05/06/2026 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
The Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, meeting in Athens on 4 June, expressed concern that overlapping crises are severely undermining food security, food systems and nutrition worldwide. It strongly condemned “the use of famine as a method of warfare”, the unlawful denial of humanitarian access, and attacks on assets vital to the survival of civilian populations, in particular agricultural and food infrastructure.
The report by Larysa Bilozir (Ukraine, ALDE), adopted by the committee, highlights the consequences of the Russian Federation’s war of aggression against Ukraine for the food security of the Ukrainian population as well as of the rest of the world, given that Russian attacks against Ukrainian port and agricultural infrastructure disrupt exports. The committee also condemned the looting and illegal commercialisation of Ukrainian grain from temporarily occupied territories.
The parliamentarians also note that most of Gaza’s population are experiencing acute food insecurity, following the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the Israeli military response, coupled with the blockages of food assistance by the Israeli authorities. They emphasised that the collapse of local food production and persistent restrictions on humanitarian access are lastingly jeopardising the population’s ability to feed itself.
In this context, the committee called on member states to implement, in domestic law, the prohibition under international humanitarian law on starving civilians as a method of warfare, and to strengthen the protection of humanitarian access and food supply corridors in situations of armed conflict.
According to the adopted draft resolution, states must reaffirm and uphold “the obligation of aggressor states to provide compensation for all damage caused, including in the agricultural and food sectors”.
In order to improve the resilience of food systems globally, the committee proposed reinforcing public mechanisms for regulating agricultural markets – through the establishment of food reserves – and reducing strategic dependencies and the concentration of supply chains by diversifying sources of supply and strengthening local and regional capacities for food production.
Finally, the committee proposed measures to strengthen the national resilience of food systems, calling on states to ensure a balanced food market between local supply chains and exports, by supporting small hold farmers and by promoting agroecological systems based on crop diversification, in order to strengthen food sovereignty and societies’ capacity to cope with future crises.