Rising Food prices and insecurity motivate violent conflict

Food insecurity in turn can spark, intensify, or perpetuate violent conflicts. While food insecurity alone is not likely to cause violent conflicts, it can become a decisive factor in increasing social grievances, in combination with socio-economic and political inequalities. In consequence, certain social segments of the population (particularly youth) become excluded from economic activities and participation in political decision-making processes, which can ultimately fuel civil unrest or conflicts (Hendrix and Brinkman, 2013). Thus, in post-war reconstruction situations, the rapid achievement of food security for large parts of the population is essential to lay the basis for establishing sustainable peace and to prevent relapse into violence. Besides these structural conditions, rising food prices have been found to decisively exacerbate the risk of political unrest and conflicts, particularly in urban settings. Across Africa, there is a strong correlation between rising food prices, increasing unrest, and increasing political repression (Berazneva and Lee, 2013). For example, wheat price fluctuation became a root cause of conflict events in Sudan in 2011 (Chen et al., 2018). The dominant explanation for the vicious circle of food prices and violent conflict is consumer grievances. Higher food prices create or increase economic constraints and/or sentiments of (perceived) relative deprivation, which activate grievances that, in turn, can lead to riots and unrests, whereas—vice versa—the outbreak of violence entails the likelihood of increasing food prices again (Raleigh et al., 2015). These grievances can be directed against the government if it fails to secure food for the population in the face of rising global food prices.