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Who Says It's a Famine?

Maura Kelly
Posted Monday, April 24, 2000, at 8:17 PM ET

Recent news reports have suggested that Ethiopia may be on the verge of another famine. When does large-scale hunger become a famine, and who decides?

Any group or government can declare that a region is suffering from famine, but a pronouncement by the United Nations carries the most weight among governments, aid agencies, and others considering how much help to give to a country. A U.N. declaration might also increase news coverage of the problem.

While there is no universal definition, most experts on food scarcity agree that a famine occurs when more than half of the people in an area are dying or become dangerously ill, directly or indirectly, from starvation. The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP)--the largest distributor of food aid in the world--generally classifies a region as suffering famine when mortality rates double because of lack of food and when more than 20 percent of the children in the area suffer from acute malnutrition (that is, when their organs have already begun to shut down).

That said, famine is hard to pin down, in part because it is difficult to maintain up-to-date mortality and population statistics for areas that are likely to suffer from one. The WFP believes there is currently a threat of famine in Ethiopia, particularly in the southeastern region known as Somali (which is different from the nation of Somalia). In January the WFP announced it needed to raise $142 million to feed the 2.3 million Ethiopians most vulnerable to starvation over the next nine months, but to date has raised less than half of its goal and fears it will run out of food in about two months. If nothing changes, the group is likely to declare widespread famine in Ethiopia at the end of June.

Explainer thanks Fritz Gilbert, director of the United States Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning System, and Gary Eilert, FEWS regional director for the Horn of Africa.

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Maura Kelly writes about women's issues for Glamour.
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Reader Response from The Fray:


If you want an easy way to help the WFP, do visit www.thehungersite.com where you can donate food every day at no cost to you and without filling out any forms or providing your name. You can click on the "Donate" button once each day: all you have to do in return is look at some sponsors' banners--they're the ones who pay for the food, which goes direct to the UN World Food Program.

--Andy Mogendorf

(To reply, click here.)

(4/26)


While I realize that widespread hunger is bad almost any way you cut it, I have to wonder why famine victims don't have enough to eat. Is it because of crop blight, locusts, bad weather or some other natural cause, or is it made by people. Could those in power (social, political, religious or what-have-you) be creating this hunger? This is a question one rarely ever hears asked, but is surely a relevant one--after all, the UN went swooping into Somalia with food during a man-made famine, but ended up having to cut deals with those in power in order to get it distributed, thus reinforcing the power structure that created the hunger in the first place. Perhaps we should look to the long-term as well as the short-term in giving aid.

--Anne

(To reply, click here.)

(4/30)

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