THE POLITICS OF FOOD AID: A BATTLEGROUND BETWEEN HUMAN SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY INTERESTS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17501/2357268X.2025.10104Keywords:
food aid, human security, foreign policy, food security, food assistance, national interestAbstract
Theoretically, food assistance aims to uphold human security by reducing hunger and malnutrition, particularly in countries affected by climate change. However, in practice, it is frequently instrumentalized as a tool of donor states’ foreign policy, creating tensions between the needs of recipients and the political agendas of donors. This study seeks to analyze how foreign policy interests such as strengthening strategic alliances, stabilizing geopolitical regions, and opening new markets influence the allocation, timing, and conditionalities of food aid, and to assess their impact on the core principles of human security. The research adopts a qualitative methodology, employing secondary data collection methods derived from various literature sources, including academic journals, newspapers, and reports from international humanitarian organizations. The collected data are analyzed using the conceptual framework of the instrumentalization of humanitarian aid. This study uses Russia’s distribution of food aid to six African countries namely Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Mali, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, and Somalia, while disregarding other African nations also facing acute food insecurity due to climate-induced drought as the case to analyze. This study finds that foreign policy considerations often serve as stronger predictors of food aid allocation than actual humanitarian need. This politicization results in delayed assistance, uneven distribution, and the imposition of conditionalities that prioritize donor economic and political objectives over the resolution of local food insecurity. As the conclusion, the instrumentalization of food aid as a foreign policy tool fundamentally undermines its primary purpose of enhancing human security. It compromises core humanitarian principles such as neutrality and impartiality, and reveals a significant gap between humanitarian rhetoric and operational realities on the ground.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Rasyiq Arif Buamona
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
