Jaishankar highlights global conflicts at UN event - what's the ‘4F’ crisis

Jaishankar speaks at the Asia Society at the conclusion of the UN High Level Week

NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar, speaking at the Asia Society at the conclusion of the UN High-Level Week in New York, highlighted the difficult state of the world, multiple conflicts and what he termed the “4F” crisis — food, fuel, fertiliser and finance.While speaking at a event, Jaishankar said, "We have right now two major ongoing conflicts, each one of whom has a consequence for every country in the world. These are conflicts with enormous repercussions. On top of that, the situation in the Middle East or West Asia, as we call it, remains very difficult. In Africa, again, there are a number of conflicts, most notably Sudan, but others as well."

"And a large part of the world faces what I, in my address to the General Assembly, called the 4F crisis, which is food, or fuel, or fertilizers, or finance.

On top of this, supply chain vulnerabilities are growing," he added.

Sharing highlights from his conversation on X, Jaishankar said the current global landscape was marked by a paradox of “obsessive competition and deep interdependence”.

He said the “indivisibility” of the global landscape required a cohesive outlook and stressed the “inevitability of multipolarity”.