'Feed people, not wars,' pope says in address to U.N. food agency
Source: Reuters
World | Mon Jun 13, 2016 7:48am EDT
'Feed people, not wars,' pope says in address to U.N. food agency
ROME | BY PHILIP PULLELLA
Pope Francis on Monday condemned the use of hunger as a "weapon of war" and lamented the fact that it was easier to move weapons across borders than the aid needed to keep civilians alive.
Days after aid agencies were allowed to deliver food to the besieged Syrian town of Daraya for the first time since 2012, Francis said preventing supplies from reaching war zones was a violation of international law.
On a visit to the headquarters of the World Food Program (WFP), the pope said the world faced a "strange paradox".
"Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by involved and incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not.
"In some cases, hunger itself is used as a weapon of war," he said in an address to the WFP, the Rome-based U.N. agency which is the largest provider of food aid worldwide.
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