The Relationships between Food Security and Violent Conflict. A Report to the Food and Agriculture Organization

This report provides an in-depth review of the literature on food security and conflict, bringing together multiple streams of research and setting up an analytic framework of food security and conflict as well as econometric and statistical analyses of food security and violent conflict across different degrees of disaggregation.

In this report we aim to achieve three outcomes. First, we provide a structured review of the growing body of food security and conflict literature, and organize it thematically to be readily accessible to policy and research audiences. Second, we develop an analytic framework of food security and conflict clusters based on the most up-to-date data available using FAO and UCDP databases. Third, these descriptive relationships are then tested at a global level as well as at sub-national levels using innovative research designs. These case studies confirm that the analytic clusters are a valid way to understand the different ways that food security and conflict categories tend to relate to each other.

The findings in this report support policy making and research in a number of ways. From a policy perspective, the report brings together streams of data that are rarely directly compared, highlighting both descriptive results that can inform food security policy in conflict-affected countries. It also highlights the need for policy institutions to support hybrid food security-conflict research, creating opportunities to gather data that speaks specifically to the food security-conflict nexus. Crucially, it brings new evidence regarding the food security and conflict relationship, innovatively using subnational data to highlight emerging challenges and opportunities for data- driven food security research and policy making.