The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference (WTO MC12) takes place June 12-15 in Geneva—two years after the pandemic forced members to postpone its original schedule. In those two years, the world has changed and the importance of multilateral approaches to tackle international trade issues has become even more acute.

The Group of Seven wealthy nations (G7), currently led by the German presidency, has put a welcome focus on the global food insecurity and nutrition crisis unleashed by the war in Ukraine, with the most severe impacts falling on vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The two May G7 meetings produced four separate communiqués, each of them dozens of pages long (the development ministers communiqué alone was 23 pages!) and a G7-led Global Alliance for Food Security was announced.

With the war in Ukraine continuing to disrupt global food markets and contribute to rising and volatile food prices, international policymakers are calling for coordination and humanitarian aid to prevent the situation from escalating into further food crisis. 

High food prices and supply disruptions triggered by the Ukraine war are hitting Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries like Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen hard, partly due their heavy dependence on wheat imports. But in the region, Lebanon—already in the midst of one of the world’s worst economic collapses since the 1850s—is uniquely vulnerable to food security impacts from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

A recent World Bank report calls Lebanon’s current crisis “The Great Denial”—referring to an ongoing breakdown of government services, civil society, and the economy.

The war in Ukraine has pushed prices of agricultural products to historically high levels, and concerns about global food security occupy headlines and world leaders’ minds, as demonstrated by recent IMF and World Bank meetings. So far, much of the attention has focused on grains, particularly wheat—because of its importance in diets, and the predicament of countries where wheat accounts for a large share of calories consumed, is largely imported, and is dominated by supplies from the Black Sea.

With the Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupting global supply chains, roiling markets and raising food and fuel prices, some governments have responded with restrictions on agricultural exports. While these policies may be domestically appealing, however, they have wider ramifications for global food prices and food security, according to the May AMIS Market Monitor. The report emphasizes that restrictive trade measures like export restrictions will further limit available food stocks, raise food and fuel prices even higher, and push poor populations into more acute food security.

Last week, the heads of the World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund, United Nations World Food Program, and World Trade Organization issued a joint statement calling for urgent global action on food security in response to skyrocketing global food prices.

Global turmoil and supply shocks can increase a country's vulnerability to food shortages. In the past, countries have often resorted to restrictive trade policies to address food supply disruptions. The Ukraine-Russia crisis is no exception; a number of countries have imposed export restrictions in various forms.