CARE’s Chief Humanitarian Officer Deepmala Mahla published an opinion piece on Newsweek where she discusses how armed conflict and violence fuel hunger and starvation. Nearly 300 million people around the world are facing extreme hunger, according to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises recently released—a threefold increase in hunger since 2016. The leading cause of starvation is armed conflict, which continues to displace communities, disrupt food production, and block humanitarian aid.
In the searing heat of eastern Sudan, I met two young girls, Lujain and Fajr. Before the war erupted, they were students in Khartoum, one dreaming of exploring the world as an airline pilot, and another aspiring to become a heart surgeon. Today, they live in a displacement camp hundreds of miles from home, where a single meal a day is a luxury. Their dreams haven’t disappeared—but they’ve been deferred, maybe indefinitely.
Everywhere I went, I encountered women and girls like them, all of whom bore the weight of multiple losses—loved ones, homes, regular meals, futures. As they grappled with all they had lost, questions lingered in the air, unspoken but unmistakable: “Are we less than human? Is that why the world has turned away?”
Read Deepmala’s opinion piece here.