Food as a weapon: legal basis for ensuring food security in Ukraine in the context of the war

Abstract

Problem setting. The Global Food Security Index (GFSI) defines four indicators for assessing food security in countries, including Affordability, Physical Availability/Availability, Quality and Safety, and Natural Resources and Resilience. The goal of each state today is to maintain an adequate level of food security, which is understood as achieving a state of optimal provision of the country’s population with economically affordable, high-quality and safe food. If we analyze countries by GFSI indicators, most of them will not meet this goal. In the context of population growth, climate change, the percentage of hungry people or lack of food availability even in developed countries, wars and other factors affect the food supply. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations in 2015, pays considerable attention to hunger (Goal 2). This issue is becoming more acute as a result of Russia’s armed aggression, which is currently complicating the issue of food supply in Ukraine, causing disruption of agricultural production processes due to mining of agricultural fields, damage to special equipment, destruction of livestock farms, environmental impact, soil pollution, etc. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The legal issues of food security in the context of martial law in Ukraine have been considered in the works of such scholars as: O.V. Gafurova, V.M. Yermolenko, T.O. Kovalenko, G.S. Kornienko, T.V. Kurman, M.Y. Pokalchuk, Y.Y. Pustovit, O.M. Tuieva, etc. This issue was not properly covered in the light of the latest legislative changes at the national and international level. Purpose of the research is to analyze Ukrainian legislation on food security under martial law, identifying the main problems and formulating proposals for improving the current legislation, taking into account the international legal aspect. Article’s main body. The article examines the legislative changes in food security that have taken place in Ukraine over the past few years due to the war, the use of food as a weapon, which in the context of the events may threaten the global food system. The war has profound implications for food security, with the United Nations estimating that 670 million people will suffer from malnutrition in 2030, 78 million more than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, another crisis is spreading and exacerbating that could affect the global dynamics of food security the war in Ukraine, which has had a comprehensive impact on global agricultural markets in various aspects, such as export and import, agricultural production in frontline areas, unmined agricultural fields, higher prices in the process of land cultivation, etc. In addition, the disruption of logistics supply chains leads to higher world prices for grain, mineral and organic fertilizers, and energy, which leads to food shortages and will provoke further food price inflation in the world. The resulting complications affect, for example, the implementation of the global goals of The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which in the near future may give rise to international and national legislative changes in the vision of food security. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Famine as a method of warfare not only violates international humanitarian law, but also contradicts certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. According to the UN experts, “famine” is not only a matter of access to food for survival, but also “the intentional deprivation of not only food or water, but also other goods necessary for the survival of the civilian population.” Russia’s terrorist activities have provoked a global food crisis. Unblocking Ukrainian ports for grain exports will help to partially overcome it. At the same time, it is important to monitor the food needs of the Ukrainian population in order to avoid famine in our country. It should also be noted that in the context of Ukraine’s membership in the WTO, the war makes it impossible to apply such means of protecting the domestic market as export and import quotas. Given the current realities in the agricultural sector in Ukraine, it is already necessary to enshrine at the legislative level that in shaping the directions of the state agricultural policy and public investment, priority should be given to food production and the quality of nutrition of the population, thus increasing the resilience of the national food system to external threats.