the cognitive development impediments from that can be passed on from generation to generation so we're not only a risk of failing to raise children we're potentially risk. in the kasai region of the democratic republic of congo three quarters of a million children a suffering from acute malnutrition two years ago fighting broke out between the army and. rebel fighters leaving more than a million fleeing the majority unable to find food guns a fall in silence but hunger remains as farm a struggle to replant fields that have been pillaged and actually very shocked by it by what i saw and what i heard. i visited several hospitals where children were treated for complication of syria these children were struggling to survive in syria the government's been accused of war crimes after using a strategy of surrender or starve areas including. refugee camp were held

under siege while crucial food and medical supplies were blocked all the while the regime continued to mount bombing campaigns the new report by save the children says starvation is being used as a weapon of war other countries it listed as most dangerous to children including iraq afghanistan somalia nigeria south sudan and the central african republic global hunger is now on the rise reversing two decades of decline as aid organizations according governments to account for blocking aid and attacking aid workers they continue to grapple with chronic funding shortfalls possibly preventing them from getting food to where it's most needed for inside story lore about a manly al-jazeera. thank you ok so listen to our panel joining us here in doha sultan baraka at the rector of the center for conflict and humanitarian studies at the door high institute for

graduate studies in sheffield in the u.k. just to help my research fellow in global food justice at the university of sheffield and joining us in london cayennes a lark a spokesman for save the children welcome to the program can let me start with you mean your report also says that say save the children is making an assessment that between august and december of this year about four hundred ninety thousand children are likely to die as a result of hunger just how do you reach that number how do you reach that conclusion in the first place. i thank you for having us on the show so i think the first thing to say with the number in the report is the number the five hundred ninety thousand children are estimated for the entirety of the year so i think there was a slayer in one of the versions of the paper so we're talking about five hundred one thousand for the entirety of twenty eighteen that said we worked out all of these numbers are the big four point five million which is

a huge huge number and the scale of the problem we just can't hide from four point five million it's a total number estimated by u.n. figures that will require treatment for human interaction in twenty eighteen then based on the estimation of how many people agencies and u.n. agencies are going to reach are left with five hundred ninety thousand which probably won't get covered and potentially it's an underestimate as well and then of those obviously a huge amount likely to be dying before the end of the year but the number is for the total of twenty eighteen and as the piece at the beginning said that's twenty percent up and twenty sixteen and actually we're expecting figures from here for you know in the next couple of days which will probably be pushing us even higher up the scale. just a twenty percent increase since two thousand sixteen is that because they are more wars or they are to reasons as well i think this is a very timely reports from save the children and i think it's really important that politicians also respond to this it's important to remember as well though that hunger and malnutrition are being reproduced systematically in today's food system

so it's not only conflict that causes it's a cause of hunger malnutrition but at the moment it's a major it's a major driver ok. i mean the report is focusing on ten countries most of them have some sort of conflict ongoing. we always see aid organizations new mini tour u.n. workers in the field so why is it so difficult to actually reach those people. or the number of combined difficulties and they kind of kind of contributed charter the first one is is one a simple one of axis starvation has always been a weapon of war and historically this was the one of the main ways you get communities to surrender is by sea laying siege and cutting the food and water supplies and so on now in the in the recent years the international law has regulated the ability to see if there was a and as

a city militants as the but with supplies of food now that is not always respected is not respected by the size that are laying siege and occasionally and quite often in some parts where there is total broke breakdown of government it's not respected by the resistance groups militia as such or so access is very important aspect the other aspect is displacement that when conflict people get displaced when the displays they lose access to their own grounds their one feels that not able to produce food so there's less supplies in the market and also there is the purchasing power of communities they are less likely to have the ability to purchase food and of course to diversify the type of food intake the consuming and that leads to some forms of malnutrition ok so again we are talking about access and maybe probably when one talks about starvation of men with derision

these days yemen comes to the forefront. probably you have the same situation in other conflict zones how difficult it is for your workers to be able to reach the populations in the them i'm supposing they have to sort of negotiate every stretch of the road until they reach their. yes we're going back to the number of five hundred ninety thousand children this year cited so that's obviously a huge huge number so one part of it is resources but you say another part of it is getting access to these communities in the most in need and i think it manifests itself differently in different countries so you gave the example of yemen where actually there's been examples of aid agencies having the resources having the aid ready to go but the countrywide located meant that we couldn't get there in other cases it might just be general insecurity or the weather or difficulty trying to turn transporting food in some of these contexts so varies from place to place i

think the one thing i would say is it's difficult but we can reach a lot of these children and they weren't there were there were definitely we don't . you can just tell you are good at talking about. food insecurity and conflict at the same time is basically stating the obvious so how does one get around the i mean how does there are laws around there are charges around but how does one make sure that they're actually applied. in those areas. yeah i think what we need to recognize is more widely within the global food system inequality and power are being reproduced in a number of different ways and often there is a tendency to portray hunger as the outcome of exceptional circumstances be that a complex situation or air the outcome of say natural natural disaster but what we need to pay much more attention to is how hunger and inequality are actually

systematically being reproduced within that food system at different levels at the global level but also at the national level and there is very much a reluctance on the account of governments to intervene within what is often seen as a global a global food market so there are all sorts of different ways in which inequalities are already being reproduced not only when it comes to a situation like in conflict and we need to recognise that much more widely than we currently do so just adding to it just i was saying is it a matter that conflict brings food insecurity or you also have diverse that food insecurity could lead to conflict well i mean my understanding globally food insecurity has been on decline over the last ten fifteen years in fact if you compare the statistics from the global hunger index nine hundred ninety in nineteen eighteen nineteen nineties two thousand eighteen there's been a significant reduction globally but within conflict there has been

a spike in terms of malnutrition hunger and starvation in certain communities so i think although i agree that inequality has not been addressed and some rich countries continue to produce and in some places dump food in order to protect the market price of food production in their own countries and some poor countries still have less access to food conflict does produce very specific circumstances that creates these spikes in statistics and requires special. attention axis we talked about it is is is is key but increasingly agencies are reluctant to take the risk as they used to do in the past because of what has happened in iraq in syria and afghanistan the many cases of aid workers being killed aid convoys being being attacked so now they require a degree of guarantee before they start a journey to to bring food into

a country at the same time they have developed and evolved and they develop strategies to to create greater resistance resilience sorry within those communities so you see for example within syria the fertile red crescent recently produced. or encouraged the ability to produce wheat under siege so there are areas that have no access to the international market but people have gone back to producing food within those areas and like there are many programs agencies are trying to. build in those areas because the nature of the conflict is different we are now living increasingly protracted conflicts that are going on average six seven eight years and it means you can't just rely on aid agencies bringing the of a load of food every now and then so you have to go back to the very basics of communities and help them produce food locally where i know you saying that wars last seven eight years but i think also this place people displacement can become

a way of living for decades in some cases now can just picking up on the difficulties the logistics underground for bringing food security to the populations in need i think isn't there a danger that with the amount of conflicts that exist these days maybe a bit more than a decade ago or so. it's becoming the new normal that you know children are suffering that people are displays that people are hung. and maybe they'll be a danger also that the international community would show much interest yeah i think it's always a risk in kind of doing a pretty compelling fatigue but what we've seen over the last couple of years in particular if you look at the example of somalia last year there was very nearly a massive famine in somalia in twenty seventeen but i think even though there was one in twenty eleven where two hundred fifty thousand people did die the public did mobilize governments didn't mobilize so i think the sentiment is that poor because

they know that the quality of aid is that we can save these lives so it's definitely something that we need to think about i think probably a bigger barrier is getting and up the resources in and i actually have to agree with a lot of what the other panelists have said you know in the protected nature of some of these crises it's not just about. kind of aid agencies coming in it's about all of the communities the local national regional and global level coming together holding people to account for violations of international law or just violations of the kind of the rules in the norms around protecting children and civilians in conflict as well as building food security and trying to eradicate some of the economy inequalities which are all kind of most acute in conflict settings and result in the numbers that we have today which is one in one children potentially dying every minute because of the nutrition in conflict zones i mean it is there's a nice quote from one of our directors earlier you know war is being played out in the bodies of children and it's avoidable we need to do something about

a certain let's bring let's talk about yemen for example because famine doesn't happen overnight there's warnings. n.g.o.s many tarion world. issues reports and statements there brooke it's happening but nobody does anything at the end for example yemen it could it says situation that could have been avoided because it's completely manmade isn't it it isn't in yemen before the war relied a little bit on imports of food but quite a lot on production of food internally now with the war the infrastructure has been destroyed some commuters have been displaced unable to work the land as they used to in the past in the past and they're not able to market their products across the country so that has created some problem added to that of course now. the food supplies that's coming in chairman particularly food aid. the majority of it is coming through all her data port and this has been under attack since earlier this

year and it hasn't really been won by either of the sides from the saudi perspective they see it as a source of income for the houses because the house these tax the the imports of the port and they would like to cut that source of from the other side from the community side it's the only and main entry point for food and from the aid agencies every day that she's bringing majority of their aid through her data and there will really struggle to find an alternative port if the how they deport is goes so just so we have a situation that's one example yemen but it's a situation that's perpetrated in other areas where basically the civilian population is sort of held hostages from if i may use that word from all sides we keep on saying that survey she is a war crime does a un resolution as well but at the end of the day who is responsible.

who do you bring accountable for the situation yeah i think this is a very good question and it's it's not necessary and an easy answer to that there are multiple so. situation that the moments where we face protracted crises and where embodied has an enormous influence on food security there is a working group at the united nations committee reform committee for food security that precisely looks at least issues and there have been many different n.g.o.s also like save children working on this coming up with recommendations so some recommendations are that there needs to be more direct reporting to desex the u.n. secretary general the need to be more early warning systems as to when and where hunger is being used as a weapon west of asia is being used as a political weapon. and the u.n. the director general of the of the u.n. . it has been recommended by reports reports the swiss federation and the dutch government would actually be asked to name the people who are responsible for

causing these situations and who are using hunger as a weapon of war so what i'm trying to say is there are a lot of record recommendations being made by organizations like save the children and many others but often the issue is that these reports are not followed up upon and there is a lot of data out there as a fellow band analysts have always made also made clear and there are a lot of things that can be done but what is really important is that the political will is there and that the u.k. government in this case but also individual politicians are willing to respond to these figures and actually state their own responses to what these reports tell us and are willing to take that kind of political responsibility and in my view that's often what is lacking. so again. lack of political responsibility what do you think about that because governments do acknowledge that there is a problem but then does anything else happens i mean there's

a lot of noise each time. what a report similar to the one we're discussing this program comes out then what's a follow up you know again agreeing with. my fellow this is there is definitely a lot of political action in follow up to some of these numbers and i think particularly in this case you know hunger. although everybody is kind of in agreement that it is likely to increase in conflicts and things like that there isn't the same sense of kind of moral outrage with hunger as a risk with the use of for example chemical or chemical weapons or explosive weapons or why their effects which we are starting to see over time seem much more action both at the kind of the global market upper level and by individual governments and state so. i think what we saw happen is when you talk a little bit of a coming together between hunger and some of those morally. reprehensible kind of other types of crimes because this is trauma on children it's a form of violence a report earlier this year from save the children says one in six children are

living in conflict zones and there are more risk than ever in conflict zones. so you know it's just a matter of marrying the two things together that the type of action that we're seeing in other sectors and with other issues for this. sauterne just you know this outcry when chemical weapons are used why wouldn't there be a similar i cry when children the most vulnerable the ones humanity has the obligation to protect our left to die of hunger in a world where does an abundance of food let's be fair. well it depends on how were reported the context is and as you know in yemen it wasn't were reported at the start of the conflict and a little bit by little as the public opinion shifted and people started to discuss or read differently. media outlets including al-jazeera was covering it much better than they did in the past so i think there is an outrage out there about what's what's going on the difficulty with the hunger is that it kind of creeps in

a minute just creeps in slowly it's not a sudden phenomenon that you see it and you can really bring in the cameras and talk about it immediately it is a gradual process you lose access you lose supplies useability to buy food you get displaced you start saving on what you eat you start making very hard decisions as to who you feed in your family you know for some families on a daily basis and children are not necessarily given priority in time when you have to feed men and fighters and so on so in communities where there's little food the priorities are considered differently and of course when you get that mixed up with the politics of it all it becomes much more difficult to to untangle and i think just to try and also you earlier question the ultimate responsibility is with the warring parties and in particular with a party that is laying siege to an area that if you are concerned about smuggling

weapons and this is the excuse given often is that in convoys of food weapons and smuggle the wall should the international we should be able to give guarantees that food convoys are only just that food can for convoys ok and just that just briefly because we're nearly to the end of the program. one could argue that it's not the lack of food that is bringing man attrition starvation hunger but it's actually politics. yes i mean this is a very broad question so it's a shame it's lost but it's i think in addition to what's been said before about hunger kind of creeping in why it's very difficult to to tackle it i think we can see that in different places across the world and this is making this point not to relativize what's going on in protracted conflict situations but support out that actually reliance on food aid and food banks for example here in the u.k. has risen exponentially over the last couple of years and i am afraid that this

kind of the pendency on on a and food bank is actually becoming more normalized this is also to do because we primarily view markets are as our main point of access to food whereas if we're talking about things like resilience for example we might think about accessing food more directly but our current food system contains the so many different linkages and is very fragile and we're very much dependent on that system to feed us. but that the kind of dependency that comes from that is very new in a way if we look at say fifty sixty years ago fish systems were more much more localized and we're more resilient as a result of it because we had more direct access to food so this kind of situation where there's only one way to access food which is through markets excludes a lot of people who are then for one reason or another do not have access through the market become very very vulnerable but this pendens is becoming more and more

normalized ok well unfortunately we have reached the end of the program but i mean save the children is calling on a new protection strategy and one child dies but a minute during this program at least twenty five children have lost their lives think about that well thanks to all our guests just to hartman and. i think you do for. watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our web site al jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter the handle is at a.j. story from me how does the how me and the entire theme ganda by for now.

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ineffective and outright dangerous donald trump's national security advisor delivers a blistering attack against the international criminal court and threaten sanctions . palestinians are trying to prosecute israel for war crimes at the i.c.c. and now the trumpet ministration will close the p.l.o. as diplomatic office in washington also ahead this hour a weapon izing starvation how hunger in conflict zones could kill a child every minutes before the end of this year and iraq's prime minister goes on a listening tour in the city where they have been deadly protests against his government. and the if you just image of holy day schools as movie a joke of it makes a grand slam trophy in the full team of the u.s. open. to this news. thank you for joining us the u.s. has threatened to arrest and prosecute judges and other officials of the

international criminal court the blunt warning was delivered by president donald trump's national security advisor john bolton speaking to a conservative advocacy group bolton described the court as unaccountable and downright dangerous during the same speech he confirmed that the trumpet ministration is closing the palestinian liberation organization's diplomatic office in washington the p.l.o. has been pursuing war crimes charges against israel at the i.c.c. . today on the eve of september the eleventh i want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the president of the united states. the united states will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court we will not cooperate with the i.c.c. we will provide notices where we have three correspondents on the stories and

a hoarder is in the hague outside the international criminal court harry foster is standing by with palestinian reaction from ramallah in the occupied west bank we begin with kimberly hawkins our white house correspondent in washington d.c. kimberly this was john bolton's first major address since joining the trump administration and he went to hide at the i.c.c. . yes he certainly did essentially what he's saying is that he has long held and many in the united states believe in the troubled ministration believes that it's rife with abuses it undermines u.s. sovereignty even violates the u.s. constitution that mandates a separation of powers and a check on those powers that none of this is possible and for that reason in the end many of those reasons alone that the u.s. will not recognize any attempt by the i.c.c. to potentially follow through with any sort of investigation into alleged war crimes when it comes to u.s.

actions in afghanistan in fact promising very strict action if that were to take place in the form of criminal sanctions under the u.s. justice system the criminal justice system which could in fact mean sanctioning of individuals blocking entry into the united states and even criminal prosecution in the united states the u.s. is not a party to the rome statue came billy it's not part of the international criminal court so when they talk about these sanctions against the i.c.c. what exactly do they mean. oh well what they mean is that the united states would take action because it does not believe that the i.c.c. has any jurisdiction the u.s. does not recognize international law that it is a threat to its sovereignty and as a result it would be taking very aggressive action what this has to do with is the fact that the i.c.c. has also threatened action with regard to the united states so certainly this is retaliatory in some respects and the national security adviser john bolton making

it very clear that if that actually were to take place that it would be met sterling strongly and swiftly by the united states kimberly thank you for that kimberly hocket live for us at the white house now let's go over to the hague headquarters of the international criminal court zain a holder is there for is there not quite aggressive posturing and aggressive language from the u.s. towards the i.c.c. or spin their reaction. yes harsh language from john bolton the i.c.c. did not react after the speech but they did read the excerpts of that speech which was leaked to the media and we reached out to officials and the i.c.c. in the statement that they gave really they used diplomatic language in one way or another trying to dismiss really the importance of the united states when they say the court benefits from the membership of one hundred twenty three parties representing all regions of the world so dismissing the fact that the united states

is not a member of this organization also in that statement the i.c.c. statement they remain committed quote to independent import impartial exercise of our mandate saying really we're not going to pick and choose which cases we are going to try but what is not clear is will the i.c.c. pursue you know trying the u.s. military and u.s. intelligence service men in afghanistan for alleged war crimes because we know that when the poor prosecutor formally requested this this is really what angered the united states they've had a rocky relationship from the start the u.s. is not the member of the organization of the i.c.c. but really the fact that they wanted to try the u.s. servicemen in afghanistan worsened the relationship great broad assault on the i.c.c. by the americans over afghanistan but also over israel palestine zina as you know the palestinians are threatening to take israel to the i.c.c. over what they say are the crimes committed against them how likely is the

international criminal court to undertake an investigation on israel given this pressure. well that is not clear how the i.c.c. is going to react but we have been speaking to former prosecutors human rights defenders and they say look at the end of the day the i.c.c. is being used as a political tool as a political instrument by powerful nations like the united states they accuse the united states for example of acting above the law you know why is it that u.s. servicemen or its ally israel are treated differently from other countries when other countries other nationals can be prosecuted and not u.s. nationals as well as israeli national so there is anger among former prosecutors human rights defenders they say that why did the united states for example vote to refer libya to the i.c.c. it wasn't because it had interests to do so so they see this really as double standards on the part of the united states what the court is going to do next it is hard for us to say like i mentioned the reaction really

a very watered down reaction using diplomatic language that's as much as they were willing to say up to this point thank you for that is in a harder live for us at the hague and finally we go to harry fawcett in ramallah in the occupied west bank john bolton and the state department confirming today harry that the p.l.o. office in washington d.c. will be shut down tell us about the palestinian reaction to this latest move against his leadership. well we've had the most recent reaction just in the last few minutes coming from the spokesman for mahmoud abbas the palestinian president saying that issues such as jerusalem such as the palestinian right of return they were worth a lot more than the relationship with the united states that ties very much with what we heard from eric can't the secretary general of the palestine liberation organization earlier we spoke to him saying that really this is the last thing in a series of moves that the united states could do already we've had the declaration

of jerusalem as israel's capital as far as the u.s. is concerned the moving of the embassy there and then in recent weeks we've seen these huge slashes in u.s. aid money two hundred million dollars withdrawn from funding to the p.a. the entirety of the u.s. funding of an ra the u.n. agency that assists palestinian refugees the ending of u.s. money twenty five million dollars worth annually for palestinian hospitals in occupied east jerusalem and so the palestinians are saying that this is very much in accordance with that kind of pressure against the u.s. against the palestinians right and that as much as the united states is saying that this is punishing the palestinians over the i.c.c. pressure to get israel up in front of the i.c.c. it's part of sort of bullying pressure tactics more generally it sounds like carried the americans intentions to force the palestinians to return to the negotiating table is having the opposite effect but where do the palestinians go

from here in light of all this pressure not just on them but also on the i.c.c. now. yes they say they will redouble their efforts in terms of seeing israel investigated and in due course they hope prosecuted at the i.c.c. . saying that they will also raise the issue of the impending destruction of a bedouin village in occupied in the occupied west bank which. as indorsed by the israeli high court just last week i think also they will be looking at some of the language in john bolton speech around this substantive decision about the closure of the p.l.o. office and on the potential for any kind of action against israel at the i.c.c. i mean the united states saying that it will stand with its allies but naming only israel among those allies so it's obviously an important factor in this decision but also when talking about the kinds of things that the i.c.c. might investigate that the threats that he sees the i.c.c.

carrying out to investigate what he said was self-defense against terrorism but also the construction of what he called housing units in the occupied west bank no longer the u.s. administration calling them settlements it seems but now referring to them as as housing it is when you think back to the early days of the trump administration when trump himself in the.