Sierra Leone’s President Bio Leads UN Security Council Debate on Weaponized Hunger
[Suggested image placeholder: President Julius Maada Bio addressing the United Nations Security Council]
NEW YORK – Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio has presided over a high-level United Nations Security Council debate, issuing a stark warning that hunger is being systematically weaponized in modern conflicts and constitutes a war crime under international law.
Speaking as both Sierra Leone’s head of state and Chair of the ECOWAS Authority, President Bio chaired Tuesday’s session focused on “Threats to International Peace and Security: Conflict-Related Food Insecurity.” This marked his second address to the Council during Sierra Leone’s two-year tenure on the powerful 15-member body.
Deliberate Starvation as a War Crime
President Bio framed the deliberate starvation of civilians not as collateral damage but as a calculated weapon of war, describing it as a “slow, silent, corrosive” form of violence that fuels instability and displacement. His remarks came amid ongoing conflicts from Gaza and Sudan to Haiti, Ukraine, and the Sahel region, where food systems have been systematically devastated.
The Sierra Leonean leader outlined three core positions: that starvation constitutes a crime, that food insecurity both drives conflict and represents a peacebuilding imperative, and that sustainable peace requires substantial investment in agricultural resilience and human capital development.
National and Regional Solutions
President Bio presented Sierra Leone’s “Feed Salone Initiative” as a practical national model demonstrating how food security intersects with peace and development. The program’s four pillars—production, resilience, markets and value chains, and human capital—aim to strengthen productivity while building climate-smart agricultural systems.
At the regional level, he highlighted ECOWAS efforts to integrate food security into peacebuilding frameworks, including expansion of the ECOWAS Food Security Reserve and the ECOWARN early warning network designed to monitor and prevent crises before they escalate.
Six-Point Global Action Plan
The President proposed six concrete actions for the international community: protecting food systems in conflict zones, institutionalizing early-warning mechanisms, safeguarding humanitarian access, advancing accountability for starvation crimes, linking peacebuilding finance to agricultural recovery, and prioritizing the empowerment of women and youth across agricultural value chains.
He emphasized that Africa seeks partnership rather than sympathy, noting the continent holds most of the world’s uncultivated arable land alongside significant youth-driven innovative potential. This positioning reframes Africa’s role from aid recipient to essential partner in global food security solutions.
Broader Implications for International Security
The debate reflects growing recognition within international security circles that food insecurity represents both a consequence and driver of conflict. Historical precedents, including the use of hunger as a military strategy in various 20th-century conflicts, underscore the persistent challenge now affecting multiple contemporary war zones.
President Bio’s leadership in chairing this session also signals Sierra Leone’s evolving role in international diplomacy, transitioning from a nation that experienced brutal civil war to one contributing to global peace and security architecture. His concluding call to “ensure that no child is starved into submission, no harvest held hostage, and no community driven to violence by hunger” framed the issue as both a moral imperative and practical security requirement.
Source: https://globaltimes-sl.com/2025/11/18/sierra-leones-president-bio-chairs-un-security-council-debate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sierra-leones-president-bio-chairs-un-security-council-debate