Which countries famine

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You can help. It is a slow agonizing process, driven by callous national politics and international indifference. Nigel Timmins, Oxfam.

Tagged with. Measures to curb the spread of COVID have hit economies worldwide, pushing millions into unemployment and poverty, and leaving governments and donors with fewer resources to address the food and nutritional needs of the most vulnerable people.

WFP has the expertise and reach to help prevent famines from occurring, through various approaches. The most powerful tool that WFP can deploy to save lives in the face of famine is emergency food assistance, both in-kind and cash-based.

Cutting-edge technology allows WFP to raise the alarm where circumstances are rapidly deteriorating, providing insights that inform the right response and ensure we reach those in urgent need. On any given day, WFP has 5, trucks, 20 ships and 92 planes on the move; every year WFP distributes more than 15 billion food rations.

Eliminating the threat of starvation and preventing famine entirely will require longer term and more complex interventions, including strengthening education, nutrition, livelihood resilience and social protection systems such as school meals programmes. Famine is never inevitable — with proper planning and coordination, it can be prevented and millions of lives can be saved.

We deploy a variety of tools to both prevent and respond to famine. Here is a selection. WFP has rolled this tool out in South Sudan and northeast Nigeria, among other countries, allowing mobile response teams to reach people in remote, isolated areas. This is discussed further in the Data Quality and Definition section below. In any case, whilst in absolute terms it is certain that the drought caused enormous suffering, whatever excess mortality that did occur in Maharashtra was very much lower than the major famines occurring under totalitarian regimes in roughly the same period.

It is important to note, however, that the question of how often famines have occurred within democracies crucially depends upon the definition of famine being used. In particular, what, if any, excess mortality lower-bound is being used yields different answers. This leaves only the three democracy famine events discussed above.

Regardless of the threshold though, the main point remains the same: famines tend not to occur in democracies, and none of the catastrophic life-taking famines documented in history have occurred in the context of functioning democratic institutions. Many of the major famine events in our table occurred as the consequence of international or civil war.

For some of these, famine was used as an intentional part of political or military strategy. Despite the plan only being partially executed, over 4. In terms of more recent events, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, famines in Africa have become increasingly associated with civil war, and include a number of crises in places that were not previously prone to famines at all, such as Mozambique and Biafra in Nigeria. In addition to the direct casualties, conflict can also generate disruption to production and trade and can encourage the spread of disease epidemics, particularly through forced migration.

It is mainly in the context of conflict that major death-dealing famines can be expected today. It is important to note that, as opposed to dying from literal starvation, the vast majority of people that die during famines actually succumb to infectious disease or other illnesses, with some diseases being more directly linked to diet than others. Famines brought on by drought often go hand-in-hand with a scarcity of clean drinking water that increases the threat of cholera and other diseases.

Increased migration and the disruption of personal hygiene and sanitation routines and healthcare systems also increases the risk of outbreaks of infections diseases, all in the context of a population already weakened through malnourishment. This is particularly true in places where such diseases are already endemic. Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa where vaccination rates for measles have been relatively low , the disease has been a big killer during modern famines in the region alongside other infectious and parasitic diseases common in non-crisis times.

In each case, it can be seen that communicable diseases were the ultimate cause of death in the majority of cases. Note that, for India and Moscow, the excess mortality attributable to starvation is not available separately. This is in contrast to some famines that occurred in industrialised countries during WWII, in a context of overall healthier populations and systems of sanitation that were maintained to some degree despite the crisis.

In these instances disease played far less of a role, with deaths from starvation correspondingly higher. In February , parts of South Sudan were officially declared by the UN as being in famine — the first such declaration since By May the famine had apparently receded, thanks to an effective aid response that averted large-scale loss of life. And yet, the crisis was far from over. Here we look in more detail into the famine declaration in South Sudan, in order to understand better how famine is defined today and how this fits in with our understanding of famines in the past.

The IPC lays out thresholds across three dimensions of outcomes, all of which must be evidenced in order for a famine to be declared in a certain area:.

A few things are worth noting about this definition. Firstly, these thresholds represent only the most severe rank of the IPC food insecurity classification. The system ranges from Phase 1 to Phase 5, with 5 corresponding to a famine situation. Lower phases of food insecurity are categorized by lower thresholds in each of the three dimensions above. Secondly, it is important to see that such thresholds are a measure of intensity rather than magnitude. Thus different assessments of food security trends will often be made depending on the geographic level of analysis.

An amelioration at a very local level is perfectly compatible with an overall deterioration of the food security status of a country as whole. And this is exactly what happened in South Sudan over the course of It was the intensity of the food security situation in Unity State in January shown in dark red colors , which brought about the famine declaration later in February, with IPC Phase 5 thresholds being confirmed in some parts.

By May the situation in Unity State had somewhat abated due to humanitarian relief efforts, but the food security situation of most other parts of the country had deteriorated significantly. Just as different parts of a country can have different food security statuses, different households can, and typically do, experience different levels of food insecurity within any given geographic area. Rather than looking at geographical subdivisions, one way of getting a sense of how different people are faring in a food emergency is to look at the numbers of individual households experiencing different levels of food insecurity.

Since nutritional status and mortality data are typically collected for whole populations in a given area, only the food consumption and livelihood change dimension is used to categorize food security at the household level — though signs of malnutrition or excess mortality within the household are used to confirm the presence of extreme food gaps at the higher insecurity rankings.

So whilst the household-level classification considers fewer outcomes only food deficits, as opposed to nutritional or mortality outcomes , it does allow for an assessment of the magnitude of a food emergency in terms of the absolute number of people being affected at different levels of severity.

Looking at the household data for South Sudan over offers another angle on the evolution of the crisis. The two tables shown give the number of people estimated to be at a given level of insecurity across the different States in January first table and May second table. With such a disaggregation we can see that the humanitarian provision, targeted to the most in need in Unity State, did indeed bring down the number of people experiencing the very worst food insecurity.

However, if we look at the number of individuals in Phase 3 Crisis or worse food insecurity, we see not only a deterioration in the country as a whole The Household Group IPC classification can be used to get a sense of the scale of the food emergencies currently underway.

The numbers estimated to be in need of emergency assistance in , as defined by FEWS, did represent a peak in recent times 45 — and humanitarian needs remained high in This, however, does not imply an expectation that famine mortality would rise to the levels seen in the midth Century. The IPC system is fundamentally geared towards preventing famines, rather than assessing their severity after the event.

As stated in the IPC Manual, Rather, in order to inform real-time decision-making, the IPC thresholds for famine… are set to signify the beginning of famine stages. It is important to bear this in mind when trying to compare such assessments with famine trends over time.

In reference to the discussion above, this can be thought of as a measure of magnitude only along one dimension: mortality. Official famine declarations based on the IPC Area classification, like that made for South Sudan in , do not straightforwardly map on to such an analysis. For instance, given the larger population being affected, it is quite possible that more people have died due to food consumption deficits since early in Yemen than in South Sudan, despite the intensity of the former crisis not having brought about a famine declaration in any part of the country so far.

Sorry to be neo-Malthusian about it, but continuing population growth in this region makes periodic famine unavoidable … Many of the children saved by the money raised over the next few weeks will inevitably be back again in similar feeding centres with their own children in a few years time. It is not uncommon to see arguments along the lines of this quote from Sir Jonathan Porritt, claiming that famines are ultimately caused by overpopulation.

From such a perspective, the provision of humanitarian aid to famine-afflicted countries, however well intended, represents only a temporary fix. In this view it fails to address the fundamental issue: there simply being too many mouths to feed. As mentioned in the quote, this suggestion is commonly associated with the name of Thomas Robert Malthus, the English political economist writing at the turn of the nineteenth century.

But does the evidence support this idea? Here we look into the relationship between population growth and famine, as well as that between population growth and hunger more generally. This chart compares the number of famine deaths per decade — based on our famine dataset — with the world population over the same period.

We might naturally think that the explanation for this trend lies in increasing agricultural production. Indeed, food supply per person has consistently increased in recent decades, as we can see in the interactive line chart shown. The large increase in global population being met with an even greater increase in food supply largely due to increases in yields per hectare. However, looking at the issue in this way is too simple. As we discuss in our entry on Famines , insufficient aggregate food supply per person is just one factor that can bring about famine mortality.

Contemporary famine scholarship tends to suggest that insufficient aggregate food supply is less important than one might think, and instead emphasises the role of public policy and violence: in most famines of the 20th and 21st centuries, conflict, political oppression, corruption, or gross economic mismanagement on the part of dictatorships or colonial regimes played a key role.

The same also applies for the most acutely food-insecure countries today. It is also true of the famine in Somalia referred to above, in which food aid was greatly restricted, and in some cases diverted, by militant Islamist group al Shabaab and other armed opposition groups in the country.

Thus, all in all, the recent history of famine mortality does not fit the Malthusian narrative particularly well. Firstly, contrary to what Malthus predicted for rapidly increasing populations, food supply per person has — in all regions — increased as populations have grown.

Secondly, famines have not become more, but less frequent. Thirdly, in the modern era the occurrence of major famine mortality, and its prevention, is something for which politics and policy seem the more salient triggers. Given the typically political nature of outbreaks of such famine crises, it may make more sense to look for an effect of population growth on the longer-term trends of hunger and malnutrition.

But again, at the global level, we know that population growth has been accompanied by a downward trend in hunger.

As we discuss in our entry on Hunger and Undernourishment , in recent decades the proportion of undernourished people in the world has fallen , and, although more muted, this fall is also seen in the absolute number.

The number of people dying globally due to insufficient calorie or protein intake has also fallen, from almost half a million in the s to roughly , in the most recent data, as shown in the visualisation. We can also look at the experiences of individual countries, rather than just at the global level. Do those countries with particularly high population growth rates find it harder to adequately feed its population?

GHI is a composite measure, out of , that combines four indicators: undernourishment , child wasting , child stunting , and child mortality. The first scoring was conducted in , and was then repeated every eight years with the most recent being in carried out in The score is based on data collected in the years leading up to the scoring year, and as such reflect the hunger levels in this period rather than solely capturing conditions in the year itself. All the countries for which there was GHI data available between and are shown in the three charts.

Of the countries for which we do have GHI data, it is clear that those with higher levels of hunger have also tended to have had higher population growth over the last 25 years first chart. It is important to see though that among the countries for which we have GHI scores in both and , the level of hunger went down in all but one — Iraq second chart. Over the same period population went up in almost every case. Moreover, those countries that experienced higher levels of population growth in fact saw a bigger drop in their GHI score over this period.

The countries that saw high population growth over this period started with higher levels of hunger in So what we are seeing here is that countries are converging towards lower levels of hunger: it fell quickest in countries with the highest levels of hunger third chart. So whilst countries that experience hunger do tend to have high levels of population growth, the idea that population growth necessarily leads to increased hunger is clearly mistaken: many countries with high population growth have recently managed to decrease levels of hunger substantially.

Environmental degradation, including climate change, does pose a threat to food security , and the growth of human populations has undoubtedly exacerbated many environmental pressures. However, this represents only one aspect of the complex explanation of why so many people suffer and die from undernourishment today, despite their being adequate food available for consumption globally. If we want to put an end to hunger, we need to understand the diverse causes that bring it about. Oversimplifications that mistakenly see hunger and famine as an inevitable consequence of population growth do not contribute to this end.

As we discuss here , recent trends in famine mortality, and hunger more generally, largely contradict the first hypothesis. Here we investigate the second, by considering the contribution of famines to long-run population trends. What role has famine played in shaping birth and mortality rates throughout history? We begin by considering two examples of famines which, from a demographic point of view, differ enormously: the Chinese famine of and that in Ireland in the late s.

Famine-like conditions are present this year in Ethiopia , Madagascar , South Sudan and Yemen , as well as in pockets of Nigeria and Burkina Faso, with , affected. After declining for several decades, world hunger has been on the rise since , driven by conflict and climate change. World food prices rose in May to their highest levels in a decade, UN figures show, with basics like cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar up a combined 40 percent versus year-ago levels.

According to WFP, global maize prices have soared almost 90 percent year-on-year, while wheat prices are up almost 30 percent over the same period.