ROME (Reuters) – Pope Francis yesterday condemned the use of hunger as a “weapon of war” and lamented the fact that it was easier to move weapons across borders than the aid needed to keep civilians alive.
Days after aid agencies were allowed to deliver food to the besieged Syrian town of Daraya for the first time since 2012, Francis said preventing supplies from reaching war zones was a violation of international law.
On a visit to the headquarters of the World Food Programme (WFP), the pope said the world faced a “strange paradox”.
“Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by involved and incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not.
“In some cases, hunger itself is used as a weapon of war,” he said in an address to the WFP, the Rome-based UN agency which is the largest provider of food aid worldwide.
“(Weapons) circulate with brazen and virtually absolute freedom in many parts of the world. As a result, wars are fed, not people,” said Francis, who has often condemned arms manufacturing and trafficking.
In January, UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon accused both the Syrian government and rebels of using starvation as a weapon, calling the practice a war crime.
