw it. Most of that was misrepresentation and untruth, but the consequence was that politicians took the view that, “These are faraway places of which we know little and the British public are much more concerned about domestic issues”— of course that is true—“and they’re concerned about migration”. We fail to point out to them that if we do not support these communities and these people in situ, that adds to our problems. It creates a situation in this country that we have to deal with.
I argue that, from a moral point of view, this timely debate is absolutely right. My final plea to the Minister—I know that I am knocking at an open door—is that he will use whatever means he can to ensure that the UK Government take genuine, consistent leadership to condemn this, but also to do everything they can at every opportunity to make it clear to those protagonists that there will be consequences. When people see that there are consequences, that will not stop it but it might reduce it. And please have a rethink about our aid policy, because it is not serving our national interest.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, this has been an excellent, albeit brief, debate. I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, for securing the debate and for her extremely powerful opening remarks. It is worth putting on record my party’s deep-felt relief that a ceasefire has now, hopefully, been reached in Gaza, that the remaining hostages have been released and that the war that has caused so much death and destruction over the past two years now appears to be over, although, while I join the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, in very much hoping that it is at an end, there is still an awful long way to go.
As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, observed, it is hardly a pleasure to contribute to this debate on such a tragic subject. It is a worry that reports of starvation being used as a weapon of war are still in abundance and, frankly, getting worse across the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and others have drawn attention to the situation in Sudan. It remains a wonder to me that, while we have seen thousands marching on our streets regarding Gaza, we have seen virtually no one marching regarding the much worse situation in Sudan and it makes me wonder about the motivations of some of the protesters.
The reports that we have seen include, from Sudan, an estimate by the UN of 25 million people being deliberately starved; 4.5 million in Somalia; and accusations of a covert, and sometimes overt, starvation operation by Russian forces in Ukraine, among others. Sadly, none of those has yet led to any prosecutions, which speaks to the difficulty of verifying the use of starvation as a weapon of war in general, let alone in some of the active war zones. That point is driven home by the fact that there has never been an international prosecution of this as a war crime on its own. It is for that very reason that it is hard to verify cases of weaponised starvation. If they are, punishment must be executed in a timely fashion so that justice may be seen to be done. It is not something, as other speakers have observed, that can be solely delegated to judges in The Hague; the UK and our allies must continue to commission and support the gathering of evidence and press for those cases to be brought to court.
I sympathise with Ministers; Ministers in my Government also spent much time on this matter. But producing change of course requires more than paying it lip service; it means interacting with international partners, including those currently at war. We in the previous Government secured commitments from the Israeli Government, by working and collaborating with them, to open specific pathways for aid, such as the Erez crossing and the port of Ashdod. We extended aid hours and ensured that more aid trucks were promised entry.
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. We should all benefit from hearing from the Minister about the steps the Government are taking to ensure that starvation is not used as a weapon of war. We are proud signatories of the Rome statute, and we should be doing our utmost to take practical actions to uphold it.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, I start by expressing my gratitude to my noble friend for securing this debate. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. The simple fact is that millions of people today are dangerously malnourished because of conflict, and too often this malnourishment has devastating consequences, in particular for children. It has severe and often irreversible impacts on their physical growth, cognitive development and immune system, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and ill health, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, highlighted.
It also impacts on the very thing we want to achieve: economic development. Growth, jobs and education are the key elements for changing this disastrous situation. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, is absolutely right about malnutrition: addressing nutrition is the foundation for real change. The Government of course acknowledge that the deliberate deprivation of food, water and other essentials for civilian survival is a growing and persistent threat.
Let me address the questions from my noble friend Lord Browne and other noble Lords on ODA and the current situation. The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that for us to achieve a safer and more prosperous world, we need to address aggression, particularly the prevention of conflict, which is a priority. Certainly, the difficult decisions we have made have been in response to the aggression committed by the Russian Federation. But I stress what noble Lords have heard me say before: ODA is not our only tool in ensuring peace, prevention and development. We need to use every tool in our toolkit to ensure that we can focus. A key element of that is supporting those conditions to ensure investment and increase trade. We are absolutely focused on that.
Promoting compliance with international humanitarian law is at the heart of our foreign policy. Our debate has underscored a sobering truth: as many as 70% of major food crises are directly linked to conflict and insecurity, according to the World Food Programme. We have seen patterns of sieges, blockades and denial of access in multiple contexts, so ably evidenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, whose personal experience is true evidence of this terrible situation. In too many cases, these patterns are not collateral consequences of war; they are being used deliberately to weaken, punish and displace civilian populations.
It was against this backdrop that, as the Minister covering Africa and human rights, I attended the launch event in May this year for the Government’s legal handbook on conflict, hunger and international humanitarian law. To reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, this handbook is not only a guide for our diplomats, lawyers and Armed Forces but a very important advocacy tool, setting out clearly what the law requires of all parties to conflict, including non-state armed groups. This is important because famines are significantly less likely to occur if all warring parties, including non-state armed groups, comply with international law.
The handbook also firmly backs UN Security Resolution 2417, as my noble friend set out, which helped the United Kingdom in 2018 when we joined the consensus on the amendment on the intentional use of starvation as a method of warfare in non-international armed conflicts—which was adopted, as she rightly pointed out, by the ICC Assembly of States Parties in 2019. Our position on ratification remains under review. The simple fact is that we need to ensure a very strong coalition for action, as she pointed out.
Many noble Lords also referred to Gaza, where we are witnessing a catastrophic man-made famine. As the Prime Minister said, the welcome ceasefire agreement must be implemented in full, without delay, accompanied by the lifting of all restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza. To respond to my noble friend Lord Browne, the Foreign Secretary delivered a very strong message at the UN Security Council on 23 September. We also led joint statements with over 30 partners, pressing Israel to allow food, medical supplies and fuel to reach those in most desperate need. The ceasefire is that opportunity to get desperately needed humanitarian aid in there, fast.
We are also funding a £74 million aid package this financial year for Palestine and Palestinians across the region. Alongside our diplomatic efforts to increase humanitarian access, this is contributing to providing food, shelter and support for over two million people. There is no doubt that this is saving lives.
Many noble Lords, but my noble friend Lady Brown in particular, along with the noble Lord, Lord, Oates, highlighted Sudan. We are deeply alarmed by the UN fact-finding mission’s findings that starvation has been deliberately used there as a method of warfare. No one could have failed to be moved by this morning’s BBC “Today” programme, which had first-hand evidence of the impact of that starvation on not only the civilian population in general but children in particular, and its absolutely horrific consequences. As my noble friend and other noble Lords have said, almost 25 million people are acutely food insecure, and almost 9 million are on the brink of starvation. This is absolutely abhorrent. I congratulate the BBC for reporting on that, but we are not getting sufficient focus on Sudan, and we need to do more.
As the third largest humanitarian donor in Sudan, we have already provided aid to over 2.5 million people since the conflict started. To reassure noble Lords, we are using our position at the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council to call out violations and demand rapid, unimpeded humanitarian access. At last year’s UNGA, I also led a meeting where we brought in first-hand evidence from the victims of sexual violence and from those who were suffering as a consequence of food deprivation. In October, we led efforts to renew the UN fact-finding mission’s mandate for a third year, securing the strongest council support and reinforcing the independent mechanism investigating human rights abuses across Sudan.
I will briefly mention Ukraine. We are fully committed to holding Russia to account for its illegal and barbaric actions, and we have welcomed the agreement between Ukraine and the Council of Europe to have a special tribunal for the crime of aggression. It is a good example of how we can hold people to account. We are absolutely strong supporters of the ICC, and we are determined to hold those responsible for serious violations of IHL to account. To address the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, we are also supporting Ukraine and the training of its troops in international humanitarian law. It is a good idea to see how that works in practice, and how we can spread that good practice.
It has been a great, important debate, focusing on issues that are often too silent. We must ensure that starvation must never be a weapon of war. We must never be silent when it is used as one, because protecting civilians is not optional; it is both a legal obligation and a moral imperative.