Latest news with #FewsNet
WIRED
19-02-2025
- Business
- WIRED
This USAID Program Made Food Aid More Efficient for Decades. DOGE Gutted It Anyways
One of the first things Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) did was push for extreme cuts to the United States' primary international aid agency, the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Musk insisted that USAID was too wasteful and corrupt to exist, but by effectively dismantling the agency, DOGE ended projects like the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net), a long-running, broadly successful data analysis initiative that provides guidance to ensure that food aid is delivered in the least-wasteful way possible. Deprived of USAID funding, the Fews Net program is currently offline. The international development firm Chemonics, which staffs a large portion of the project, says it has furloughed 88 percent of its US-based workforce. For now, that means the United States may be facing a new, less efficient era of food assistance, one that could leave the country more vulnerable to future global crises. The goal of Fews Net is to crunch a wide array of variables—from weather patterns to armed conflicts—to predict where famines will occur ahead of time and deploy resources to prevent and curb disasters. Its reports are used both internally by USAID and by other governments, nonprofit groups, and aid agencies around the world. It can't flat-out prevent people from going hungry or guarantee that foreign governments will take its recommendations, but it has a fruitful track record of providing advance warnings and guidance that keep people alive. For example, Fews Net has been credited with saving up to a million lives in 2016, when it predicted and responded to a famine in the Horn of Africa. 'We are really a pillar,' says Laouali Ibrahim, a former Fews Net West Africa regional technical manager who retired last year. 'If you withdraw Fews Net, systems will collapse. The quality of early warnings will decrease.' A current Fews Net worker in southern Africa, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are currently furloughed and still hopeful the program might restart, tells WIRED that some countries are already feeling the impact of the program going offline, especially since it's the 'lean season,' the time when food aid is most acutely needed. While the United Nations and private-sector programs still offer their own insights into how to distribute aid, the worker says that Fews Net produced more timely reports. 'It leaves a huge gap,' the worker says. USAID launched Fews Net in 1985 in response to a series of famines that ravaged Ethiopia and Africa's Sahel region. The severity of the humanitarian disaster sparked a new wave of interest in humanitarian aid. (Remember the celebrity-studded song to raise money for the cause, 'We Are the World?') The Trump administration's stance on foreign aid today is markedly more negative, but secretary of state Marco Rubio, who is currently serving as acting administrator of USAID, has repeatedly emphasized that DOGE's cuts do not represent the total end of US international assistance. Rubio's office has offered emergency waivers to allow 'lifesaving' work to continue, but many aid groups say the system is not working, causing a number of crucial programs, including HIV medical assistance, to screech to a halt. Similarly, even though predicting and detecting famines can save lives, Fews Net's work is currently on hold.
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump's aid freeze shuts down ‘gold standard' famine-monitoring system
The system for monitoring global food crises appears to have been suspended after President Donald Trump's executive order froze US foreign aid. The website for the US-funded famine early warning systems network (Fews Net) was not accessible on Friday. A banner said reports and data were 'currently unavailable' without elaborating. Fews Net is considered the most important tool for judging levels of hunger and preventing deadly famines. Its data helps humanitarian organisations decide how to distribute food aid to tens of millions of people around the world. The organisations fear suspending Fews Net will put lives at risk when hunger levels are near an all-time high. Parts of war-struck Sudan have tipped into famine, while 2 million people in Myanmar's Rakhine state are expected to face starvation by the middle of this year. Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development, said: 'Fews Net is a vital live-saving tool. It allows food to be shipped and support to be put in place before a food shortage or crop failure turns into famine. 'Without Fews Net,' he added, 'global humanitarian responders will be flying blind, with less advance warning of where famine could strike.' Trump's executive order, one of many signed after his inauguration as president on 20 January, halted all US aid funding for 90 days while reviews were carried out. The US is the world's largest single humanitarian donor, accounting for more than 40% of funding last year, and the abruptly issued order has thrown the global aid sector into disarray. There are reports of healthcare-related projects in southern Africa closing within days of Trump's order and of local workers losing their jobs. Several charities and United Nations agencies have already laid off staff and halted work. Dozens of senior officials have been placed on leave at the US Agency for International Development (USAid), while hundreds of contractors working on the agency's programmes have been furloughed. The executive order made exceptions for military aid to Israel and Egypt, and for emergency food aid. On Wednesday, the Trump administration granted a waiver for the continuation of 'life-saving humanitarian assistance', including a programme that helps 20 million people living with HIV access antiretroviral drugs. This does not appear to have included Fews Net. USAid did not respond to a request for comment. 'Everyone in USAid is in a defensive crouch about how to proceed,' said a US official who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorised to speak. Other waiver requests covering assistance to refugees had been made but were 'immediately shot down', the official said. 'Fews Net is not strictly food aid, so it will need a waiver,' they added. The early-warning network was set up in 1985 after a famine in Ethiopia in which 1 million people died. It monitors hunger crises in 29 countries, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. The platform is coordinated and funded by USAid, gathering complex data on market prices, nutrition levels, livelihoods, trade and weather patterns. It classifies hunger crises according to a five-phase scale of increasing severity and predicts their trajectory up to nine months in advance. Dave Harden oversaw Fews Net as an assistant administrator in 2016, and credits the system with preventing a famine in Ethiopia that year by giving enough warning of drought to stockpile food. He describes Fews Net as 'the gold standard for famine monitoring' that allows 'deeply detailed long-term risk assessments'. 'This preparation is fundamental to the humanitarian system and saves enormous amounts of lives, reduces damage and allows for better resilience,' said Harden. 'If you don't have it, people die. That was the difference between Ethiopia in 1984 and 2016.'
