Disruption to global supply chains could push another 45 million people into acute food insecurity, the United Arab Emirates told the United Nations on 17 September, in one of the sharpest warnings yet from a Gulf state about the fragility of the world’s food trade. UAE minister of state Khalifa Al Marar made the case at an Arria-formula meeting held during the 81st UN General Assembly in New York, chaired by Bahrain’s foreign minister Abdullatif Rashid Al Zayani.
Al Marar told delegates that protecting supply chains, trade routes and energy flows was essential to international peace and stability, not simply a matter of commerce. Failing to do so, he argued, would undermine the rules-based order that governments rely on to manage cross-border trade during a crisis. The 45 million figure he cited traces back to World Food Programme modelling on how far acute hunger could spread if shipping and fertiliser flows through conflict-exposed regions stay disrupted.
Why the Gulf is watching trade routes closely
The warning reflects a structural reality for Gulf states: most import the bulk of their food and are exposed to the same shipping chokepoints, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, that carry grain and fertiliser to the wider Global South. A prolonged disruption anywhere along those routes raises costs for Gulf importers just as it does for the countries the UAE says are most at risk.
That exposure gives the UAE’s intervention a dual character: humanitarian concern paired with direct self-interest. Officials in Abu Dhabi have spent recent years building strategic food reserves and diversifying import sources specifically to guard against this kind of shock, and the UN statement reads as much as a call for international cooperation as a signal that the Gulf sees its own food security bound up with the same fragile trade routes.
The remarks echo, and were made just over a week before, a separate warning from India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, who told the Asia Society in New York that fertiliser shortages and war-disrupted grain routes could trigger a major global food crisis within months. Both statements point to the same underlying mechanism: energy and fertiliser markets are tightly linked, and stress in one quickly shows up as stress in the other.
Developing economies carry the heaviest cost
Al Marar was explicit that the consequences of supply-chain disruption fall unevenly. Wealthier importers can absorb higher freight and fertiliser costs by drawing on reserves or paying a premium; lower-income countries generally cannot. The World Food Programme’s hunger hotspot assessments have repeatedly flagged this asymmetry, noting that countries already coping with conflict or drought have the least capacity to absorb a second, trade-driven shock.
No timeline was given for when disruption might translate into the 45 million figure becoming reality, and the estimate depends on assumptions about how long current tensions persist. What the UAE’s statement adds to the debate is a reminder that food security is no longer treated purely as a humanitarian file at the UN; it is increasingly framed, by food-importing and food-exporting states alike, as a matter of international security requiring the same diplomatic urgency as conflict prevention itself.
The Arria-formula format itself is notable. These informal Security Council sessions are typically reserved for issues members want debated outside the constraints of a formal resolution, suggesting Gulf and allied states see supply-chain protection as needing sustained diplomatic attention rather than a one-off statement.
