This month, toward the end of 2025, World Hunger Education Service launched a broad and indepth study about the patterns, trends and extent of violent attacks and threats against aid programs delivering food and nutrition solutions in famines, crises, warzones, and for displaced populations. The results will be published here, in Hunger Notes. This is an independent study that is at WHES’s initiative.
In recent years, there has been a growth in attention to and professional publications about attacks on health care in fragile states and conflicts, which include missiles, drones, shooting, targeted assassination, roadblocks, air strikes, mortar fire, kidnapping and siege. All of these are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
There has been no corresponding attention to attacks on food assistance or nutrition programs, which this new study hopes to fill in.
WHES’s Lead Researcher, Eline de Looijier, is seeking inputs from a wide range of UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, donors, journalists, researchers and observers who can help her document not only the extent of attacks on food/nutrition, but also how aid agencies adapt to threats and risks of attacks and seek to mitigate these risks.
WHES is an independent nonprofit and respects the confidentiality of people contributing to this study. WHES thanks all those who are able to share their thoughts. Please send inputs to Eline at: Eline de Looijer
