Tag: famine

Mali Faces Famine

As of early 2026, Mali continues to face a deep nutritional crisis. While there has been long-term incremental progress in reducing chronic malnutrition (stunting), acute malnutrition (wasting) remains at emergency levels, particularly in the conflict-affected northern and central regions.  Mali is among six countries at highest risk of famine or catastrophic hunger in early 2026.  The UN estimates 5.1 million people are in need.

Because of the conflict there have been more than 800 incidents of access denial of aid to people in need in 2025, which has included violence against aid workers.  Mali  borders the Sahara desert and is prone to drought and malnutrition.

Acute malnutrition among children nationwide averages 11.6%, which is well above the African regional average of 6%.  Within Mali, crises areas include Ménaka (22.2%) and Gao (19.3%), where malnutrition rates have surged far past the WHO’s 15% emergency threshold.

An estimated 1.5 million children are acutely malnourished, with over 314,000 cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition, which is the most life-threatening form.

Militant activity and “blockade tactics” in the North and Center have disrupted local markets and restricted access to agricultural fields, making food both scarce and unaffordable.

See:  https://www.fao.org/4/t2860t/t2860t02.htm

 

Book Classic: The Challenge of Famine, Recent Experience and Lessons Learned by John Osgood Field

The anthology edited by John Osgood Field, The Challenge of Famine, Recent Experience Lessons Learned” remains one of the premier books about predicting and measuring famine ever published.  Field, until his retirement a professor of food studies at Tufts University School of Nutrition, published this in 1993 with Kumarian Press, arrayed a dozen key scholars of famine who including Joel Charney, Mary Anderson, Dirk Stryker, Peter Cutler, Jack Shepard and others.  Field wrote the introduction, the first chapter, and the final summary chapter.  The book is as appropriate to read today as when it was published as it hones in on the ambiguity of when to say that there is a famine.

Field writes that when in full bloom, famine is dramatically clear to the naked eye.  However, he writes, how to recognize famine before it becomes obvious is the dilemma around which much of the book revolves. This is relevant at a time when there are hot debates over which parts of Sudan may or may not be in famine, which parts of Gaza may or may not be in famine with data sets pointing in different directions as to the answer.

Field clarifies that famine is a slow onset disaster, which does not happen suddenly, but has a lengthy gestation. He makes the key point that notwithstanding the complexity of famine and the multiple factors underlying it, the principal indicators are few and manageable. In other words, famine may be caused by different processes, but there are fewer cases, but the data for recognizing famine are fewer. The dilemma facing early warning is that it is very difficult, perhaps impossible to be definitive, clear and compelling about something that does not yet exist. Ambiguity is inherent in famine prediction.

This means that political decision making will come into play. Early warning does not eliminate the role of politics. Both political early warning and administrative early warning have better track records in inducing early decision making and response than early warning systems that are purely technical.

Writing about the famine codes in India, Field dissects detection and response with responsibility of the same individuals who typically were district level officials.

Contributor William Torrey reflects on community famine surveillance in Sudan, which is very timely in 2025.  Torrey dives into Darfur, including about participation by locals in Al-Fasher who were also involved in relief work, early warning, and famine response.

In his chapter about Oxfam America’s disaster response, Joel Charney mentions that honest reflection and self-evaluation are not exactly hallmarks of the voluntary agency community.  “According to their own public relations pieces, it seems that the agencies always do well regardless of the grave mistakes in judgment that journalists and other independent investigators continually uncover.”  He reviews the 1978 famine in Cambodia.

Mary B. Anderson and Peter Woodrow draw on their extensive case studies of disasters in many countries for key lessons, such as how disaster victims have important capacities which are not destroyed in disaster and therefore should be built on.  They argue that outside aid to these victims must be provided in ways that recognize and support these capacities.

In his chapter, Jack Shepard summarizes his research into American assistance to Ethiopia during the 1981-1985 famine period.  He recounts hos U.S. food aid became an important part of foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s at a time of increasing American food production and increasing malnutrition around the world.  Shepherd recounts the evolution of aid policies including destabilizing Marxist regimes.  “Nowhere is the Reagan policy more clear than in its treatment of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official relief and development agency of the American Roman Catholic Community.  From 1982 through 1984 the administration deliberately delayed its response to emergency food aid requests for Ethiopia by CRS.”  In time, US food aid ramped up largely cross-border through Sudan into Tigray and Eritrea (fighting against the government of Ethiopia).

The most distinctive chapter was by Peter Cutler:  “Responses to Famine and Why They Are Allowed to Happen.”   Among Cutler’s observations is that rural famine victims are likely to become a political issue only if their case is taken up by influential urban elites, such as university students or the press.  He catalogs various contradictions in our aid system.

For instance, NGOs are in a contradictory position with regard to famine control.  On the one hand, their field staff are among the best informed of all actors operating in a famine zone, yet at the same time they are the least likely to challenge the system or influence governments. This is because NGOs are highly vulnerable. Cutler concludes the professional relief and development agencies will avoid the risks of challenging donors and the host governments when famine breaks out among unpopular groups of victims.

Publisher:  Kumarian Press, West Hartford Connecticut.  ISBN:  1-56549-019-3

Hunger Increases Even Further in The Sudan

August 28, 2025:  Aid agencies estimate that malnutrition in Sudan increases in scale, depth and scope.  Much of the reporting comes from the far western region of Darfur, where, between January and May 2025, North Darfur saw a 46% increase in children admitted for SAM treatment at health centers compared to the same period in 2024 — with over 40,000 children treated in just that region.

As a result of 2 1/2 years of civil war, over 14 million Sudanese have been displaced by violence, both internally and across borders.  In the largest camp for displaced persons, Zamzam in North Darfur,  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported devastating malnutrition rates — as high as 29–30% acute malnutrition, and high mortality (e.g., one child dying every two hours.  Similarly,  Save the Children reported a nearly fourfold increase in severe acute malnutrition cases seen in one South Kordofan clinic from June 2023 to June 2024, with 1,457 children admitted in June 2024 alone.

Though access by international organizations to children in this large, rural country is limited, UNICEF estimates that some 3.2 million children under 5 may have  acute malnutrition in 2025, including about 770,000 experiencing Severe Acute Malnutrition, meaning they are extremely wasted.

The U.N.’s advisory body about famine, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported 25.6 million people in the Sudan are food insecure, and of those, 8.5 million are in Emergency (Famine degree Phase 4) and another 755,000 are in Catastrophe/Famine (Famine degree Phase 5).

Humanitarian access is greatly constrained, with persistent fighting preventing deliveries of food or supplies into many areas, notably in Darfur, Khartoum, and regions with large numbers of internally displaced person.

Concern Worldwide is supporting 81 health facilities across Sudan, particularly in West and Central Darfur, treating children under five for acute malnutrition, with a focus on delivering ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).  Despite the destruction of Sudan’s only RUTF factory in 2023, Concern has secured and delivered 10 metric tons of RUTF to vulnerable communities. In 2024, they reached nearly 484,000 people with lifesaving health and nutrition support.

 

Famine Early Warning System Restarted

Correction & Update:  Hunger Notes reported on March 19 about the cancellation of the important, 40-year-old Famine Early Warning System program, created and funded by USAID.  While true at the time, FEWS NET has been re-established. You can access it here.

The May 2025 prediction report is available here and  reports that “Conflict remains the most severe and widespread driver, particularly in settings with protracted violence or rising geopolitical tensions in East Africa, the Middle East, the Sahel, Central Africa, and Haiti. The  intersection of insecurity, inflation, and limited humanitarian access presents critical concerns across the most affected regions…the residual effects of prior droughts and floods are expected to contribute to food insecurity in parts of southern Africa, eastern Africa, and Afghanistan. Additionally, available weather forecasts suggest rainfall patterns in Sudan, South Sudan, and West Africa may mirror those of 2024, bringing flooding to riverine, wetland, and low-lying areas and dry conditions in the Gulf of Guinea. If this materializes, the resultant loss of cereal crops, cash crops, and livestock will be most acute in areas already impacted by concurrent conflict and economic shocks.”

 

– S Hansch, WHES

Why Nations Fail, Famine and the Nobel Prize

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded in October to the authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in part for the analysis of international inequalities in their best-selling 2012 book Why Nations Fail:  The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Crown Publishers), which arrays economic development experiences of many countries to argue that poverty and famine are due to a lack of inclusive institutions allow for broad participation in decision-making processes and provide incentives for innovation and productivity.  The authors refer to “extractive” examples where the interests of elites are empowered over the needs of the population.

While not specifically exploring hunger, the authors touch on agriculture and food insecurity, for instance when comparing North Korea (characterized by extractive institutions) and South Korea (inclusive), including North Korea’s drift toward famines.  The authors also look at the extractive rule of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, which resulted in famine.  They write:  “The persistence of poverty in many parts of the world is not due to lack of resources or ignorance… but to extractive economic institutions.”

Acemoglu teaches economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Robinson at Harvard University.   They write: “economies based on the repression of labor and systems such as slavery and serfdom are notoriously noninnovative. This is true from the ancient world to the modern era. In the United States, for example, the northern states took part in the Industrial Revolution, not the South. Of course slavery and serfdom created huge wealth for those who owned the slaves and controlled the serfs, but it did not create technological innovation or prosperity for society.

Governments resist agricultural reforms that can mitigate malnutrition and poor health because of fear.  “”Fear of creative destruction is often at the root of the opposition to inclusive economic and political institutions.”

The authors note: “In many African countries, the majority of the labor force works in agriculture, yet agricultural productivity is very low…. The Green Revolution in agriculture… had a major impact on the lives of millions of people, but its benefits were highly unevenly distributed.”

Acemoglu and Robinson acknowledge that geography and culture play some role, as does agency.  But they array evidence that inclusive economic institutions like property rights, rule of law, ease of starting businesses, and open, competitive markets create incentives for investment, innovation, and widespread economic participation – driving sustained growth.  Echoing decades of comments by other economists, they observe that many poor nations are trapped in a “vicious circle” where extractive political institutions inhibit economic reform and preserve the power and wealth of elites.

Some critics of the authors’ argument focus on reverse causality.  In other words, wealthier, modernized countries are more likely to foster inclusive institutions.  Bill Gates critiqued the authors for attributing Venice’s decline to institutional changes rather than external factors like competition in trade routes.  Similarly, Gates argued that the authors overlook environmental factors like droughts in explaining the collapse of civilizations such as the Mayans.

 

S Hansch

 

Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response by Fred Cuny

Book Classic:  Famine, Conflict and Response:  a Basic Guide

By Fred Cuny, with Rick Hill      (West Hartford, CN:  Kumarian Press       1999)

This basic, extremely readable text about famine prevention and relief remains a preferred textbook decades after first written by Fred Cuny, and published after he was killed along with his team near Chechnya.  Compiled posthumously by Fred’s colleagues Rick Hill and Pat Reed, the text style is not academic, but practical, reflecting Fred’s own frontline problem solving in a wide range of emergencies.

Chapter one addresses the causes of famine, including war, drought, disruptions to markets, failure to plant, collapse in purchasing power and environmental degradation.  This is followed by an examination of the consequences of famine, including measles, diarrhea, the separation of family members, and challenges to social bonds.  In chapter three, Cuny puts forward the notion famines spread geographically, how famine ‘belts’ shift.  Chapter four explores the economy of rural subsistence communities and herding pastoralists.  He observes how famine coping strategies, such as eating seed stocks, prolong the famine by decreasing the next year’s harvest.

Chapter five shifts to aid agency response, namely early warning, including the USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) which watches for indicators of famine;  increases in distress sales, livestock deaths, crop failure, poor rainfall, low food reserves, and then – at a late stage – increases in the rate of child malnutrition.  Fred pointed out the value of “food demand models” that “attempt to find out whether people have reasonable access to that food..  Access is measured by the market price and whether people have the money to buy an item or barter for it.”  Notably:  “a rapid increase in food prices or a drop in family income may indicate the onset of famine.”

The book then has several chapters of “counter-famine” interventions, including food, cash, “market interventions” including loans, market sales, food-for-work, price supports for livestock, barter, grain-for animal exchanges, subsidies, price controls, and income-generating projects that improve agricultural systems.  Page 76 presents a novel and brilliant diagram matching stages of famine (hoarding, migration, starvation, etc.) against preferred interventions (monetization, food-for-work, price support, intensive feeding, etc.)  Fred encourages counter-famine operations “aimed at keeping the local market system from collapsing, preventing people from having to sell their assets, stopping migration and maintaining the family.”

Decades ahead of his time, Cuny outlined the use of vouchers or coupons, to be redeemed with identified food vendors set up for each community.  He also recognized the counter-famine dynamics of tapping local merchants and food supplies:  “Once merchants release food they are hoarding, others will also start to sell… helping to reactive the normal market system.”

The book explains food rations and the logistics of moving and storing food to camps.  His explanation of the use of aircraft is short but clear.  The book concludes with chapters about effective aid monitoring and cross-border operations which are frequently necessary for reaching conflict zones.  The book concludes with discussion of helping populations along border “enclaves” and their long-term shift to rehabilitation and return.

In the volume’s introduction former OXFAM, CEO John Hammock, and former USAID administrator, Andrew Natsios, explain that Fred’s “powers of observation and analysis were his greatest strengths, allowing him to aggregate disparate and seemingly unrelated data into a coherent explanation of what was happening and then design a comprehensive strategy to address the crisis.” Then, “Whenever Fred traveled to a food emergency, he would first stop at the local market to review prices for price and livestock and to talk with merchants about inflationary pressures, the volume of commodity turnover in the market, the sources of commodity supply, and to which local ethnic or political groups the merchants were allied.  And then he would simply stand and observe:  who was buying, what they were buying, and what they were using for currency.  By the end of the first day, he would understand much of the economy of famine in the region.”

They also summarize key themes that ran through Fred’s analyses:

  •  The context of the emergency is crucial;
  •   Traditional responses by international agencies can cause more harm than good;
  •   International aid is a drop in the bucket compared with local aid;
  •   The key to success in relief aid is involving local people directly;
  •   Relief and development are intricately linked;
  •   Relief aid is not a logistical exercise to get goods to people – it is a process to accelerate recovery; and
  •   Relief intervention teaches us lessons; we should heed the lessons learned from the past.

WHO Reports 43,000 excess deaths in Somalia, in 2022, due to Drought

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported the results of a retrospective study commissioned by both their WHO-Somalia office and Unicef’s Somalia office.  The study,  conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College-London, used  statistical modeling to determine that approximately 43,000 excess deaths occurred in 2022 due to the drought in Somalia, largely associated with malnutrition.

“Love and Liberation” Captures Voices of Local Aid Workers in Famine Zone

Lauren Carruth’s important 2021 book, Love and Liberation – Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) fills a gap in the literature about aid programs by listening to the perspectives of those personnel delivering aid on the front-lines who are not expatriates, but locals, who, by the way, represent the majority of staff for all aid agencies everywhere.  In doing so she discusses alternate ways of understanding crises, what “localization” actually means, inequalities in local labor hierarchies.

Carruth, a Professor at American University in Washington, DC, explores the reasons why the eastern region of Ethiopia is repeatedly beset by food crises that have compelled substantial amounts of food and health assistance by the World Food Programme, Save the Children, UNICEF and other aid organizations for decades.  This cyclical nature of the relief industry plays out in other countries as well.  An anthropologist, Dr. Carruth suggests a typology for places and peoples who suffer repeat or perpetual food insecurity.

The author’s interviews cover not only the conditions driving food insecurity, but the emotional lives of the local aid workers who are passionate about their work and emotional about the problems they see firsthand.  As she says “Drivers, logistics managers, translators, data collectors, researchers and field monitors and the like were all necessary to aid operations because, essentially, they make projects happen.”   She compares the expectations and experiences of locals working with the UN, with Non-governmental Organizations, and the Ethiopian government.  The book returns often to this theme:  “the global humanitarian industry depends on ample supplies of cheap, temporary, flexible and expendable labor from the localities where it intervenes — ironically to proffer a narrative of improving the lives of locals.”  She gives voices to the 95% of humanitarian personnel who are from the countries and communities in crisis.

Dr. Carruth’s focus is the Somali region in the northeast of Ethiopia, not the also-disaster-prone central and northern regions of Ethiopia or the recent warzone in Tigray.  The northeast region, past Jijiga is arid lowlands where many populations are pastoral herders, moving around, posing challenges for aid agencies to reach.  Drivers of conflict, the author explains, include both drought and inter-communal conflict.  The research for this book occurred during a confluence of these hazards:  “By July 2018, as I was conducting research for this book, there were over one million persons internally displaced in eastern Ethiopia, newly settled into makeshift camps and informal settlements near Jijiga and Dire Dawa and all along the Oromia-Somali regional boundaries.”

An example of the type of work the book draws on are mobile health and nutrition teams.  “Mobile teams have been active in the [East Ethiopian] Somali Region since 2005 during a measles and polio outbreak.  Most mobile teams are designed to provide vaccinations, a few essential medications, water treatment equipment referrals to higher medical facilities, supplies of ready-to-eat fortified BP-5 biscuits and therapeutic Plumpy’Nut peanut paste…  Typically communities qualify for mobile team visits based on local rates of acute malnutrition in children under five years or reported outbreaks of infectious disease in the local population… but ..most humanitarian relief targeted the lives and health of young children and their mothers and not the entire community.”

While describing the “affable characters” whom the author finds in the local humanitarian outreach, Dr. Carruth also documents the reciprocal exchange networks  by which the population copes, including trade over long distances.  For instance:

  •        “The decentralization of relief work with its focus on training and hiring ever more local staff and deploying them throughout the region — often on mobile dynamic projects — requires hospitality on the part of hosting family members, friends and recipient communities.  Hospitality is therefore necessary to accomplish the logistics and travel humanitarian interventions require.”
  •    Local staff are compensated in a range of ways.  For instance, “Food for work, training workshops in midwifery and similar interventions organized through governmental and UN relief programs are almost free gifts and …humanitarian handouts.”

Carruth does an admirable job describing the tensions between short-term relief (band aids) and longer-term systemic problems.  So many locals in Ethiopia have been saturated with surveys by NGOs who also promise assistance that doesn’t come.

She describes how local aid workers who are indispensable feel, nevertheless, that they are invisible. “The humanitarian industry continues to rely on the willingness of locals to accept temporary, precarious and flexible contracts, informal labor arrangements and small salaries and per diems [reimbursements] for less money than either Amharic-speaking Ethiopians or expatriates occasionally flying into the Somali [eastern] Region.  The informality of the aid work so often performed by locals and the popularity of tropes about the heroic local aid worker also leave unquestioned the consideration in which their labor takes place, and leave unquestioned the fact that it is often performed in unacceptable conditions with no benefits and no legal rights or recourse for workers’ emotional well-being, abuse, exploitation or injury.”

At 169 pages this book is readable, timely and relevant to anyone interested in how actual humanitarian work unfolds, telling a very neglected part of the story.

To follow the author’s research, see:  https://laurencarruth.com/

For further information about food insecurity in eastern Ethiopia, see:

https://fews.net/east-africa/ethiopia

https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/over-3-million-people-impacted-worst-drought-40-years-ethiopias-somali-region

 

reviewed by Steven Hansch, WHES board

OXFAM warns that current famine in Horn of Africa will kill a person every 36 seconds.

In a press release of October 14,  2022 Oxfam has sent a warning that from now until the end of the year, the current famine in the Horn of Africa will cause hunger related deaths equivalent to a rate of one person dying every 36 seconds.

OXFAM reiterated  that this famine is worse than the famine in 2011, in which more than a quarter million people died.