Food insecurity in Lebanon

As Lebanon weathers through an economic crisis and COVID-19 outbreak, food insecurity has become a major concern across media headlines and in society. More stories are surfacing on how many families can no longer afford to meet their food needs, raising questions on the future of Lebanon’s fragile food sector.   What is food security, and what does it mean for a country to be food insecure? For the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian agency concerned with food security and food assistance, these questions are essential in today’s Lebanon. Access to food is a basic need and a basic right, with serious and far-reaching human and economic consequences when under threat, especially since the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society are usually those first and most affected.   At the 1996 World Food Summit, the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security defined food security as