As Kirsty McNeill approaches 100 days as international development minister, her words to charities while serving as Scotland office minister are worth recalling: civil society sees “things we in government just can’t see.” In international development, that could not be truer.

I recently returned from Chad, where we took three members of parliament to see Action Against Hunger’s work, and where the consequences of the war in neighbouring Sudan on fuelling hunger are impossible to ignore.

From where Action Against Hunger sits, we can often see hunger coming. Every day, from Sudan to Gaza, communities are being pushed deeper into poverty, displacement and hunger by conflict. We see it when food disappears from markets, when families can no longer afford basic meals, when farmers lose access to land and when health workers see more children arriving with acute malnutrition. By the time famine is declared, catastrophe is already under way.

In 2025, 266 million people experienced acute food insecurity. For the first time since records began, famine was confirmed in two places in the same year: in parts of Sudan and Gaza. In both cases, conflict, displacement and restrictions on humanitarian access were central drivers.

Famine and acute hunger are almost always the foreseeable outcome of conflict, political decisions and failures to act. On the ground, we see firsthand that these crises are the result of human decisions.

The lethality of conflict globally has tripled in the last 20 years. Essential infrastructure like hospitals schools, and water systems are systematically targeted, yet conflict parties are widely met with near impunity from foreign powers.

This trend matters because it will define the global fight against poverty. The World Bank projects that by 2030, around 60 per cent of people living in extreme poverty will live in fragile and conflict-affected economies. Tackling conflict cannot be separate to the UK’s approach to global development. It is the central challenge.

Against this backdrop, it is encouraging to see the UK’s new foreign secretary announce sanctions targeting violent extremists in the West Bank, which signals a willingness to use diplomatic tools to defend international law. Equally welcome is the government’s vocal commitment to delivering its manifesto pledge to return UK aid spending to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.

Aid budgets have been falling from nearly all the major donor governments, exacerbating the challenges for organisations like Action Against Hunger, operating in fragile and conflict-affected states. It comes on top of daily operational challenges with security, humanitarian access and a lack of basic infrastructure. Yet these are precisely the places where needs are greatest. Walking away is not an option.

This reality of worsening conflict-induced poverty exposes a growing gap in current development thinking. The government’s Modern Development Approach, published shortly before the new administration took office, sets out a plan that prioritises high-return investment. History shows us that this approach is not a match for conflict-affected contexts.

Investment is high risk where governance systems are weak, security risks are high, sanctions are imposed and markets have collapsed. A focus on investment-led growth is liable to leave behind those with the highest needs.

The UK’s development model must evolve. Fragile and conflict-affected states cannot be treated as exceptions to mainstream development policy, siloed to the humanitarian budget. They must be central to it. This means prioritising development approaches that are adapted to fragility.

A different type of diplomacy, one that is values-led and human security focused, should sit at the heart of the government approach to building a safer world. When human decisions drive hunger, human interaction can play a key role in stopping it. But values-led or human-centred diplomacy cannot become another buzzword.

It requires sustained, high-level engagement to influence decision makers and armed actors, with the core aim to first prevent and then to protect civilians in conflict. It should mean using early-warning triggers for diplomatic action, rather than waiting until famine is declared.

If the UK’s international engagement is grounded in human dignity, international law and civilian protection, those values must shape what the government does before people reach the point of starvation, not simply what it says afterwards.

The UK’s 2027 G20 presidency provides an opportunity to take this approach internationally. The G20 cannot resolve every conflict. But it can influence many of the conditions that determine whether shocks become catastrophes, addressing debt, development finance, climate resilience, food systems and investment in prevention.

Britain should use its presidency to make the case that preventing conflict and hunger is central to a safer and more resilient world. It must connect food and human security with climate, health and economic security.

One hundred days in, my message to McNeill’s is simple:

Civil society can often see hunger before it becomes famine.

The real test is whether governments are prepared to use that knowledge and their diplomatic influence while there is still time to act.

After a year in which famine was confirmed twice, success should not be measured only by how the world responds to the next catastrophe.

It should be measured by whether we prevent it from happening at all.

Jean-Michel Grand is executive director of Action Against Hunger UK

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project