Food riots refer to protests, riots, and civil unrest attributed to popular outrage against food shortages and high or rising prices of food. In the 20th and 21st century, food riots occurred across the Middle East in several different countries. Immediate causes of food riots have included reduction in food subsidies, inflation, and economic stagnation. Food riots have also occurred as part of larger social movements. Food riots also figure prominently in criticism of austerity, neoliberal, and related IMF structural adjustment policies, such as during the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots. [1]
Egypt experienced food riots in 1977, [2] 1984 [3] and 2017.
On Sunday, October 1, 1984, Egyptians in the Kfar el-Dewar industrial outside of Alexandria rioted and fought with police for eight hours. The rioters, who were said to number in the hundreds, "pelted police with stones, overturned carts in the town market, and smashed shop windows," according to one news report. [4] The police reported that one person was killed, 13 people were injured, and 40 people (including police) were arrested. [5]
Food riots hit Jordan in 1989 [6] and 1996. [7] At the beginning of 1989, Jordan defaulted on debt payment to the IMF, leading it to introduce price increases between 10 and 15% In April. [8] That month the unrest began in the southern town of Ma'an before spreading to other cities in the south of Jordan. At least four civilians and one off-duty soldier were killed and total casualties reached at least 32 people in what would come to be known as habbat nissan, or the "Squalls of April". [9] [10] While the 1989 riots were occurring in Jordan, King Hussein gave an interview with PBS' Robert MacNeil. At the time, Hussein stated:
Our economy's sound and the promise of the future is great, but nonetheless, we have had to devaluate the Jordanian dinar and recently engaged the International Monetary Fund in talks, and that providing us with the potential to reschedule our foreign debt, half of which is military and half economic. This is a result of the awful situation we found ourselves, in when promises of the Arab states did not materialize as a result of the Baghdad summit, and the size of this foreign debt is equal to the commitments that were not forthcoming. [11]
Food protests began on Thursday, August 27, 1987, in Beirut and spread to other towns over the next few days. [12] Marchers in the southern town of Sidon chanted "We're hungry! We want to eat!" and protests were logged by the police in the Eastern Lebanon town of Rasheiye in the Bekaa. [13]
Occurring 12 years and 120,000 deaths into the Lebanon Civil War, the onset of the riots coincided with that day's record fall of the value of the Lebanese pound against the dollar to 300 to 1. The falling exchange rate had considerable repercussions at a time when Lebanon imported 85% of its basic needs. [14]
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Hussein bin Talal was King of Jordan from 11 August 1952 until his death in 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of Jordan since 1921, Hussein was a 40th-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
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The Caracazo is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting that started on 27 February 1989 in the Venezuelan city of Guarenas, spreading to Caracas and surrounding towns following austerity measures from President Carlos Andrés Pérez. The weeklong clashes resulted in the deaths of hundreds, thousands by some accounts, mostly at the hands of security forces and the military. The riots and the protests began mainly in response to the government's economic reforms and the resulting increase in the price of gasoline and transportation
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Abdul Karim al-Kabariti is a Jordanian politician and businessman who was the 30th Prime Minister of Jordan from 4 February 1996 to 9 March 1997.
The Egyptian "bread riots" of 1977 were a spontaneous uprising against the increase in commodities' prices on the 18th and 19th of January after the Egyptian government cut subsidies for basic foodstuff.
The Jordanian protests were a series of protests in Jordan that began in January 2011, and resulted in the firing of the cabinet ministers of the government. In its early phase, protests in Jordan were initially against unemployment, inflation, corruption. along with demanding for real constitutional monarchy and electoral reforms.
The 2011 Israeli border demonstrations started on 15 May 2011, to commemorate what the Palestinians observe as Nakba Day. Various groups of people attempted to approach or breach Israel's borders from the Palestinian-controlled territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan. At least a dozen people were killed when protesters attempted to cross the border from Syria.
The Arab Spring unrests and revolutions unfolded in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, and in the rest of the region, some becoming violent, some facing strong suppression efforts, and some resulting in political changes.
Following the outbreak of the protests of Syrian revolution during the Arab Spring in 2011 and the escalation of the ensuing conflict into a full-scale civil war by mid-2012, the Syrian Civil War became a theatre of proxy warfare between various regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. Spillover of the Syrian civil war into the wider region began when the Iraqi insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) started intervening in the conflict from 2012.
The Tunisian bread riots were a series of violent demonstrations in Tunisia that occurred from December 1983 to January 1984, triggered by a rise in the price of bread due to an IMF-imposed austerity program. President Habib Bourguiba declared a state of emergency and the riots were put down by force. Over 100 rioters died. The regime was weakened by the upheavals and the aftermath of food riots. Three years later General Zine El Abidine Ben Ali seized power in a coup.
The 1989 Jordanian protests started in Ma'an on 18 April after the government cut food subsidies, increasing food price. Demonstrations and riots quickly reached neighboring southern towns. Protestors accused the government of rampant corruption, and demanded that the prime minister Zaid Al-Rifai lose his job; martial law be lifted; the electoral laws be reformed; and restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of the press be removed.
The Second Arab Spring is a series of anti-government protests which took place in several Arab world countries from late 2018 onwards.
The Lost Decade or the Crisis of the 80s was a period of economic stagnation in Peru throughout the 1980s which was exacerbated to a severe macroeconomic crisis by the end of the decade. Foreign debt accumulation throughout Latin America, a series of natural disasters, mass public expenditures, nationalizations of banks and financial institutions, and the shutting of Peru out of international credit markets led to a decade of macroeconomic decline. The financial crisis soon became adopted into the public sphere through hyperinflation in commodities, food shortages, and mass unemployment. By the end of the decade, Peru's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted over 20%, and poverty rose to 55%.
The 1984 Egyptian intifada was a bloody uprising and civil resistance movement that rocked northern Egypt against food prices and Inflation that skyrocketed under the presidency of Hosni Mubarak. On 1 October, in Kafr-el-Dawwar, Riots rocked the city led by mostly workers against the prices of basic economic goods and prices. It would be the biggest and most bloodiest protests in Egypt since the 1977 Egyptian bread riots and the first and biggest political challenge in Hosni Mubarak’s presidency.
The 1996 Jordanian protests were mass protests and riots in Jordan for 2–4 weeks in August–September against new International Monetary Fund-led reforms, leading to bread-price hikes and despite economic troubles, the government of Prime Minister Abdul Karim Kabariti increased food prices and basic good prices hiked, sparking rioting in Karak and spread to Ma’an, Zarqa, Amman, Madaba and other southern cities, where poverty is high.
