On Tuesday, September 13th at 10am ET, AfP joined the Stimson Center for a conversation surfacing key issues surrounding food insecurity as a driver and consequence of conflict—particularly amidst the war in Ukraine—and identifying solutions governments, the private sector, and the NGO community can deploy to address the current crisis effectively. This hybrid event featured the EU Delegation to the USA’s Silke Boger, Food for the Hungry’s Jonathan Papoulidis, USAID Contractor David Alpher, and Stimson Center’s Johanna Mendelson Forman.

Key Event Takeaways:

• Food insecurity is affected by resilience in supply change, governance, climate change and many other things beyond simply a lack in the supply of food. These things fall within the heading of “fragility” and are one of the reasons why a proactive approach such as the one set out by the GFA is so useful.

• What we need to look at in the next several years is coordination. The pressing issues of our time (climate change, conflict, food insecurity, etc.) are all interconnected and we need to make our responses more interconnected in order to be more effective. We need to create a system or forum to discuss these interconnected issues in a more frank manner.

• Integration of programming across agencies is easier when you have a top level “thou shalt” policy that mandates collaboration. The Global Fragility Act provides real advantages in this area in the way that it is phrased.

• The perennial problem is how to get the interagency to work together on food security. Another problem is how to coordinate thought leadership on this issue, especially in the framework of resilience.

• Another key component as we look at creating resilience in food supply chains is evaluation and assessment of efforts. One assessment or report is a snapshot in time. Unless you learn as you go, you won’t be using the best methods to understand a specific context. 

• Conversations about food security tend to be high-level and from the top down. We need to do a better job of including grassroots voices and making sure that information for the ground level can be effectively and consistently communicated to policymakers. 

• We need to focus on food as a human right, as a core component of stability and peace, and as a key issue in reforming the international system. The response to this focus should include recognition that food is a very critical compounding factor in conflict, investment in resiliency in food systems and application of systems thinking to food security. 

Speaker Bios:

Johanna Mendelson Forman (Moderator):

Johanna Mendelson Forman is an Adjunct Professor at American University’s School of International Service. She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, where she heads the Food Security Program. Her frontline experience as a policy maker on conflict and stabilization efforts drove her interest in connecting the role of food in conflict, resulting in the creation of Conflict Cuisine®: An Introduction to War and Peace Around the Dinner Table, an interdisciplinary course she teaches at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. As an Adjunct Professor leading this innovative curriculum, Johanna challenges her students to explore new ways of looking at diplomacy, conflict resolution, and civic engagement to understand how food, as a form of Soft Power, can drive these issues in the 21st Century. In establishing this link between food and conflict, Johanna developed a new interdisciplinary platform examining why food is central to survival and resilience in conflict zones.

David Alpher:

David Alpher is an expert in peacebuilding, integrated deterrence and humanitarian assistance, with twenty years' experience in the field. He is currently the Conflict and Violence Prevention Integrator for USAID as a contractor, working to integrate a deeper understanding of conflict and conflict prevention across the spectrum of USAID's programming. He was most recently a Humanitarian Assistance Advisor to the Military for USAID's Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, and a Democracy Fellow with USAID's Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, focused on Countering Violent Extremism. From 2013 until joining USAID in 2018, he was the first permanent representative in Washington DC and head of the US office for the British peacebuilding NGO Saferworld, leading advocacy efforts to shape US foreign policy on areas such as community security, terrorism and violent extremism, aid and conflict interactions, and security sector reform. In previous work within the NGO sector, as a district manager and Chief of Party, he led youth engagement and IDP reintegration programs in Iraq, also managing the civil-military engagement within Iraq's complex reconstruction and stabilization environment. He has facilitated back-channel dialogues in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, led conflict analysis missions in Burkina Faso, Nepal and Ethiopia, among others, and backstopped a range of peacebuilding and development programs. In addition to his programmatic expertise, he holds an MS and PhD in conflict analysis and resolution. He is also a veteran of the United States Army.

Jonathan Papoulidis:

Jonathan Papoulidis is Global Director of Fragility and Resilience, Food for the Hungry Inc. where he provides broad leadership on the Agency’s policy, programming, and partnerships for multidimensional resilience in fragile contexts. He is a Columbia World Projects fellow at Columbia University and serves on advisory boards for the Global Resilience Partnership and Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet. He previously served with the United Nations, including in Indonesia as Chief of Policy and Programs in the Office of the UN Recovery Coordinator and then as UN Coordinator and Special Advisor for Aceh and Nias and UN Security Coordinator for Sumatra. From 2004-2006, he served in the UN peacekeeping mission in post-war Liberia as advisor to the UN Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Governance and Recovery. Before that, he was the senior UN OCHA representative in Turkey, preparing for the 2003 Iraq humanitarian response. Prior to these postings, Papoulidis served at UN headquarters in New York, focusing on protection of civilians, conflict prevention, private sector partnerships and post-crisis transitional planning. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University and the Center for Refugee Studies, York University. He has written for the Brookings Institution, Harvard International Review, Yale Journal of International Affairs, DevEx, New Humanitarian and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. He has a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.

Silke Boger:

Since 1 October 2021, Dr Silke Boger has held the position of Counsellor for Agriculture at the Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America. Between 2016 and 2021, she led the Market Unit responsible for Arable Crops and Olive Oil in Directorate-General of Agriculture and Rural Development at the European Commission in Brussels. In this capacity, she has managed the economics of the various agricultural markets, as well as the implementation of regular and exceptional EU market measures. Previously, Silke worked in DG Human Resources and Security, initially in career policy design, then in central coordination, and, in her last position, as Head of HR. Before joining the European Commission, Silke worked in agricultural policy-making at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Germany. She holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics.