Holistic approach needs to be adopted for curbing Food Insecurity, Poverty, Militancy and Conflict

Experts urged that “there needs to be adopted a holistic approach in order to take on the looming threats of food insecurity, poverty and militancy, in order to guarantee human security.” It was said at a consultative meeting with civil society on Relationship between Food insecurity, poverty and Conflict here at SDPI on Monday.

The speakers on the panel for the discussion were Sahib Ha, Head of Vulnerability and Food Security Assessment, World Food Programme, Syed Kamal Shah, Former Federal Secretary Interior, Dr. Abid Q. Suleri, Executive Director SDPI, Mueed Yousuf of United States Institute of Peace; Faisal Gorchani of SDPI moderated the session.

Mueed Yousuf of USIP introduced the activities of his institution that they are a Washington based Think Tank shared the activities and background of his organisation, he said that SDPI of a partner organisation in working on various themes related to conflict resolution, conflict prevention and conflict management. He further elaborated that we should learn from experiences of other countries that improved their internal management and resolved internal conflicts and subsequently developed without needlessly relying on foreign countries to help them to progress. “Corruption has become a norm in Pakistan and without individual self-accountability it is impossible to develop a balanced society in Pakistan ”, he added.

Syed Kamal Shah shared his perspective on status of Pakistan in terms of food security. He said that there is a need to differentiate between extremism and terrorism and all extremists are not necessarily terrorists. He was speaking about various types of securities and their relationship with each other. He expressed that the Muslims are being stigmatized; he quoted the examples of LTTE of Srilanka, Japanese Kamikaze Pilots and certain other examples to show that whenever there is a feeling of oppression and helplessness, terrorism emerges. So it is quite dangerous to relate a religion with terrorism. He further elaborated that there needs to be a cooperative approach in dealing with such conflicts and need to adopt both hard and soft approaches rather than dealing only with coercion as it could deteriorate the situation further. Elaborating on extremism he said that, extremism is a state of mind and heart, and thus extremism and terrorism needs to be separated and treated differently. Extremism could be dealt with a softer approach it is related to a matter of the heart while terrorism has its ideological reason behind its execution. He said the causes of extremism include lack of education, poverty and food insecurity, long fostering political disputes, and political deprivation and a sense of powerlessness is also a major contributor.

Dr. Sahib Haq said that the regions having more food insecurity had a higher rate of militancy notably areas like Waziristan, Dera Bugti and some other parts of Northern Punjab have had a higher rate of militancy as compared to other areas of conflict. Sahib Haq was of the opinion that militancy has a direct connection with food security and needs to deal with an economic perspective, like creating job opportunities for the unemployed etc. He also said that disaster also had a very negative effect on farmers and small scale industries. He also said that after the floods in the Food security deteriorated in the country under normal condition- from 38% to 49%. He also said that disasters further worsened the situation-increased the number of food insecure people and if that issue was not addressed in near future it can lead to even more militancy as deprivation and food insecurity were among the major causes of militancy according to him.

Dr. Abid Q. Suleri talked about social dimensions of food security. He said that there are four dimensions to food insecurity being individual, national, regional, and global security and they are all interlinked so steps need to be taken to curb it on an individual level so to prevent it from reaching higher levels. He said that 1969-71 was the best era for economic growth but that was ignored and Bangladesh was lost in the same era. There needs to be a proper way to explore such opportunities and now Baluchistan is in the same situation. He gave the numbers that in 2003 27% of population was food insecure, now in 2010 55% of population is food insecure. He said that militancy also leads to poverty and it is a vicious cycle that never ends. In 2003-2007 boom was at micro-level, there is a need for active field implementers. He also discussed that there is a conflict of haves and have-nots and the Mullah-Marxist network is benefitting out of it. He said that there needs to be debt servicing, reduction in defense expenditure, and the issues need to be publicized not politicized.

In the question answer session there were questions about the relationship of poverty leading to militancy and also the socio-economic aspects of conflicts and their repercussions. Participants shared their views on the lack of education, food and health facilities in the conflict stricken areas that can in turn be even more disastrous.