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Indian Express
2 days ago
- Health
- Indian Express
Gazans are starving, falling sick, and dying. Why has the UN not declared a ‘famine' in the war-torn land yet?
Populations across Gaza Strip are at the risk of famine, and a third of Gaza's population is going days without eating, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Till Sunday (July 27), aid into the Palestinian enclave was being routed only through the Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). However, around 900 Gazans in the recent weeks have been killed at the GHF aid sites while trying to gather food, according to the UN human rights office, OHCHR. On Sunday, amid increasing criticism of the humanitarian situation, Israel said it would halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and allow new aid corridors. However, even as alarm over the crisis in Gaza is rising, officially, famine is yet to be declared in the battered enclave. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, states that the formal declaration of a famine comes with caution. Set up in 2004, the IPC is the leading international authority on food crises, which includes over a dozen UN agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies. The IPC was developed during a food emergency in Somalia by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) along with global partners. It is coordinated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. FEWS NET, meanwhile, was established in 1985, in response to famines in East and West Africa when US aid officials realised the need for a way to monitor global hunger. It was founded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to collect and analyse data from at-risk areas on a monthly-basis. The IPC defines famine as an extreme deprivation of food, its official website stated. 'Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident,' as described in the IPC Famine Classification processes. A famine, as per the IPC, can be declared when all of the following three conditions are confirmed: — 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving. — At least 30% of children (six months to five years old) suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they're too thin for their height. — At least two people or four children under five per 10,000 are dying everyday due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease. Even though the IPC remains the 'primary mechanism' utilised by the international community to determine whether a country is in the grip of a famine, it is often the UN, along with government institutions and multiple other high-level representatives, who possess the authority to declare a famine in an area. Why does the declaration of famine matter? The IPC's classification system acts as a powerful tool in informing, alerting, and mobilising the world before a crisis gets out of hand. Declaring a famine could scale up the global humanitarian response to Gaza. A few countries where the IPC has recently declared famines are Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and in parts of Sudan's western Darfur region in 2024. What is the status of Gaza? IPC's analyses released on May 12 expected close to 71,000 children under the age of five to be acutely malnourished over the following 11 months (that is, April 2025-March 2026) in these, 14,100 cases were expected to be severe. Moreover, nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women would also require treatment for acute malnutrition during this period. IPC categorises hunger crisis on a five-point scale: Phase 1 (Acceptable or, Normal), Phase 2 (Alert or, Stressed), Phase 3 (Serious or, Crisis), Phase 4 (Critical or, Emergency), and Phase 5 (Extremely Critical, Catastrophe or, Famine). Between May to September-end, the IPC projected the whole territory of Gaza to be classified under Emergency (IPC Phase 4), with the entire population expected to face Crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above). This includes 470,000 people (22 per cent of the population) in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5), over a million people (54 per cent) in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and the remaining half million (24 per cent) in Crisis (IPC Phase 3). Also, in Gaza, there persists an impossibility to gather accurate data, with limited access to the territory for experts, and completely damaged infrastructure and care and monitoring networks. The Commissioner-General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, last Thursday posted on X that one in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City. Lazzarini said most UNRWA workers are surviving on a meagre bowl of lentils each day, leading many of them to faint from hunger at work. He also pointed out that UNRWA has 6,000 trucks of food and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt, which he demanded be immediately let through. 'Families are no longer coping. They are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened,' he said. 'Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.' Are there no aid trucks entering Gaza now? The food crisis in Gaza intensified early March this year, when Israel completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, demanding Palestinian militant group Hamas to release all the remaining hostages. In May, when the blockade was lifted after 11 weeks, Israel allowed limited UN deliveries to resume, and over 400 Palestinians were killed as they tried to reach the aid sites. Since then, Israel has allowed in around 4,500 trucks from the UN and other aid groups, to distribute, among other things, 2,500 tonnes of baby food and high-calorie special food for children, Israel's Foreign Ministry stated last week. Amid increased international pressure, the Israeli military Saturday night began to airdrop aid into the Strip. These included seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and canned food, the Israel Defence Forces stated over a Telegram post on Sunday. On Saturday, Israel said that over 250 trucks carrying aid from the UN and other organizations entered Gaza this week. This is much lesser than the about 600 trucks that entered Gaza per day when the ceasefire was in place until March. The Israeli military also said on Saturday that it would establish humanitarian corridors for United Nations convoys, but refrained from providing further details.
Zawya
22-07-2025
- General
- Zawya
Strengthening vulnerability analysis to tackle food insecurity in Southern Africa
Food insecurity in Southern Africa is worsening, driven by erratic weather patterns, pest outbreaks, and economic shocks. An estimated 46.3 million people across seven countries -Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, South Africa and Tanzania— are projected to fate acute food insecurity during the 20205/26 consumption period. As shocks intensify, timely and harmonized vulnerability assessments remain critical to inform early action, response planning, and policy development. To this end, representatives from 11 Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States, joined by regional and international partners including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP), Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Regional Support Unit, gathered virtually from 14 to 16 July 2025 for the Annual Dissemination Forum of the SADC Regional Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis (RVAA) Programme. The event was followed by the 29th Steering Committee meeting on 17 July 2025. Despite data collection and budgetary challenges, seven Member States successfully completed their national assessments and presented findings at the forum. These findings contributed to the finalization of the 2025 Regional Synthesis Report on the State of Food and Nutrition Security in SADC, validated by the Regional Vulnerability Assessment Committee (RVAC). The report highlights a concerning uptick in food insecurity, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and low-income urban areas, underscoring the compounded impact of the 2024 El Niño-induced drought, ongoing conflict, and high food prices. At the same time, the region experienced normal to above-normal rainfall in many areas during the 2024/25 season, supporting a modest recovery in cereal production and grazing conditions, particularly in countries like Tanzania, Lesotho and Eswatini. FAO's technical support and way forward As a long-standing partner of the RVAA system, FAO continues to support Member States in enhancing the quality and use of vulnerability assessments. This includes contributing technical expertise to the Regional Vulnerability Assessment Committee, promoting alignment with IPC frameworks, and strengthening links between data and early action. Looking ahead, FAO will continue engaging with SADC Member States and partners to improve the quality and coverage of vulnerability assessments across the region. This includes supporting harmonization of tools and methodologies, promoting digital data collection systems, and fostering cross-country learning and peer-to-peer exchange. FAO is committed to working alongside the SADC Secretariat to strengthen the institutional sustainability of the RVAA programme and integrate early warning into broader disaster risk management systems. The outcomes of the 29th Steering Committee meeting reaffirm the urgency of accelerating investment in regional food security analysis. The Committee called for renewed efforts to mobilize resources for the upcoming landscape analysis of existing national frameworks, which will inform the development of a harmonized vulnerability assessment framework for the SADC region by 2026. FAO will remain a key technical partner in this process, offering expertise to ensure that the proposed framework is scalable, inclusive, and responsive to the complex drivers of vulnerability facing Southern Africa today. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): Regional Office for Africa.
Japan Times
15-05-2025
- Climate
- Japan Times
World hunger monitor faces 'large gap' after U.S. aid cuts
For years, Luis Treminio has provided guidance to farmers in El Salvador, using a U.S.-backed famine monitoring system to boost crop production and help prevent hunger. Armed with public bulletins and regular food security alerts produced by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), Treminio would relay the critical data to farmers. But it was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and has been operating at sharply reduced capacity since U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a spending freeze on USAID in January. "It's a very important early warning system tool," said Treminio, who heads the Salvadorian Chamber of Small and Medium Agricultural Producers, an association of about 125,000 corn, beans, sorghum and rice growers. "If the program's early warning alerts disappear, I think producers would have worse losses than we already do," he said. FEWS NET provided forecasts six to 12 months in advance, with drought and weather monitoring to help farmers plan when to plant their crops. The FEWS NET program has shifted to a new website under the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) but with limited information, dealing a blow to those who relied on the service from local farming associations and international aid groups to governments and policymakers. USAID cuts have significantly affected humanitarian organizations around the world that were working on life-saving programs from vital HIV health care to land demining and food aid. Created by the U.S. government in 1985 after devastating famines in East and West Africa, FEWS NET reports have been a key resource for organizations deciding where and how to deploy humanitarian relief. A Famine Early Warning System Network in Africa (FEWS NET) scientist talks to a farmer in Kilifi county, Kenya, in February 2022. | REUTERS On Jan. 27, Chemonics International, which manages FEWS NET, received a stop-work order from USAID. Two days later, FEWS NET's original website went dark and has been offline ever since. According to Mike Budde, USGS FEWS NET program manager, work is under way to get the new website fully functioning, but it is likely to take some time. "The USGS FEWS NET website is in no way a replacement or replication" of the original site, Budde said in an email. "There is a large gap in the resources we provide" compared with the earlier website, he said. "That said, we are in the process of coordinating across our science team to make available some of the information previously posted on that site in the interim." Across Africa, food security experts and humanitarian workers said FEWS NET has been indispensable to humanitarian and development work — providing data-driven insights into food security, climate impacts and emerging crises. Its regular assessments and early warning reports enabled aid workers to anticipate and respond to acute food insecurity, especially in regions in East and West Africa affected by drought, conflict and economic shocks, they said. For example, during periods of severe drought or conflict, FEWS NET's monthly and seasonal forecasts integrating climate data, crop conditions and market analysis helped identify vulnerable communities and prioritize interventions. This ensured that aid reached those most at risk before situations escalated into full-blown emergencies. "FEWS NET's comprehensive approach ... has supported ActionAid Ethiopia and partners in designing holistic responses to complex crises," said Tinebeb Berhane, ActionAid Country Director in Ethiopia. "The network's evidence-based recommendations are widely used not only by NGOs but also by government bodies and international agencies for coordinated humanitarian planning and policy action." By leveraging FEWS NET's robust early warning systems and localized data, Berhane said her organization strengthened its anticipatory action and contributed to effective, targeted and life-saving assistance for vulnerable populations. Erin Lentz, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and an expert on international food security, said FEWS NET was "trying to do better early warning, how to think about these things holistically." "That's hard to do and takes a lot of training, understanding of global economic factors, requires the ability to think about how these things directly impact people's lives and livelihoods," she said. Early warnings and food insecurity analyses by FEWS NET were effectively used to help address a famine in Somalia in 2011 and contributed to averting another famine there in 2017, according to Lentz. "Part of the problem is that one of the most valuable parts of early warning is trend analysis — are things getting worse or better?" Lentz said. "It's hard to retrospectively rebuild data," she said. "Maybe that could be taken over by another organization, but it's not clear yet who that is or who has the skills and infrastructure to do that."
Egypt Independent
09-03-2025
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
A US-run system alerts the world to famines. It's gone dark after Trump slashed foreign aid
A vital, US-run monitoring system focused on spotting food crises before they turn into famines has gone dark after the Trump administration slashed foreign aid. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) monitors drought, crop production, food prices and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries. Funded by USAID and managed by contractor Chemonics International, the project employs researchers in the United States and across the globe to provide eight-month projections of where food crises will emerge. Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and many other nations has been stopped amid the Trump administration's effort to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID). 'These are the most acutely food insecure countries around the globe,' said Tanya Boudreau, the former manager of the project. Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The website is down. And its treasure trove of data that underpinned global analysis on food security – used by researchers around the world – has been pulled offline. FEWS NET is considered the gold-standard in the sector, and it publishes more frequent updates than other global monitoring efforts. Those frequent reports and projections are key, experts say, because food crises evolve over time, meaning early interventions save lives and save money. 'You need to get your planning in place well in advance in order to avert the worst outcomes,' Boudreau told CNN. 'A late intervention actually leads to much higher costs in terms of responding, and those costs can be measured both in terms of the cost to the US government or other agencies that are responding, but also costs in terms of the livelihoods of people who are being affected.' USAID recently indicated that the humanitarian waiver issued by the State Department would apply to FEWS NET, according to a source familiar with the FEWS NET program. But aid workers did not yet have any specifics yet on what activities would resume, when or how, the source told CNN. This screenshot shows the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) website on March 6, 2025. From Famine Early Warning Systems Network US Secretary of State Macro Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly said he has issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid. However, multiple USAID staff and contractors who have spoken to CNN say almost all USAID humanitarian assistance programs remain stopped in their tracks, as payments have not been processed and there are no staff in DC to manage contracts. That includes lifesaving food assistance in Afghanistan, Colombia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among other countries, according to a list of terminated USAID awards obtained this week by CNN. The list shows that charity partners have also had to stop providing nutrition-dense products for children suffering from starvation in Myanmar, as well as hold back food deliveries in Ethiopia, with aid now at risk of spoiling in warehouses. CNN has reached out to the State Department and USAID for comment. The disappearance of FEWS NET isn't currently having as much of an impact on the ground as the freezing of the food assistance itself, food security expert Daniel Maxwell told CNN. 'But very soon, if the food assistance does continue to flow, but FEWS NET is not there, then there isn't any good mechanism, at least no internal mechanism within the US, to help determine where that assistance is most needed.' People line up to receive relief aid packages at an operation run by USAID, Catholic Relief Services and the Relief Society of Tigray on June 16, 2021 in Mekele, Ethiopia./File 'It serves the US government, but it also serves the rest of the humanitarian community too. So, its absence will be felt pretty much right away,' said Maxwell, a professor of food security at Tufts University and a member of the Famine Review Committee for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system. The IPC, another mechanism to monitor food insecurity, is a global coalition backed by UN agencies, NGOs and multiple governments, including the United States. While the two systems' functions have become more overlapping in recent years to some degree, a key difference is that the IPC analysis for specific countries is conducted on a volunteer basis, while FEWS NET has full-time staff to focus on early warning of future crises. Maxwell said that while there are other famine monitoring mechanisms, FEWS NET was the system that 'most regularly updates its assessments and its forecasts.' 'Decades' of data taken offline FEWS NET was created following the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which killed an estimated 400,000 to 1 million people – and caught the world off guard. President Ronald Reagan then challenged the US government to create a system to provide early warning and inform international relief efforts in an evidence-based way. The system going dark means that 'even other governments that were using our [US] data to try to provide food relief to their own people can't even access this,' said Evan Thomas, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. 'This is, at this point, quite petty – we're not even spending money to host a website that has data on it, and now we've taken that down so that other people around the world can't use information that can save lives,' Thomas said. The team at the University of Colorado Boulder has built a model to forecast water demand in Kenya, which feeds some data into the FEWS NET project but also relies on FEWS NET data provided by other research teams. The data is layered and complex. And scientists say pulling the data hosted by the US disrupts other research and famine-prevention work conducted by universities and governments across the globe. 'It compromises our models, and our ability to be able to provide accurate forecasts of ground water use,' Denis Muthike, a Kenyan scientist and assistant research professor at UC Boulder, told CNN, adding: 'You cannot talk about food security without water security as well.' 'Imagine that that data is available to regions like Africa and has been utilized for years and years – decades – to help inform divisions that mitigate catastrophic impacts from weather and climate events, and you're taking that away from the region,' Muthike said. He cautioned that it would take many years to build another monitoring service that could reach the same level. 'That basically means that we might be back to the era where people used to die because of famine, or because of serious floods,' Muthike added.
CNN
09-03-2025
- Business
- CNN
A US-run system alerts the world to famines. It's gone dark after Trump slashed foreign aid
A vital, US-run monitoring system focused on spotting food crises before they turn into famines has gone dark after the Trump administration slashed foreign aid. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) monitors drought, crop production, food prices and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries. Funded by USAID and managed by contractor Chemonics International, the project employs researchers in the United States and across the globe to provide eight-month projections of where food crises will emerge. Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and many other nations has been stopped amid the Trump administration's effort to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID). 'These are the most acutely food insecure countries around the globe,' said Tanya Boudreau, the former manager of the project. Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The website is down. And its treasure trove of data that underpinned global analysis on food security – used by researchers around the world – has been pulled offline. FEWS NET is considered the gold-standard in the sector, and it publishes more frequent updates than other global monitoring efforts. Those frequent reports and projections are key, experts say, because food crises evolve over time, meaning early interventions save lives and save money. 'You need to get your planning in place well in advance in order to avert the worst outcomes,' Boudreau told CNN. 'A late intervention actually leads to much higher costs in terms of responding, and those costs can be measured both in terms of the cost to the US government or other agencies that are responding, but also costs in terms of the livelihoods of people who are being affected.' USAID recently indicated that the humanitarian waiver issued by the State Department would apply to FEWS NET, according to a source familiar with the FEWS NET program. But aid workers did not yet have any specifics yet on what activities would resume, when or how, the source told CNN. US Secretary of State Macro Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly said he has issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, including food and medical aid. However, multiple USAID staff and contractors who have spoken to CNN say almost all USAID humanitarian assistance programs remain stopped in their tracks, as payments have not been processed and there are no staff in DC to manage contracts. That includes lifesaving food assistance in Afghanistan, Colombia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among other countries, according to a list of terminated USAID awards obtained this week by CNN. The list shows that charity partners have also had to stop providing nutrition-dense products for children suffering from starvation in Myanmar, as well as hold back food deliveries in Ethiopia, with aid now at risk of spoiling in warehouses. CNN has reached out to the State Department and USAID for comment. The disappearance of FEWS NET isn't currently having as much of an impact on the ground as the freezing of the food assistance itself, food security expert Daniel Maxwell told CNN. 'But very soon, if the food assistance does continue to flow, but FEWS NET is not there, then there isn't any good mechanism, at least no internal mechanism within the US, to help determine where that assistance is most needed.' 'It serves the US government, but it also serves the rest of the humanitarian community too. So, its absence will be felt pretty much right away,' said Maxwell, a professor of food security at Tufts University and a member of the Famine Review Committee for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system. The IPC, another mechanism to monitor food insecurity, is a global coalition backed by UN agencies, NGOs and multiple governments, including the United States. While the two systems' functions have become more overlapping in recent years to some degree, a key difference is that the IPC analysis for specific countries is conducted on a volunteer basis, while FEWS NET has full-time staff to focus on early warning of future crises. Maxwell said that while there are other famine monitoring mechanisms, FEWS NET was the system that 'most regularly updates its assessments and its forecasts.' FEWS NET was created following the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, which killed an estimated 400,000 to 1 million people – and caught the world off guard. President Ronald Reagan then challenged the US government to create a system to provide early warning and inform international relief efforts in an evidence-based way. The system going dark means that 'even other governments that were using our [US] data to try to provide food relief to their own people can't even access this,' said Evan Thomas, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. 'This is, at this point, quite petty – we're not even spending money to host a website that has data on it, and now we've taken that down so that other people around the world can't use information that can save lives,' Thomas said. The team at the University of Colorado Boulder has built a model to forecast water demand in Kenya, which feeds some data into the FEWS NET project but also relies on FEWS NET data provided by other research teams. The data is layered and complex. And scientists say pulling the data hosted by the US disrupts other research and famine-prevention work conducted by universities and governments across the globe. 'It compromises our models, and our ability to be able to provide accurate forecasts of ground water use,' Denis Muthike, a Kenyan scientist and assistant research professor at UC Boulder, told CNN, adding: 'You cannot talk about food security without water security as well.' 'Imagine that that data is available to regions like Africa and has been utilized for years and years – decades – to help inform divisions that mitigate catastrophic impacts from weather and climate events, and you're taking that away from the region,' Muthike said. He cautioned that it would take many years to build another monitoring service that could reach the same level. 'That basically means that we might be back to the era where people used to die because of famine, or because of serious floods,' Muthike added.
