From Food as a Weapon of War to Food as a Weapon of Mass Construction
“the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves … are you ready to sacrifice to end world hunger. to sacrifice to end colonialism. to end neo-colonialism. to end racism. to end sexism.” — Assata Shakur (1)
Introduction — World Food Day and the Politics of Hunger
World Food Day is frequently used by states and corporations to present technocratic solutions while obscuring the politics behind hunger. Starvation today is not an accident or humanitarian failure — it is an intentional strategy. Occupations, counter-revolutionary wars, corporate monopolies and imperialists use control over food — production, distribution, aid — to discipline, dispossess, and destroy communities.
From Gaza to Sudan and across the Global South, the weaponization of food is a pillar of racial-capitalist, imperialist political economies that treat food as commodity and control. But there also exists persistent resistance, led by rural, Indigenous women, alongside mutual aid networks and farmers’ movements, who are building life-affirming systems that refuse scarcity. This piece looks at three connected dimensions of the struggle: (I) how hunger is used as a tool of genocide and occupation; (II) the insurgent practices of food sovereignty led by women and communities; and (III) concrete demands for a liberatory food politics.
I. Genocide, Occupation, War and the Violation of the Right to Food
Across the Global South, but specifically in Palestine and Sudan, starvation is produced intentionally. In Gaza, the Israeli Zionist occupation has combined blockade, bombardment, and control of crossings to intentionally destroy agricultural systems, fisheries, food infrastructure and access to water — producing dependency, forced displacement, and demographic collapse through ethnic cleansing.(2) Long before the recent genocidal escalation, Palestinians were subjected to systematic monitoring and rationing of their food—a method of control that enabled the widespread starvation seen today.
In August 2025, Gaza governorate was classified by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification as being at IPC Phase 5 with over half a million people facing catastrophic famine. The IPC’s famine review committee said it was “deeply alarmed by the worsening situation in Gaza, where prolonged conflict has destroyed health, nutrition, water, and sanitation systems essential to sustaining life, forced repeated displacement, and concentrated the population into ever smaller and overcrowded areas”(3) Over the last two years, Israel has also decimated more than 67% of Gaza’s farmland, “wiping out 10,183 hectares out of a total of 15,053 hectares.”(4)
In the West Bank, the occupation has used land confiscation, movement restrictions, and “green colonialism” — such as criminalizing foraging of zaʿatar, miramiyyeh and akkoub — to sever people from their ancestral foodways. Jumana Manna writes: “It was 1977 when Israel’s then minister of agriculture, Ariel Sharon, declared [za’atar] a protected species, effectively placing a total ban on the tradition of collection, punishable by hefty fines and up to three years in prison… These preservation laws constitute a thin ecological veil for racist legislation designed to further alienate Palestinians and Syrians in the occupied Golan Heights from their lands.”(5) This alienation is also present in the uprooting of olive trees. Settlers raid homes, set vehicles on fire, aided by the zionist occupation’s army. Nearly 3000 olive trees were recently uprooted in the village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah. Officially, these olive trees are designated as a “security threat” to a nearby settlement road. Yet these centuries-old olive trees testify to Palestinians’ long-standing stewardship of the land. As Jwan Zreiq writes: “Their deep root systems and longevity create a living testimony to indigenous Palestinian care of the land”.(6)
Similarly, in Sudan, hunger has long been a deliberate political weapon, with decades of neoliberal restructuring, IMF and World Bank conditionalities, and colonial trade patterns that have turned basic necessities into commodities. Currently, Sudan is facing what the United Nations is calling the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than half the population, about 30 million people are in need of aid, and around 12 million are displaced, both internally and outside of the borders as refugees. The counter-revolutionary war that started in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has targeted civilians and dismantled infrastructures essential to survival. In the process, seed banks have been looted, markets manipulated, and supply chains broken — all contributing to catastrophic hunger. As Abubakr Omer writes in Seeds of Sovereignty,
“Armed groups, militias and paramilitary forces now control large swaths of territory; they establish transport checkpoints, demand levies on food being carried by farmers or traders, and frequently block or divert food flows away from communities that are deemed hostile. Firearms are not just tools of conflict; they are instruments for structuring who can access what food, when, how.”(7)
This shows that in Sudan, forced starvation is being structurally enforced – not just as a side-effect of war but as a system of coercion and displacement. Similar to Gaza, in July 2024, parts of Sudan were classified IPC Phase 5, with hundreds of thousands facing famine conditions.(8) External actors—including Gulf states, Egypt, and the UAE—have actively fueled Sudan’s war and profited from it, as different segments of the military and paramilitary elite compete over control of mineral and food resources from regions like Darfur. These resources, including gold and livestock, are channeled into lucrative export markets in Egypt and the Gulf. Regional geopolitical dynamics further prolong and intensify the war, linking local hunger and displacement to broader global and imperial interests.(9)
In both Gaza and Sudan, starvation—enforced through bombs and the destruction of food systems—is a deliberate mechanism of imperial and genocidal power.
In Gaza, humanitarian ‘aid’ has been transformed into a bloody business, exemplified by Israel’s strict control over aid delivery to Gaza. Since the establishment of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) on 27 May 2025, military oversight of convoys and distribution sites has turned food movement into a regulated extension of the siege. (10)
Monitoring groups and UN agencies document repeated incidents in which Palestinians who were attempting to reach GHF distribution points have been shelled or shot at, and aid convoys obstructed.(11) Starvation levels pushed women, men and children to risk their lives for food boxes often not fit for human consumption.
Although the October 8 2025 ceasefire agreement included provisions to increase aid access, implementation has repeatedly failed (12), allowing food to remain a lever of power rather than a path to relief.
This manipulation of humanitarian flows is an extension of genocide, with women disproportionately bearing the brunt. Salma, a Palestinian woman, described her daily struggle:
“The loss of dignity cuts as deeply as the hunger. At aid centers, women face pushing, shouting, humiliation, even threats. I fear for my daughters in those places. Every attempt to get food feels like another wound. Recently I walked for hours to reach an aid distribution point. There were thousands of desperate people, crying and pushing while soldiers fired in the air. When I finally reached the front, everything was gone. I came back to my children empty-handed. On days when there is a little food, I give it to them and survive only on tea or water.”(13)
In Sudan, humanitarian access has been severely restricted in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur where the RSF has maintained a siege for more than 500 days, deliberately using starvation by blocking food and lifesaving humanitarian aid. RSF forces have constructed over 38 km of earthen berms around the city to control population movement in and out and to reinforce the blockade, with civilians trapped without safe exit routes and relief deliveries often obstructed or prevented altogether.(14) Recent reports from the Sudan Solidarity Collective(15) paint a grim picture of life under the RSF siege of El-Fasher. Food prices have skyrocketed—two sacks of flour cost $10,000 USD, and a kilogram of rice sells for around $96 USD—while only ten kitchens and food distribution centers remain operational amidst constant drone and artillery attacks. Scarcity extends to animal feed, which is often spoiled, causing illness. Civilians face life-threatening conditions simply leaving their homes for food, with many killed or kidnapped by RSF forces. Medical supplies are nearly nonexistent, forcing communities to improvise care, and 70–80% of residents have fled, leaving behind mostly the elderly, injured, or otherwise trapped.(16)
II. Food Sovereignty and Resistance
Where states and occupying powers deploy hunger to annihilate, defending the right to food and life is an act of both survival and resistance by communities. Across Palestine, Sudan and the Global South, women build infrastructures of survival through insurgent agriculture and mutual aid.
In Gaza, planting and fishing are political acts of refusal. Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s farmlands and fisheries mirrors a wider pattern of land and ocean grabbing driven by settler colonialism. But even as communities are forcibly reconfigured, Palestinians reinforce their connection to land and sea—the foundation of their political and cultural identity. In a reflection written for the Institute for Palestine Studies, Mariam Mushtaha describes how her family resurrected a battered garden in their new home after being forcibly displaced, transforming it into both a source of sustenance and a symbol of resilience. Over time, what was once a barren patch of earth became alive again with vegetables. She writes:
“At a time when vegetables were scarce and, if available, unbelievably expensive, we were able to eat potatoes, lemon, peppers, and tomatoes — the fruits of our long months of hard work and quiet determination. Each meal we prepared from our own garden, even simple ones, felt like a victory not just over hunger, but over despair. For Gazans, agriculture is not only a source of sustenance, but also a tradition deeply rooted in Palestinian heritage.”(17)
As Lina Isma’il notes, “For Palestinian women, farming is not only about food — it is about memory, identity, and collective survival. Every seed saved is a refusal of erasure.” Similar acts of collective defiance are led by Palestinian women who work tirelessly in displacement camps to prepare whatever food is available for their families and neighbors.(18) Their labor collapses the false divide between humanitarianism and resistance: feeding each other becomes both survival and liberation—a feminist political economy of care in the ruins of racial capitalism.
Fishers, too, continue to assert their right to the sea. In October 2025, the Global Sumud Flotilla diverted Israeli naval forces long enough for Gaza’s fishers to cast their nets to be able to catch larger quantities of fish and partially break the siege. (19)
Shayma Nader calls this practice “insurgent agriculture”—the re-rooting of life against a system that seeks its extermination:
“Insurgent agriculture is a practice challenging settler-colonial and neoliberal commodification of land and resources, emphasizing resistance, steadfastness and hope as ways to reroot in the earth and reroute towards liberated futures and communities.”(20)
In Sudan, the Women’s Emergency Response Rooms (WRRs) emerged from revolutionary Resistance Committees established during the 2018–2019 revolution. When the war intensified in 2023, they converted these networks into decentralized food distribution systems, providing food, psychological support, and protection for women and children. Hana Jafar argues that these rooms have adapted to the conditions of war,while retaining participatory decision-making rooted in feminist organizing. What begins as emergency relief evolves into a mode of grassroots democracy in a fragmented political terrain. As Nyana, one of the volunteers puts it: “Today, we’ve established women’s branch offices in areas where women couldn’t even walk freely in public before, let alone work. Many started as informal women’s gatherings or coffee circles. With support from the women rooms, these evolved into productive cooperatives specializing in soap-making, baking, and other crafts.” (21) In Gedaref, eastern Sudan, a women’s response room emerged in mid-2024 as people fled RSF attacks in Sennar. Formed by feminist activists from the Gedaref Students and Women’s Gathering network, the group is structured horizontally, with teams for logistics, medical care, protection, and media.
As Istabraq, a volunteer, explains: “Our primary goal was to provide women and children with essential hygiene supplies and to establish mobile clinics in shelters and schools. We also aimed to train women on self-protection and create child-friendly spaces.” (22)
These initiatives reclaim public space for women and transform survival work into sites of resistance and social transformation. These are not acts of charity; they are insurgent humanitarianism rooted in collective care. Food sovereignty here is a survival tactic and revolutionary horizon—a tool to respond to genocide and occupation, and a foundation for feminist economies and liberated futures.
III. Demands and Political Vision for Food Sovereignty
The insurgent work of Palestinian farmers and Sudanese WRRs offer autonomous systems of nourishment, care, and political refusal, providing life where formal humanitarianism enforces scarcity. These practices are connected to a larger South feminist political economy where rural, Indigenous and peasant women worldwide feed communities and steward biodiversity while facing dispossession.
And to dismantle genocidal hunger, systemic transformation is required. The Nyéléni global forums offer us a comprehensive blueprint to build momentum towards a collective vision of systemic transformation—from the grassroots, for the planet, and for future generations:
• Return power to the people: Build democratic, community-led food governance. • Food sovereignty and agroecology: Protect seeds, biodiversity and Indigenous knowledge; reject corporate monopolies. • Land and territory: Secure peasant, Indigenous and fisherfolk land rights; end land-grabbing and extractive projects. • Decommodify life: Guarantee food, water and health as public rights, not market commodities. • Climate justice and energy democracy: Reject false market “solutions” and center frontline communities. • Feminist transformation: Recognize and value unpaid care labor, center women’s leadership, dismantle patriarchy. • Global solidarity and accountability: Build coordinated transnational action to confront racial capitalism and imperialism.
These demands are not abstract. As La Via Campesina puts it: “Our struggle for food sovereignty is inseparable from the struggle against corporate power. Agribusiness monopolies profit from hunger, and dismantling them is a condition for life”
Conclusion — Weapons of Mass Construction
Thus, “changing ourselves,” as Assata Shakur urges, means more than personal ethics—it means building collective institutions of care that make nourishment non-negotiable.
The weaponization of hunger is not an aberration; it is the logical outcome of a global political economy that treats food as comodity, not care. Feminist movements in Palestine, Sudan, and across the Global South show us that food systems rooted in care, reciprocity, and autonomy already exist, even under siege.These fragile but persistent, insurgent but life-affirming alternative systems need us to defend, resource, and globalize them so that food becomes the ground of liberation rather than the machinery of death.
Sudan Solidarity Collective (@sdnsolidarity), “Urgent Call to Action from partners on the ground and the worsening condition in El Fasher,” X post, October 8, 2025, https://x.com/sdnsolidarity/status/1975816678068879602.
Gaza Soup Kitchen, Instagram photo post, October 9, 2025, caption by Gaza Soup Kitchen: “Early this morning, Alaa headed to the market to see what she could gather for our neighbors and other displaced families…” https://www.instagram.com/p/DPzJyF5jlVM/
Instagram reel, @manzoorbarakahfoods October 4, 2025, caption: “Fishers in Gaza managed to cast their nets after the Israeli navy was too preoccupied blocking the Global Sumud Flotilla…” https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPYPr9xjV3S/.
Nelly Bassily is an decolonial, anti-racist feminist and disability justice activist. She has over 15 years of experience in the community/non-profit sector. Born in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal to Egyptian parents with Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian roots, her activism is rooted in the realities of immigration, diaspora and decolonization.
Her biggest and most important challenge to date is being a mother to a kiddo whom she loves with all her heart!
