Discuss how unilateral sanctions by major powers affect global food security in targeted and third countries. Illustrate with recent examples.

Unilateral sanctions are coercive economic measures imposed by individual states without UN Security Council authorisation. At the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi (September 2026), Iran's President argued such measures directly damage food security and civilian welfare [2] — a concern BRICS had already formalised a year earlier [1].

Impact on targeted countries

• Paper exemptions, real blockages: food and medicine are usually carved out, yet payment and shipping channels are not. The Rio de Janeiro Declaration (2025) records that unilateral and secondary sanctions harm the rights to development, health and food security of populations in targeted states, hitting the poor hardest [1].
• Input squeeze: restricted access to seeds, fertilisers, machinery, irrigation equipment and veterinary products depresses domestic output, converting a trade problem into a production crisis [4].
• Price transmission: currency devaluation and import compression drive food inflation, eroding real purchasing power even where grain is physically available [4].
• Humanitarian delivery: bank "de-risking" and over-compliance stall aid transfers, as agencies working in Afghanistan and Syria have repeatedly reported [4].

Spillover to third countries

• Global commodity shocks: disruption around the Russia–Ukraine conflict tightened world grain markets; the Black Sea Grain Initiative moved about 32.9 million tonnes of food, after which the FAO Food Price Index fell over 23% from its March 2022 peak — evidence that restricted flows, not scarcity, set prices for food-importing Africa and Asia [3].
• Fertiliser costs: constrained fertiliser and ammonia trade raises input prices for farmers in countries that are not party to the dispute [3].
• Chilling effect on neutral states: secondary-sanction risk complicates legitimate connectivity, as with India's 10-year Shahid Beheshti terminal contract at Chabahar (May 2024), a gateway for cargo to Afghanistan and Central Asia [5].

Sanctions thus travel far beyond their intended target, taxing the food baskets of the uninvolved poor. The way forward lies in genuine humanitarian carve-outs with banking "comfort letters", periodic humanitarian-impact assessments, and routing coercive measures through UN-mandated multilateral processes — keeping food outside the arsenal of statecraft, consistent with SDG-2 (Zero Hunger).