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What is famine? Causes and effects and how to stop it

From Gaza to Sudan, people facing famine are hungry and need urgent aid to survive.

When a global report last week revealed that almost 500,000 people in Gaza are now facing starvation, it was another frightening call to action. In half of households, people reported often that they had no food to eat in the house.

"We need all hands on deck...," said the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffith. “We fail them daily every time we're not able to get aid through to the people who need it."

At Oxfam, we’ve been focused on the fight to end hunger since our founding. So, we’re going to define what exactly is famine, what causes it, share an example of a famine, and explain how people like you can help stop famine in its tracks.

What does famine mean?

According to researchers Dan Maxwell and Nisar Majid, famine is “an extreme crisis of access to adequate food.” Visible in “widespread malnutrition” and “loss of life due to starvation and infectious disease,” famine robs people of their dignity, equality, and for some—their lives.

So how do we know a famine is occurring? The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, is a common global scale that informs how governments and aid groups should respond when people lose reliable access to sufficient, affordable, and nutritious food. It’s a five-phase warning system to inspire urgent action before it’s too late.

For a famine to exist in a given area—Phase 5 of the acute food insecurity scale— three conditions, backed by evidence, must be met:

• 1 in 5 households faces an extreme food shortage
• More than 30 percent of children are “acutely malnourished,” a nutritional deficiency that results from inadequate energy or protein intake
• Death rates exceed two adults or four children per day for every 10,000 people

As of right now, famine has not yet been declared in Gaza. But according to the IPC , there is a “high” risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip and about 95 percent of the population faces extreme food insecurity.

What causes a famine?

Famines are caused by multiple factors. Since 2020, a deadly combination of conflict, COVID-19, and climate change has dramatically increased the number of people suffering from severe hunger. When compounded by inaction or policy decisions that make people more vulnerable, famine can result and society can collapse.

In Gaza, many challenges are putting people on the brink of famine:

• Following the attack by Palestinian armed militants on October 7, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has resulted in widespread damage to assets and infrastructure critical for health and food production and distribution.
• Israel’s tightening of the siege on Gaza and systematic denial of humanitarian access to and within the Gaza Strip continues to impede the safe and equitable delivery of lifesaving humanitarian assistance.
• Aid workers in Gaza are being killed and are unable to safely deliver humanitarian aid.

Political scientist Alex de Waal calls famine a political scandal, a “catastrophic breakdown in government capacity or willingness to do what [is] known to be necessary to prevent famine.” When governments fail to prevent or end conflict —or help families prevent food shortages brought on by any reason—they fail their own people.

What is an example of a famine?

The 1984 famine in Ethiopia took the lives of 1 million people , driven in part by drought, conflict, and the policy choices of national and regional authorities. Estimates suggest around 1 million people survived thanks to the delivery of humanitarian aid.

On the evening of Tuesday, October 23, 1984, NBC Nightly News aired footage taken by an Ethiopian videographer that showed scores of deceased people on stretchers that were being taken toward makeshift graveyards. Though the scenes inspired a robust international response, the nature of that response overlooked the capacity of communities affected by the famine to help themselves.

By the next morning, Oxfam America had received over 300 calls an hour from people like you who wanted to help. During the relief effort, feeding centers provided hungry people with food rations. Makeshift hospitals supported severely dehydrated people with IVs, providing shots of tetracycline to fight infection. Oxfam delivered protein and fat-fortified biscuits to those in need that saved many lives, but some could not eat them, as their mouths were riddled with open sores because of dehydration.

“These scenes of death and dying in the famine camps in Ethiopia were beyond the American experience, beyond anyone’s comprehension,” recalls Bernie Beaudreau , an Oxfam staffer at the time.

Can famine be stopped?

Famine can be stopped—now, and in the long term . But governments and aid groups must anticipate a worsening hunger crisis, secure the resources and political will to address the root causes of hunger, and safely deliver humanitarian aid to those most in need.

In Gaza and countries like Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, and Madagascar, Oxfam is working to reduce the likelihood of famine with people like you. Here are some ways you can support Oxfam’s work:

• Stomach ailments from dirty water rob people of good nutrition from whatever food they can find, and young children are particularly vulnerable. That’s why Oxfam helps improve and repair wells to access clean water as well as trucks in water to areas where there is none.
• Good sanitation and hygiene are essential for preventing the spread of diseases like cholera, Ebola, and COVID-19, which are especially deadly leading up to and during famines. Oxfam helps construct latrines and distributes hygiene items like soap so people can wash their hands.
• When food is available in markets, but might be scarce or very expensive for some, Oxfam distributes cash to help buy food. Oxfam also distributes emergency food rations when necessary.
• In areas where farmers can plant crops, Oxfam supplies seeds, tools, and other assistance so people can grow their own food. We also help farmers raising livestock with veterinary services, animal feed, and in some cases, we distribute animals to farmers to help restock their herds .
• We help build the capacity of local organizations to respond to emergencies like famine, shifting power from international organizations to leaders rooted in local know-how. We promote the leadership of our local partners and boost their skills to reduce suffering, risks, and losses by preparing their own communities before disasters strike.
• Oxfam and our supporters advocate for the resolution of conflicts and push for sufficient assistance for people affected by war and famine. Our research and advocacy also advance sustainable development in ways that help reduce the risk of future food crises and disasters.

Now you know what famine is

Join Oxfam to help stop famine in its tracks in Gaza right now.

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Poverty and famines 2.0: the opportunities and challenges of crisis modeling and forecasting

Paul w. howe.

1 Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA USA

2 Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA USA

Elena N. Naumova

As the world works to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG1): End poverty in all its forms everywhere, by 2030, it is critical to understand its strong interrelationship with two other SDGs: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2) and Reduce inequality within and among countrie s (SDG10). Progress in one area depends on efforts in the others, and all three goals are part of the global public health agenda. Famines, which can be understood as “acute episodes of extreme hunger that result in excess mortality due to starvation and hunger-induced diseases” [ 1 , 2 ], represent one of the most serious consequences of poverty and inequality, but they also contribute to the further immiseration and marginalization of affected populations. Recognizing these interrelationships has helped transform our approach to famine in the past and could provide a starting point for exploring new advances for the future.

In his landmark 1981 book, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation [ 3 ], future Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen proposed a revolutionary shift in our understanding of these crises. He argued that famines often occur not from a lack of availability of food, but from the inability of certain populations to access it. While this insight suggested that poverty was a principal reason that people experience famines, Sen pressed for a more nuanced understanding of why certain groups are more at risk of starvation than others during a crisis. He suggested that it was an inability to ‘command’ adequate food because of a failure of entitlements that led to mortality. His entitlements approach laid the foundation for decades of research that have extended, contested, and moved beyond his views by, for example, emphasizing the importance of the processes that lead to famines [ 4 , 5 ], highlighting the critical role of politics and power in their causation and differential impacts [ 6 ], and addressing the global dimensions of the crises [ 7 ].

Although in the early 2000s trends suggested that these crises were diminishing in number and scale [ 2 , 8 ], famines  have killed hundreds of thousands [ 9 ] of people in the first two decades of the twenty-first century and left a legacy of livelihood  damage, emotional trauma, physical impairment, and social disruption. In 2021 and 2022, there have been concerns about the risk of famine in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen [ 10 ]. As of November 2021, it was estimated that more than 45 million people in 43 countries were experiencing emergency food security conditions [ 11 ]. With the looming threats of climate change, continued conflict, and emerging pandemics, the world is likely to continue to face the risk of famine in the years to come, making it critical to understand with greater certainty when and where famines will occur, and which populations will be at greatest risk, and thereby help to trigger appropriate early action [ 12 ].

Just as the risk of famine appears to be increasing again globally, three trends—related to famine theory, measuring and modeling, and humanitarian practice—are converging to offer an opportunity for a step-change in our ability to understand and forecast these crises. While the focus in the discussion will be on ‘famine,’ the trends (and the proposed initiative) apply to food and nutrition security crises more generally.

First, drawing on previous literature, academics have recently suggested that famines can be understood as complex systems and have identified conceptual models that describe their evolution from formation to collapse [ 13 ]. This systems approach to famine offers new possibilities for understanding the dynamics of these crises and could help in defining driving forces, characteristic milestones, and well-tailored metrics, which would facilitate the translation of these concepts into quantitative and analytical models and produce famine forecasts.

Second, there have been rapid developments in the fields of primary data collection and computational, mathematical, and statistical modeling. Real-time data collection capabilities, through electronic devices and crowdsourcing, have accelerated and changed the possibilities for gathering information. Innovations in predictive analytics make it possible to handle the large volume of complex data required to model and forecast famines [ 14 ]. At the same time, a suite of different types of models—systems dynamics, agent-based models, stochastic models, and regression time series models—offer a wide range of approaches to challenging problems and have gained in sophistication, accuracy, and applications. These developments have enabled progress on critical problems as complex as climate change and the COVID-19 global pandemic. They offer hope for meaningful advances to deepen our understanding of famines as systems and develop robust conceptual and forecasting models.

Third, in terms of global reach and innovation, humanitarian practice has evolved in ways that could both drive these efforts forward and translate them into significant, real-world impact. Early warning analysts have continued to improve systems for predicting food insecurity crises and famines through widespread monitoring that combines sophisticated data analysis with on-the-ground insight. The Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) platform, developed in 2004, offers comparable analyses of food insecurity and malnutrition situations globally and provides a widely accepted process for determining whether a famine has occurred based on an internationally agreed definition. Humanitarian agencies are transforming responses through greater use of cash, integration into social protection systems, and emphasis on early action. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2417, which requests regular updates on crises and strongly condemns the use of hunger as a weapon of war, has reinforced accountability for famine prevention. In all these ways, it is clear that humanitarian agencies have the capability to create, adopt, and apply innovations to address crises on a global scale.

The convergence of these trends could permit two important changes in our approach to famine. The first is to help researchers create models of famine as complex systems and describe their evolution from formation to collapse, as has been done for hurricanes and infectious outbreaks. Such models could help us gain new insights into questions such as: What are the components of a famine system? What are its spatial and temporal dimensions? How do the various parts of the system interact to produce critical outcomes such as malnutrition and mortality and why are certain populations especially vulnerable? Based on these insights, the second change would be for experts to better identify the signals of famine formation and therefore improve forecasts. If successful, these forecasts could help (as part of a wider set of tools) reduce uncertainty about the likely occurrence of food and nutrition security crises, contribute to timelier, more targeted, and life-saving action, help deter famine creation, and perhaps spark new fields of inquiry. The efforts to model and forecast hurricanes and infectious outbreaks suggest these kinds of benefits are possible if there is an iterative process that continually promotes learning from experience.

In moving toward a ‘Poverty and Famine 2.0 approach,’ we identify measuring, modeling, and forecasting as three essential and interrelated processes for gathering insight based on the goals and primary activities of each. Measuring aims to collect data to create information and knowledge. Modeling aims to process data, information, and knowledge to form casual paths, rules, and systems thinking, along with their uncertainties. Forecasting aims to infer future unknown situations based on data, information, knowledge, and system thinking. To describe a process of estimating future unknown situations, the terms ‘forecasting,’ ‘prediction,’ ‘projection,’ and ‘prognosis’ are often used by researchers and practitioners interchangeably. We are also making a distinction between forecasting and predictions suggesting that forecasting is an extrapolation of the past into the future, while predictions and projections are typically subjective and judgmental in nature. While both approaches are useful in considering changes that may take place in the future, ideally, forecasting is free from intuition and personal forecasters’ biases, whereas prediction is based on judgment. In short, all forecasts are predictions but not all predictions are forecasts.

Recognizing the potential of these three converging trends, especially the power of accurate relevant data and sound analytical solutions, several actors have engaged in pioneering efforts to use predictive analytics to improve food security and nutrition forecasting based on data sources, machine learning, and novel algorithms [ 14 , 15 ]. For example, the Famine Early Warnings System Network (FEWSNET) has partnered with scientists to incorporate climate models into their scenario-building [ 16 ]; the World Bank has developed sophisticated algorithms to forecast food crises globally [ 17 , 18 ]; Consortiums have used models to understand the risk of malnutrition; and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has used economic models to analyze the benefits of investments in resilience [ 19 ]. To a large extent, however, these efforts have been fragmented. The learnings from one are not always widely shared to inform the efforts of others. They are also partial in that most do not try to model famine itselfe, focusing instead on forecasting IPC phases, food insecurity indicators, or other outcomes. Some incorporate climate science models but have not yet found ways to bring in political and social dimensions to algorithmic forecasts. Recognizing that we are in the early stages of an emerging field, the IPC and the Global Network Against Food Crises have made famine forecasting a key component of their long-term strategies.

However, we are cognizant of the daunting challenges and genuine risks associated with pursuing famine modeling and forecasting. Modeling famine is complicated by the complexities of interacting economic, social, environmental, and political systems and the challenges of characterizing human action and decision-making. The track record on forecasting social phenomena and conflict has sometimes been discouraging [ 20 , 21 ]. These efforts also require large amounts of data from some of the most challenging contexts in the world. As a result, there is a danger that the international community will expend substantial resources and time on a venture with highly uncertain results. Such an initiative may also inadvertently reinforce the notion that there is a technical solution to famine and divert attention from pressing political issues central to its prevention. Moreover, because of the complexity of the models, they may hide assumptions and biases, reduce transparency, and perpetuate inequalities, creating ethical concerns [ 14 , 15 ]. Relatedly, the emphasis on data gathering activities and modeling exercises could lead to data-driven products that are increasingly divorced from local realities, and the experiences, views, and inputs of affected populations. Finally, while these efforts may contribute to improved forecasts, they do not directly address the critical challenge of translating early warning into early action [ 12 ].

We see potential responses to these concerns. For example, the cost of investing in these efforts is substantially smaller than the resources that are required to address current crises and that could be saved through the insights accurate forecasts could provide. Moreover, modeling and forecasting should not be seen as a substitute for social and political efforts (or existing early warning systems), but rather a complementary tool. Deliberate, joined-up approaches could also help address ethical concerns, engage affected populations, make the link to early action, and deal with data issues such as the need for reliable data repositories, tools to abstract and examine data, intra-agency and intergovernmental agreements, and data-curation standards and model-sharing protocols. Considering these challenges and potential responses, we offer six principles that could guide a famine modeling and forecasting initiative in terms of both content and process.

• Focus on both modeling famine itself and forecasting its occurrence. It is difficult to forecast what is not well understood. It is also difficult to act when the forecast is poorly focused and not well explained to end users. If we have better conceptual and analytical models of the formation, evolution, and collapse of famines as complex systems, it should help our attempts to better predict their occurrence. Likewise, progress on forecasting will point to new areas to explore in understanding the dynamics of these crises.
• Integrate multiple dimensions. While we may be more advanced in the use of climate and economic data in models, it will be important to think creatively about how political and social dimensions can be better integrated. Human behavior at any stages of decision-making could alter forecasts.
• Take an inclusive approach with global scope. The initiative requires a joined-up effort that brings together the insights of affected communities, humanitarian practitioners, famine theorists, public health professionals, data holders, and modelers across the globe. Similarly, a wide range of tools employed in science and practice—from machine learning and predictive analytics to intervention strategies to participatory approaches to simulation exercises—should be utilized.
• Be realistic, learn, and invest for the long-term. The history of using models in other fields—whether climate change or hurricanes or pandemics—suggests that they can provide early warning and deeper understanding. But the process of developing and deploying sophisticated, accurate models is challenging and the immediate payoffs uncertain. Results from conceptual developments, data analysis, and modeling need to be widely disseminated and built upon in an iterative process by a broader community. Decades may be needed to achieve the initiative’s full potential.
• Address ethical and other concerns. These models and forecasts entail a number of potential ethical risks that could undermine their usefulness and inadvertently perpetuate biases and inequalities. These concerns should be articulated and addressed upfront by the wider community involved [ 12 , 14 , 15 ], perhaps through development of protocols and procedures to guide the process.
• Look beyond models and forecasts. Models and forecasts are a potential tool for better understanding famines. But they should only be viewed as a part of a wider famine and public health agenda involving theoretical insights, enhanced early warning and action approaches, improved practice, and political efforts to prevent these crises more effectively.

Forty years after the publication of Sen’s seminal work, famine studies have identified its shortcomings and evolved in new directions, but his concern about the relationship between poverty and famines remains and challenges the global community to take creative approaches to more systematically address these crises that continue to threaten the lives and well-being of humans. Given recent trends, we believe it is an opportune moment to make a step-change in our efforts by investing in a 2.0 approach to crisis modeling and forecasting––thereby also supporting the achievement of the interrelated SDGs on poverty, hunger, and inequality.

The Journal of Public Health Policy is joining Springer in seeking submissions to a new Collection on Reducing Poverty and Its Consequences, in support of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This multi-journal Collection aims to synthesize and integrate social, behavioral, and public health perspectives on systemic structures bolstering poverty and inequality, poverty-reduction interventions, as well as gaps in our knowledge and future research directions. In promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we see the need for proactive dialogs across multiple stakeholders, forward-looking intervention study designs, understanding of long-term consequences of hunger and poverty, as well as the need for modeling and forecasting incorporating human behaviors beyond the technical solutions. We invite readers and contributors to share your thoughts, findings, and experiences through this new multi-journal Collection.

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• Famine, Affluence, and Morality
• Utilitarianism: Simply Explained

Study Guide: Peter Singer's 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality'

Introduction.

Peter Singer ’s ‘ Famine, Affluence, and Morality ’ 1 is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential texts in applied ethics. This study guide explains Singer’s central argument, explores possible objections, and clarifies common misunderstandings.

The Argument

Singer argues that most of us in affluent societies are making a terrible moral mistake. When we look at distant suffering—such as results from global poverty, famine, or disease—we tend to think that helping is morally optional , or what philosophers call “ supererogatory ”. Even if we could very easily give more to effective charities to help, doing so seems “above and beyond the call of duty”. It would be generous to give more, we think, but hardly required . We assume it’s perfectly fine to spend our money on expensive clothes, travel, entertainment, or other luxuries instead. But Singer argues that this assumption is mistaken. Instead, he argues, it is seriously morally wrong to live high while others die. 2

Singer’s argument for this conclusion is straightforward, resting largely on a key moral principle that we will call Singer’s rescue principle . The argument may be summarized as follows: 3

P1. Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, or medical care are very bad. P2. We can prevent such suffering and death by donating to effective charities (in place of consumer purchases). P3. Many of our consumer purchases are morally insignificant: we could give them up without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant. P4. The rescue principle: If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. 4 Therefore, C. We ought, morally, to donate to effective charities rather than making morally insignificant consumer purchases. 5

Note that, although Singer is a utilitarian, this argument does not rely on utilitarianism as a premise. P1 - P4 are all claims that non-utilitarians (and even non-consequentialists) could accept.

This is a really striking argument. The four premises each seem perfectly plausible. The conclusion logically follows. Yet the conclusion is radically at odds with how almost all of us live our lives. Every time we purchase something unnecessary, Singer’s argument implies that we not only could , but also should , do better. When you think about how this would apply to your own life, it could well turn out that the majority of the purchases you make in your everyday life would be considered morally wrong. Most of us could probably live significantly more frugally without sacrificing anything morally significant, and use the savings to relieve suffering or even prevent several untimely deaths. According to Singer’s argument, that is then precisely what we are morally required to do. 6 (Note that similar arguments could also apply to one’s choice of career . 7 )

Could such a radical conclusion really be true? You are probably already thinking of ways to dismiss it. But it’s not enough to simply reject the conclusion. To reject it, you must show one (or more) of the premises to be false.

Assessing the Premises

Premise 1: badness.

The first premise claims that suffering and death are very bad . That is hard to deny. Any plausible ethical theory—whether utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, etc.—will agree that, all else being equal, suffering and death are bad, 8 especially suffering that is extreme, involuntary, and uncompensated.

Premise 2: Preventability

The second premise is similarly secure: We can prevent suffering and death by donating to effective charities . Some “aid skeptics” are critical of foreign aid programs. This might suggest that we just do not know whether a given charity actually does any good. Some charitable interventions, on closer examination, even turn out to be counterproductive . However, while many charities have little impact, the most effective charities do a remarkable amount of good. Fortunately, finding effective charities is easy by consulting reputable sources such as GiveWell ’s in-depth charity evaluations. Even prominent aid skeptics do not deny that GiveWell’s top-rated charities are genuinely effective . So there is no real question that well-targeted donations can be expected to prevent a lot of suffering and death. (Of course, the argument will not apply to anyone who lacks the resources to be able to make any such donations. It’s exclusively directed at those of us who do, at least sometimes, make unnecessary purchases.)

Premise 3: Insignificant Sacrifice

The third premise claims that we could give up many of our consumer purchases “without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant.” Could one reasonably deny this? One could insist that all interests are morally significant in the sense that they count for something , so you always have at least some reason to make any consumer purchase that would bring you the slightest bit of extra happiness. But of course Singer does not mean to deny this. His use of “significant” here is not meant to distinguish interests from non-interests (that count for literally zero), but rather to distinguish especially weighty or important interests from relatively trivial ones. And it cannot plausibly be denied that some of our consumer purchases are relatively trivial, or not especially important to our lives.

It’s an interesting question precisely how to distinguish significant interests from comparatively trivial ones. The two extremes seem intuitively clear enough: luxury goods like designer clothes seem fairly unimportant, while providing a good life for one’s own child is obviously of genuine importance. In intermediate cases where it’s unclear whether an interest qualifies as deeply “morally significant”, it will be similarly unclear whether Singer’s argument requires us to be willing to sacrifice that interest in order to prevent grave harm. 9 But it’s important to note that an argument can be sound and practically important even if it is sometimes unclear how to apply it.

Premise 4: Singer’s Rescue Principle

Finally, we come to Singer’s rescue principle: If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. If we are to reject the argument’s conclusion, we must reject this premise. But can you really believe that it’s morally okay to just sit back and watch something terrible happen, when you could easily (without sacrificing anything important) prevent it?

Some may claim that our only duty is to do no harm . 10 On this view, it would be wrong to steal from the global poor, and it would be generous to help them, but we have no obligation to help in any way—it’s never wrong to simply mind one’s own business. This minimal view of morality (as limited to the duty not to harm others) meshes nicely with common views about charity. But it turns out to be unacceptable when we consider a broader range of cases, as Singer brings out with his famous Drowning Child thought experiment.

The Drowning Child

Singer writes:

If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing. 11

In a case like this, when you can easily prevent something very bad (like a child’s death), it seems clear that doing so is not only morally praiseworthy, but morally required . That remains true even if saving the child comes at a cost to yourself, as long as the cost is insignificant in comparison to the value of the child’s life. Since the cost of ruining your clothes (even an expensive suit that costs several thousand dollars to replace) is insignificant compared to the child’s life, you ought to wade into the pond to save the child.

What does the minimal “do no harm” view of morality imply about the right way to act in the thought experiment? Well, it’s not your fault that the child is drowning; you did not push them in. If you were to walk by and let the child drown, you would not be causing any additional harm—they would be just as badly off if you were not there in the first place. So the minimal view implies that it would be morally fine for you to just walk by (or even sit and eat some popcorn while watching the child drown). But that strikes most people as obscenely immoral. So the minimalist’s response to Singer’s rescue principle fails.

If applied consistently, Singer’s principle has radical implications in the real world. He writes:

We are all in that situation of the person passing the shallow pond: we can all save lives of people, both children and adults, who would otherwise die, and we can do so at a very small cost to us: the cost of a new… shirt or a night out at a restaurant or concert, can mean the difference between life and death to more than one person somewhere in the world. 12

If you accept that saving the drowning child is morally required, even at the cost of ruining your expensive suit, then morality may equally require you to donate an equivalent amount of money to save a child’s life via other means. And you can save a child’s life, just by donating a few thousand dollars to GiveWell’s top charities . (Or you can save a quality-adjusted life year by donating $100 or so.) If you would not think it okay to let a child drown when you have the ability to prevent it, moral consistency requires that you likewise refuse to let children die unnecessarily from poverty or preventable disease.

Aside from helping to address objections to Singer’s rescue principle, the Drowning Child thought experiment clarifies which of our interests are sufficiently “insignificant” that we may be called to sacrifice them to prevent grave harm to others. For example, someone might initially think that wearing designer clothes is a vital part of their identity, but if pressed on whether they would sooner watch a child drown than give up this expensive lifestyle, they might change their mind. 13

Not everyone accepts Singer’s radical conclusion about our moral obligations to donate to those in need. Yet, Singer’s conclusion is difficult to avoid since the standard objections no longer seem plausible when applied to corresponding variations of the pond case. 14 For example:

(1) You may believe charitable donations are uncertain to help. Would that remove the moral requirement to donate? But suppose you are similarly uncertain about whether the child in the pond is truly drowning (maybe they are just playing a game). Even so, mere uncertainty does not justify doing nothing. So long as the chance that your actions would help is sufficiently high (relative to the costs or any associated risks from attempting aid), you may still be required to wade in and offer assistance, just in case. Similarly, uncertainty about the impacts of your donations does not justify keeping the money to yourself, as long as the expected value of your donations is sufficiently high (relative to the costs).

(2) What if other , wealthier people could give more instead? Surely, they are under an even greater moral obligation to give, since doing so is less of a sacrifice for them. But suppose that other people stand around the pond, watching the child drown but refusing to help. They ought to help, so ideally your help would not be needed. But given that they are not helping, so your help is needed, it sure seems like it would still be wrong for you to do nothing and let the child drown. Likewise, it would be wrong not to save others’ lives by donating, even if there are more affluent people who could help but refuse to do so. (The bystander effect suggests that waiting for others to help first could easily result in no-one helping at all.)

(3) What about geographical proximity as a factor? Does it make a moral difference that the drowning child is right in front of you whereas the beneficiaries of your donations are far away ? Imagine that the pond with the drowning child was actually located far away from you, say, in another country, and you could rescue the child’s life by simply pressing a button. Surely, you would be required to press the button, even if you had to pay some money to do so. What matters morally is your ability to prevent the child from dying at a low cost to yourself, so that is what you should do—regardless of how far away the child is. Many moral theories (including utilitarianism) explicitly deny that geographical proximity is inherently morally relevant . 15

(4) Or, perhaps you think it’s enough to do your “fair share”: to just give as much as would be needed if everyone else did the same (perhaps 5% of one’s income). But suppose that after saving one child from drowning, you notice three other drowning children. Two bystanders are just watching the children drown, though you are relieved that one other adult is on track to save two of the remaining three children. Would it be okay to watch the last child drown on the grounds that you have already done the “share” (saving one out of four) that would have sufficed if everyone had done likewise? Or should you step up and do the share that is required to actually save all the children given what others are—and are not—doing?

It is unfair when some do not do their share. It’s unfairly demanding on us to have to do more than our ideal share would have been. But it would be even more unfair on the child to just let them drown. Losing their life would be a far greater burden than the extra cost to us of helping more. So, while some unfairness is inevitable when some do not do their share, concern to minimize unfairness should still lead us to step up and do more when needed.

None of these responses seems successful in establishing a morally important difference between the Drowning Child thought experiment and charitable giving. But considerations of salience, repeatability, or emergency may prove more significant. We address these in the next three sections.

Although geographical distance by itself does not seem to make a moral difference, it may make a psychological difference to us by affecting the salience of the different needs at stake. The visible suffering of a child right before our eyes has a very different emotional impact than merely abstract knowledge of distant suffering. This difference in emotional impact plausibly explains why most of us would be so much more strongly motivated to save the drowning child than to relieve distant suffering by donating to charity. But what is the moral significance of this difference in psychological salience?

Plausibly, greater salience can help bring to our attention genuine reasons to act that are there regardless, but that we might otherwise mistakenly neglect. After all, it’s not as though a suffering child suddenly becomes objectively more important once they enter our visual field. But we certainly become more aware of them (and how vital it is to help them). If this is right, it seems there is just as much moral reason to help those in need who are far away; we just tend not to notice this so much, and so we (understandably) make the moral mistake of failing to do as much as is objectively warranted in order to aid them. 16

On this analysis, the difference in salience does not affect the strength of our moral reasons—it’s just as important to save a distant child as it is to save one right before our eyes. But it does make an important difference to how we should evaluate the failure to act. Intuitively, failing to save the child from drowning would be morally monstrous , whereas failing to donate does not reflect so badly on you, even if it’s a serious moral mistake. We can explain this difference in terms of one’s quality of will . One is blameworthy to the extent that one acts from malicious motivations, or acts in a way that reveals an egregious lack of concern for others. To neglect more salient suffering reveals a greater lack of altruistic concern, even holding fixed the magnitude of the suffering in each case. So it is more blameworthy. As Chappell & Yetter-Chappell put it: “A child drowning before our eyes shocks us out of complacency, activating whatever altruistic concern we may have, whereas the constant suffering of the global poor is easier to ignore, meaning that inaction does not necessarily imply [such] an egregious lack of concern.” 17

We can thus accommodate the intuition that failing to donate to effective charities is not as blameworthy as watching a child drown (since only the latter reveals an extreme lack of altruistic concern), without this providing any reason to deny that aid in either case may be equally morally important .

Repeatability

A notable difference between the two cases is that it’s very rare to come across drowning children, whereas the needs of the global poor are constant and unrelenting. The significance of this fact is that a policy of helping those nearby in need of direct rescue would not be expected to prove especially costly. But a policy of helping anyone in the world in desperate need of aid would soon take over your life. A better analogy would then seem to be a limitless line of ponds containing drowning children. And when we consider such a case, it may no longer seem so wrong to at least sometimes take a break, and thereby let a child drown. 18

Of course, to save as many lives as possible over the long term, it would likely be optimal to take strategic breaks for self-care. At a minimum, you need to eat and sleep. But you may also save more lives in the long run if you take care to avoid burnout, taking extra breaks to spend time with friends and pursue hobbies that help you to de-stress. If so, taking such strategic breaks is morally justified by Singer’s principles. (There is no virtue in being counter-productively self-sacrificial in one’s altruism.) So this is not yet a counterexample to Singer’s view.

Still, this optimal route is highly demanding since it involves significant personal sacrifice. Suppose that in order to save the most lives you had to forsake your plans to become a parent, and cut down time spent with friends and hobbies to the bare minimum required to maintain your sanity and productivity. That is a big ask, and one that involves the loss of many morally significant goods in life. If Singer’s principle required us to pursue this optimal route, it might not seem so plausible after all.

But does it require this? Unlike maximizing utilitarianism , P4 only asks us to give up things that are not morally significant. Since the above sacrifices are clearly morally significant, it seems that they would be excluded from the list of P4’s possible demands. 19

One difficulty is that it’s not immediately clear how to apply the rescue principle to cases of repeated actions. Consider: giving up any one second of life might seem trivial. But repeated enough times, you would eventually give up your entire life , which is certainly significant. This suggests that repeatedly making an insignificant sacrifice might add up to an extremely significant sacrifice. To apply the rescue principle sensibly, then, it’s not enough to ask whether the immediate sacrifice in isolation is morally significant. We must further ask whether it’s part of a pattern that, in context, adds up to a morally significant sacrifice. If interpreted in this way, Singer’s rescue principle would seem to allow broad leeway for reserving substantial time and resources to pursue the personal projects that are most important to us. 20

Still, the conclusion of Singer’s argument remains strikingly revisionary. Even if we may reserve the majority of our spare time and resources for personal projects, we are still required to do much more for others than almost any of us actually do. Even when we need not entirely give up some expensive (or time-intensive) pastime, we may be morally required to economize—if by doing so we could (perhaps over several years) save many lives without significant lifetime loss to our own well-being . Many hobbies plausibly exhibit diminishing marginal utility: the more time and money we plow into them, the less additional value we gain from further investment. In such cases, we may be able to cut our personal investment by, say, half while still retaining most of the well-being we gain from the hobby. And of course many of us also spend time and money on entirely frivolous things that, on reflection, do not significantly contribute to our lives at all. If we reflect carefully and honestly, most of us would likely find significant opportunities to do more to help others, without needing to sacrifice anything truly important. If Singer’s rescue principle is right—and it seems hard to deny—then we really ought to pursue these opportunities.

Emergencies

The last major challenge to Singer’s argument comes from the idea that special ethical norms apply in emergency cases that cannot be broadly generalized. The drowning child scenario is a paradigmatic emergency. So perhaps common sense could be restored by combining a minimal view of our everyday obligations with ambitious positive obligations to assist in cases of emergency?

The difficulty for this view is to provide it with a principled basis. Why should emergency deaths be treated as inherently more important than equally preventable deaths from ongoing causes?

Sterri and Moen propose to explain this in terms of an “informal-insurance model”. 21 Their basic idea is that emergency ethics can be understood as a mutually-beneficial agreement among all in the moral community to informally insure each other against rare, unexpected risks of grave harm. That is, we undertake to help others in emergency situations, on the understanding that they would do the same for us. Since emergencies are rare, the comfortably-off can agree to participate in such a scheme without expecting to be bled dry by all the world’s needs. And since emergency situations can befall anyone, it’s in their enlightened self-interest to do so. We are all better off informally insuring each other against disaster in this way, than if we all were left to fend for ourselves.

This line of argument faces two significant problems, common to efforts to ground ethics in enlightened self-interest. Firstly, the underlying logic of mutual benefit excludes from the moral community not just the global poor but also others (including infants, non-human animals, future generations, and the severely disabled) who are not in a position to reciprocate. But surely you still ought to rescue a drowning paraplegic, for example, even if he could not do the same for you.

The second problem is that even when the informal insurance model gets the right result (requiring that you help), it does so for the wrong reasons. It implies that you should help for the sake of playing your part in a co-operative scheme of mutual benefit , which does not seem remotely the right reason to save a child from drowning.

To see this, imagine extending the logic of the informal insurance model to a society that includes water-phobic robots who just want to collect paperclips but occasionally drop them in puddles. In order to secure the assistance of the robots in helping to free us from getting our feet caught on railroad tracks (or other non-water-related emergencies), we might reciprocate by rescuing their lost paperclips from puddles. If the informal insurance account of emergency ethics were correct, then your moral reason to save a drowning child would be of exactly the same kind as your reason to “save” a paperclip from a puddle in the imagined scenario. But this is clearly wrong. We have moral reasons to save lives and avert great harms for the sake of the affected individuals. These moral reasons are distinct from (and more important than) our reasons to participate in mutual-benefit schemes.

Singer identifies a logical tension in our ordinary moral thought. We tend not to think much about our power to prevent great suffering (and even save lives). Even when this fact is brought to our attention, we tend to assume that it’s morally okay for us not to act on it, or to do very little. Helping would be generous, we think, but not required.

However, Singer’s rescue principle seems undeniable: if we can easily prevent something very bad—that is, without giving up anything morally significant—it sure seems that we ought to do so. And the Drowning Child scenario verifies this principle: we would not think it okay to just watch a child drown when you could easily save them at no risk to yourself. Differences in salience may explain why we find it easier to ignore more distant suffering; but it would also seem to suggest that we are morally mistaken to do so.

Considering repeatability means that we need to take our overall patterns of response into account: sacrifices that are small in isolation may add up to extreme sacrifices that are more than Singer’s principle would require. But even so, there are likely to be many changes we could make to our lives in order to help others more, without overall causing any significant loss to our own well-being. If Singer is right, we are morally required to make these changes. It’s no less important than saving a child who is drowning right before our eyes.

Discussion Questions

• Many effective altruists now believe that you can do more good through pursuing a high-impact career than by donating (even generously) while working at a less impactful job. How does that affect your view of Singer’s argument? Could you be morally required to consider a career change? Should someone in a high-impact career be expected to donate to charity in addition?
• This study guide focuses on the more moderate version of Singer’s rescue principle. But he also defends a stronger version, according to which we are morally required to prevent bad things from happening whenever we can do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. How much difference do you see between these two versions of the principle? Do you think the stronger principle is correct?
• What would a scalar utilitarian think of Singer’s principles? If there is no such thing as obligation, just better and worse actions, how would that affect Singer’s argument? Would saving lives become any less important or worthwhile if it was no longer “obligatory” in addition? What do you think is added by saying that an act is (not only good but also) “obligatory”?
• Imagine that you are going to donate money to an effective charity—enough to save two lives. But along the way, you see a child drowning in a pond. There is no time to set aside the cash in your pockets: if you jump in, the money will be destroyed, so you will be unable to make the donation after all. Should you still save the drowning child? Why / why not?
• We tend to just think about the money or resources that people already have. But suppose that you could easily earn more , say by working overtime (or shifting to a more lucrative job). Might it be wrong not to earn more money (in order to then donate more)? How would you apply Singer’s principles to this case?
• Would it be wrong for you to tell them about Singer’s argument?
• If so, would that mean that Singer’s conclusion is false , and they are not obliged to donate more after all? Or could a moral claim be true even if it was not always a good idea to tell people about it?

Your professor will explain their general expectations, or what they are looking for in a good philosophy paper. You can find other helpful general guidelines online . If writing on Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ in particular, you should take care to avoid the following common pitfalls:

• Do not get hung up on empirical disputes, such as those surrounding aid skepticism. The interesting philosophical question is whether Singer’s moral principles are correct. So just suppose we are in a position where we could help others. The fundamental philosophical question here is: How much could morality, in principle, require us to give up in order to help others? Aid skepticism does not answer this question, but merely dodges it. (Further, as MacAskill emphasizes: “There are thousands of pressing problems that call out for our attention and that we could make significant inroads on with our resources.” Global health charities are far from the only way that our money could be productively used to help others.)
• Do not get distracted by the sociological question of whether we could hope to convince most of society to act on Singer’s recommendations. The question is what we, as individuals, ought to do . It’s not about what we can convince others of. That would, again, be to dodge the fundamental moral question.
• Although Singer is a utilitarian, his argument in this paper does not rely on utilitarianism as a premise. Look again at the premises. These are all claims that even non-utilitarians could (and arguably should) accept. Alternatively, if you think that non-utilitarians ought to reject one or more of these premises, your essay should offer an argument to this effect.
• If you are having trouble coming up with an original “take” on the argument, it can often be helpful to read published responses until you find one that you disagree with. (You might start with our suggestions for further reading, below.) You can then write about why you disagree, diagnosing where you think the other author’s argument or objection goes wrong. Or, if you disagree with Singer’s original argument, you could explain why, while also showing how you think others’ defenses of his argument (as found, for example, in this very study guide) go wrong.

Good luck! And remember to cite your sources.

How to Cite This Page

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Resources and Further Reading

• Peter Singer (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 1(3): 229–243.
• Peter Singer (2019). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty , 2nd ed. The Life You Can Save, Bainbridge Island, WA and Sydney, available free at <www.thelifeyoucansave.org>.
• Richard Y. Chappell & Helen Yetter-Chappell (2016). Virtue and Salience . Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 94(3): 449–463.
• Andrew T. Forcehimes & Luke Semrau (2019). Beneficence: Does Agglomeration Matter? Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (1): 17-33.
• Frances Kamm (1999). Famine Ethics: The Problem of Distance in Morality and Singer’s Ethical Theory, in Singer and His Critics , ed. Dale Jamieson, Oxford: Blackwell: 174–203.
• William MacAskill (2019). Aid Scepticism and Effective Altruism . Journal of Practical Ethics , 7(1): 49–60.
• Richard Miller (2004). Beneficence, Duty and Distance . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 32(4): 357–383.
• Theron Pummer (2023). The Rules of Rescue: Cost, Distance, and Effective Altruism . Oxford University Press.
• William Sin (2010). Trivial Sacrifices, Great Demands . Journal of Moral Philosophy 7 (1): 3-15.
• Michael Slote (2007). Famine, Affluence, and Virtue, in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems , ed. Rebecca L. Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe, Oxford: Clarendon Press: 279–296.
• Aksel Braanen Sterri & Ole Martin Moen (2021). The ethics of emergencies . Philosophical Studies, 178 (8): 2621–2634.
• Jordan Arthur Thomson (2021). Relief from Rescue . Philosophical Studies 179 (4): 1221-1239.
• Travis Timmerman (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown . Analysis , 75(2): 204–212.
• Peter Unger (1996). Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence . Oxford University Press.

Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality . Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3): 229-243.  ↩︎

See also Unger, P. (1996). Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence . Oxford University Press.  ↩︎

P1 and P4 are quoted (with minor edits for clarity) from p. 231 of the text. P2, P3, and C are our own extrapolations.  ↩︎

Singer advocates a stricter version of the rescue principle, where we are required to sacrifice even some genuinely morally significant things, so long as they are not comparably significant to the harms thereby prevented. We focus here on the less demanding version of the rescue principle since (as Singer notes) it’s sufficient for practical purposes, while being more difficult to reject. But the stronger version is also plausible, and is entailed by utilitarianism (while also being compatible with other moral theories).  ↩︎

Note that this conclusion leaves open that there may be some third option that you ought to do that is even better than donating to effective charities. It’s just making the contrastive normative claim that, between the two specified options , you ought to donate rather than make morally insignificant consumer purchases.  ↩︎

Unless, again, there is some other option that would do even more good, in which case we may be required to do that instead!  ↩︎

The career-focused version of Singer’s argument might look like this (with P1 unchanged):

P2*: We can prevent suffering and death by working in an impactful job rather than spending our time on a career that does not help others.

P3*: We can work in an impactful job without significant uncompensated sacrifice.

P4*: If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without significant uncompensated sacrifice, we ought, morally, to do it.

C*: We ought, morally, to work in an impactful job rather than spend our time on a career that does not help others.

Note that P3 and P4 are worded in terms of significant uncompensated sacrifice, because one’s career choice is a major life decision that is likely to involve significant tradeoffs. If one passes up becoming an artist (say), there may be something morally significant about that loss, even if one is overall happier with an alternate career. If you receive benefits commensurate with what you sacrificed, we can say that your sacrifice was compensated and so not costly to you, all things considered.  ↩︎

Someone sufficiently desperate to escape the argument might reject the first premise by claiming that overpopulation is such a problem that we should not seek to save lives after all (because lives saved add to overpopulation, thus increasing overall suffering). But there are a number of reasons why this is badly misguided. First, this claim is a myth: empirically, saving lives in poor countries does not lead to overpopulation. See: Melinda Gates (2014). Saving Lives Does Not Lead to Overpopulation . The Breakthrough Institute ; Hans Rosling. Will saving poor children lead to overpopulation? Gapminder Foundation .

Second, someone who really believed this claim would also need to advocate for shutting down hospitals, letting serial killers go free, etc. Few would be willing to consistently hold the view that there is no point to saving innocent lives. Letting people die unnecessarily seems an atrocious way to attempt to counteract overpopulation.

Third, there are obviously better alternatives, such as empowering women in ways that predictably lower birth rates. Examples of this include global family planning charities or girls’ education. See Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 1(3): 229–243, p. 240.

Finally, note that it’s increasingly disputed whether we should be more concerned about overpopulation or underpopulation; and that none of these concerns touch on the importance of reducing suffering, which increases the quality rather than quantity of life.  ↩︎

Though, as we’ll see below, the drowning child scenario might help to illuminate the boundaries of morality’s demands here.  ↩︎

Or, even more minimally, to simply not violate anyone’s rights . Either way, philosophers call this a negative duty—a duty to not do a certain action—in contrast to positive duties to do a certain action.  ↩︎

Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 1(3): 229–243, p. 231.  ↩︎

Singer, P. (1997). The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle . New Internationalist . ( archive )  ↩︎

Of course, the relevant question is not the psychological one of what someone would be willing to choose, but the moral one of what choice is truly justifiable. But it’s often by thinking through such a choice from the inside that we form our moral beliefs about which choices are morally permissible.  ↩︎

See also Chapter 3: Common Objections to Giving, in Singer, P. (2019). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty , 2nd ed. The Life You Can Save, Bainbridge Island, WA and Sydney, available free at <www.thelifeyoucansave.org>.  ↩︎

Though for a competing view, see Kamm, F.M. (1999). Famine Ethics: The Problem of Distance in Morality and Singer’s Ethical Theory, in Singer and His Critics , ed. Dale Jamieson. Oxford: Blackwell: 174–203.  ↩︎

Though for a competing view, which takes normal empathetic responses to determine what is right, see Slote, M. (2007). Famine, Affluence, and Virtue, in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems , ed. Rebecca L. Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe, Oxford: Clarendon Press: 279–296.  ↩︎

Chappell, R.Y. & Yetter-Chappell, H. (2016). Virtue and Salience . Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 94(3): 449–463, p.453.  ↩︎

Timmerman, T. (2015). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with letting a child drown . Analysis , 75(2): 204–212.  ↩︎

Notably, Singer’s stricter comparable sacrifice principle might require those sacrifices, if none of the personal losses were comparable in significance to the extra lives saved. Singer himself endorses the utilitarian thought that we ought (in principle) to give to the point of marginal utility , where the cost to us of giving any more would equal or outweigh the gain to others. But non-utilitarians might, of course, take a different view of what counts as being of comparable moral significance. And the weaker rescue principle (P4) that our main text focuses on is certainly less demanding.  ↩︎

This interpretation brings Singer’s rescue principle much closer to Miller’s Principle of Sympathy , according to which: “One’s underlying disposition to respond to neediness as such ought to be sufficiently demanding that giving which would express greater underlying concern would impose a significant risk of worsening one’s life, if one fulfilled all further responsibilities; and it need not be any more demanding than this.”

Miller, R. (2004). Beneficence, Duty and Distance . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 32(4): 357–383, p.359.  ↩︎

Sterri, A.B. & Moen, O.M. (2021). The ethics of emergencies . Philosophical Studies, 178 (8): 2621–2634.  ↩︎

The future is equal

• Press releases

Famine in Somalia: causes and solutions

The UN announcement of famine in Somalia is both a wake-up call to the scale of this disaster, and a wake-up call to the solutions needed to limit death-from-hunger now and in the future. So, what is famine and how can we prevent it? Famine is the “triple failure” of (1) food production, (2) people’s ability to access food and, finally and most crucially (3) in the political response by governments and international donors. Crop failure and poverty leave people vulnerable to starvation – but famine only occurs with political failure. In Somalia years of internal violence and conflict have been highly significant in creating the conditions for famine.  

What is famine?

The UN uses a five-step scale, called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), developed with NGOs including Oxfam, to assess a country’s food security. Stage 5 – “famine/humanitarian catastrophe” – requires that more than two people per 10,000 die each day, acute malnutrition rates are above 30 percent, all livestock is dead, and there is less than 2,100 kilocalories of food and 4 liters of water available per person per day In October 2009 Oxfam published a paper on Ethiopia and neighboring regions asking “what can be done to prevent the next drought from becoming a disaster?” We acknowledged that food aid saved lives but that it was not cost-effective and did not alone help people to withstand the next shock. By the time the UN calls a famine it is already a signal of large-scale loss of life. We can only ensure now that aid comes quickly and appropriately to prevent an even worse-case scenario. We must also resolve not why this famine happened but why again? And how to prevent the next one?

The causes of famine

Famines result from a combination “triple failure”:

• Production failure : In Somalia, a two-year drought – which is phenomenal in now being the driest year in the last 60 – has caused record food inflation, particularly in the expectation of the next harvest being 50% of normal. Somalia already had levels of malnutrition and premature mortality so high as to be in a “normalized” state of permanent emergency. This is true too in pockets across the entire region.
• Access failure : The drought has killed off the pastoralists’ prime livestock assets (up to 90% animal mortality in some areas), slashing further their purchasing power. In addition Somalia severe internal conflict has made development almost impossible to achieve and data difficult to access both accurately and credibly.
• Response failure : Underlying it all has been the inability of Somalia’s government and donors to tackle the country’s chronic poverty, which has marginalized vulnerable people and fundamentally weakened their ability to cope. There’s been a lack of investment in social services and basic infrastructure and lack of good governance. Meanwhile donors have reacted too late and too cautiously. The overall international donor response to this humanitarian crisis has been slow and inadequate. According to UN figures, $1 billion is required to meet immediate needs. So far donors have committed less than $200m, leaving an $800 million black hole .

How does this situation compare with current food crises in other parts of the world? 

This famine represents the most serious food insecurity situation in the world today in terms of both scale and severity.

This is the first officially-declared famine in Africa so far this century, at a time when famine has been eradicated everywhere else.

What needs to be done?

The 21st Century is the first time in human history that we have the capacity to eradicate famine. To do so, we must address the underlying problems:

• Production solutions : We must accelerate investment in African food production. There are regions in Africa we know have always faced chronic food shortages, where even small blips in harvests can have terrible consequences. We need more support for small-holder farmers and pastoralists (e.g. hardier crops, cheaper inputs, disaster risk management).
• Access solutions : We must alleviate rural African poverty. More aid and budgetary investment into physical infrastructure (roads, communications etc) and allowing public intervention to correct market failures until markets are stronger (e.g. grain reserves to stop price volatility).
• Response solutions : We need to move away from discretionary assistance to guaranteed social protection e.g. such as social assistance to the poor households to access food throughout the year and insurances, so that support can be triggered automatically in times of crisis. In some contexts cash transfers can be more appropriate than food aid, where availability of food is not a problem.

Emergency aid is vital right now, but we also need to ask why this has happened, and how we can stop it ever happening again. The warning signs have been seen for months, and the world has been slow to act. Much greater long-term investment is needed in food production and basic development to help people cope with poor rains and ensure that this is the last famine in the region.

Published July 2011.

Oxfam responded to the crisis by providing life-saving water, sanitation services, food, and cash, aiming to reach at least 3.5 million people, across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

A global food crisis

Conflict, economic shocks, climate extremes and soaring fertilizer prices are combining to create a food crisis of unprecedented proportions. As many as 309 million people are facing chronic hunger in 71 countries. We have a choice: act now to save lives and invest in solutions that secure food security, stability and peace for all, or see people around the world facing rising hunger. 

Extreme jeopardy for those struggling to feed their families

The scale of the current global hunger and malnutrition crisis is enormous. A shocking 37.2 million people face Emergency levels of hunger, while 1.3 million people are in the grips of catastrophic hunger – primarily in Gaza and Sudan but also in pockets of South Sudan and Mali. They are teetering on the brink of famine.

Many food crises involve multiple overlapping issues driving hunger, that are building year on year. The interplay between conflict, economic shocks and the impact of the climate crisis is vital to understanding the scale of the challenge.  The global community must not fail on its promise to end hunger and malnutrition by 2030.   

WFP is facing multiple challenges – the number of acutely hungry people continues to increase at a pace that funding is unlikely to match , while the  cost of delivering food assistance is high  because food and fuel prices have increased.  

Unmet needs heighten the risk of hunger and malnutrition. Unless the necessary resources are made available,  lost lives and the reversal of hard-earned development gains  will be the price to pay. 

What is driving the global food crisis?

But why is the world  hungrier than ever? 

This seismic hunger crisis has been caused by a deadly combination of factors. 

Conflict is still the biggest driver of hunger, with 70 percent of the world's hungry people living in areas afflicted by war  and violence. Events in countries such as Palestine and Ukraine are further proof of how conflict feeds hunger – forcing people out of their homes, wiping out their sources of income and wrecking countries’ economies. 

The climate crisis is one of the leading causes of the steep rise in global hunger.  Climate shocks destroy lives, crops and livelihoods, and undermine people’s ability to feed themselves.  Hunger will spiral out of control if the world fails to take immediate climate action. 

Global fertilizer prices have climbed even faster than food prices. The effects of the war in Ukraine, including higher natural gas prices, have further disrupted global fertilizer production and exports – reducing supplies, raising prices and threatening to reduce harvests.  High fertilizer prices could turn the current food affordability crisis into a food availability crisis . 

On top of increased operational costs , WFP is facing major drops in funding,  reflecting the new and more challenging financial landscape that the entire humanitarian sector is navigating. Almost half of WFP country operations have already been forced to cut the size and scope of food, cash and nutrition assistance by up to 50 percent.

Hunger Hotspots 2024

Publication | 5 June 2024

Hunger and malnutrition surging across West and Central Africa, says report

Story | 12 April 2024

Hunger in Gaza: Famine findings a ‘dark mark’ on the world, says WFP Palestine Country Director

Story | 18 March 2024

Hunger hotspots

From the Central American Dry Corridor and Haiti, through the Sahel, Central African Republic, South Sudan and then eastwards to the Horn of Africa, Palestine, Syria, Yemen and all the way to Afghanistan,  conflict and climate shocks are driving millions of people to the brink of starvation. 

In 2023, the world rallied  US$8.3 billion for WFP to tackle the global food crisis.  But it is not sufficient to only keep people alive. We need to go further, and  this can only be achieved by addressing the underlying causes of hunger. 

The consequences of not investing in resilience activities will reverberate across borders. If communities are not empowered to withstand shocks and stresses, this could result in  increased migration and possible destabilization and conflict.  Recent history has shown us this: when WFP ran out of funds to feed Syrian refugees in 2015, they had no choice but to leave the camps and seek help elsewhere, causing one of the  greatest refugee crises in recent European history.  

Let's stop hunger now

WFP’s changing lives work helps to build human capital, support governments in strengthening social protection programmes, stabilize communities in particularly precarious places, and help them to better survive sudden shocks without losing all their assets. 

In just four years of the  Sahel Resilience Scale-up, WFP and local communities turned 158,000 hectares of barren fields in the Sahel region of five African countries into farm and grazing land.  Over 2.5 million people benefited from integrated activities.  Evidence shows that people are better equipped to withstand seasonal shocks and have improved access to vital natural resources like land they can work.  Families and their homes, belongings and fields are better protected against climate hazards.  Support serves as a buffer to instability by bringing people together, creating social safety nets, keeping lands productive and offering job opportunities – all of which help to break the cycle of hunger. 

As a further example, WFP’s flagship microinsurance programme – the R4 Rural Resilience initiative –  protects around 360,000 farming and pastoralist families from climate hazards that threaten crops and livelihoods  in 14 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Guatemala, Kenya, Madagascar and Zimbabwe. 

At the same time, WFP is working with governments in 83 countries to boost or build  national safety nets and nutrition-sensitive social protection, allowing us to reach more people than we can with emergency food assistance.  

Humanitarian assistance alone is not enough though. A  coordinated effort across governments, financial institutions, the private sector and partners is the only way to mitigate an even more severe crisis in 2024.  Good governance is a golden thread that holds society together, allowing human capital to grow, economies to develop and people to thrive.  

The world also needs deeper political engagement to reach zero hunger.  Only political will can end conflict in places like Palestine, Yemen, and South Sudan and Ukraine,  and without a firm political commitment to contain global warming as stipulated in the  Paris Agreement , the main drivers of hunger will continue unabated. 

Tackling hunger

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World Hunger: Causes and Solutions Essay (Critical Writing)

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Although World Hunger may seem to be completely solved for the majority of people in developed countries, it is not entirely true. Diverse issues concerning this global problem can be considered urgent or damaging for some nations or even continents. For example, despite the presence of several developing and industrial countries in Africa, most of the continent’s inhabitants lead an agricultural lifestyle and live under conditions of constant hunger. Therefore, an appropriate solution requires to be found in order to provide broad-based prosperity and admissible living conditions.

World hunger can be caused by diverse reasons, which lead to the establishment of different concepts about the issue. The most common reasons for famine are poverty, food shortages, war, armed conflicts, global warming, the economy, poor public policy and food nutrition, gender inequality, food waste, as well as forced migration. Hence, the global understanding of world hunger can be viewed in correlation with other ubiquitous issues, and the reason for various solutions is the distinctions between its diverse concepts and directions.

For example, poverty tends to be one of the most significant factors that contribute to global hunger. In terms of famine, inadmissible living conditions lead to the inability to purchase healthy food. Additionally, the majority of poor families often sell their household goods, devices, and clothes to provide their relatives and children with the minimum amount of food and water. Living under the line of poverty results in a decrease in health levels, higher death rates, and expanding world hunger, especially in poor domestic areas. The Democratic Republic of Congo can be presented as an example of these factors’ influence. The second enormous problem causing global hunger is the ubiquitous food shortage that is mostly applicable to African countries as well. Generally, in this case, famine emerges under the affection of global warming, inappropriate weather for cultivating activities, the overall poverty across certain regions, and the population’s low educational level. In addition, global hunger shows a tendency to fluctuation depending on the year’s seasons; for example, when in certain tribes, the food from the previous harvest is ceased.

War or armed conflicts are often the primary reason for broad-based hunger. For example, in such countries as Sudan, Syria, or Iraq, the confrontations among diverse belligerent groups led to poverty, the decay of natural and human resources, and a shortage of land suitable for cultivating activities. Under such conditions, the populations of specific countries suffer from famine and struggle to get access to nutritious food. Hence, it can be stated that several reasons and issues for world hunger can be grouped based on their distinctions and similarities, such as economic, martial, social, or environmental factors.

A number of scholars and scientists express their concerns about global hunger and often consider it the most significant social problem comparable with the climate crisis. For example, Peter Singer and Garrett Hardin depict the importance of famine and suggest diverse solutions for the cease of the problem in their publications and scientific research. Both researchers argue about helping the less lucky and wealthy ones or leaving them without support and donation. The issue is rather controversial. Hence, scientists express diverse opinions regarding the world hunger and poverty problem. Singer’s main idea is that if people can provide starving, dying, and struggling people with help or financial support, they should definitely do it (Boesch, 2021). However, Hardin argues his viewpoint and supports the idea of “no sharing,” which means no donation from the wealthy ones (Hardin, 1974). Those viewpoints cannot be defined as correct or incorrect, ethical or unethical, because both have their risks and benefits. Therefore, they require to be examined and estimated to find the right compromise for solving this existing catastrophe.

On the one hand, people living in wealthier and more economically developed countries cannot be forced to donate to save other people from dying. Additionally, it cannot be considered an ethically inappropriate decision as such citizens do not bear any responsibility for the lives of poorer nations. However, when individuals see some donation or volunteering proposals and do not perform any actions, they generally feel guilty despite their non-participation. Singer explains that if there is any chance of helping someone to survive, then this opportunity has to be taken, and the person needs to be saved. Due to the complexity of people’s lives, this cannot be taken as the only right decision. For example, many people in the United States live under the line of poverty and often cannot afford to buy even vital products. However, American citizens prefer to donate to children in Africa instead of helping those who live only several miles away. In addition, Singer’s idea is rather extreme as it requires every citizen living under appropriate or satisfying living conditions to donate their money instead of buying more goods and services for themselves.

In comparison to Singer’s opinion, Hardin takes just the opposite position on the issue. However, the no-sharing concept can be considered extreme as well. For example, celebrities having millions or even billions of dollars could take part in diverse volunteering activities to encourage others willing to help to do so. Business corporations could apply a particular part of their profit to the establishment of specialized funds for helping people in need.

Such a viewpoint cannot be considered totally correct as well due to the broad-based integration and international relations between different political leaders and countries. Hardin thinks that people should not share their incomes or wealth with the poorer representatives of the community and focus on the increase of their own well-being (Hardin, 1974). No evidence is needed to state that the refusal to donate and invest in poverty and world hunger will lead to an enormous difference in economic and socio-cultural levels among various countries and continents. This situation will not be beneficial for both sides as such causes as lowering international trade volumes, growing number of immigrants and refugees, as well as overall economic stagnation will be seen. Therefore, the concept of no sharing might be inappropriate based on its radicalism and damaging outcomes.

Blind donations cannot help other nations succeed or fight the problem. More than money, such countries need support in developing and implementing advanced technology and learning to deal with climate change and diverse natural disasters. Additionally, modifications in the political, economic, and social spheres would be beneficial; hence, developed countries and their citizen would play a greater role by teaching volunteers than by donating. Hence, the right solution for the issue can be found by overlapping both Hardin’s and Singer’s suggestions. The donations should continue; however, those actions should be voluntary; therefore, only those who want to help should do it. Such funds are relevant in combination with the increase of knowledge, development of production, and economy. Donations and sponsorships without an actual rise in productivity are irrelevant and unprofitable.

Boesch, B. (2021). Ethics and absolute poverty: Peter Singer and effective altruism. 1000-Word Philosophy. Web.

Hardin, G. (1974). Lifeboat ethics: The case against helping the poor . The Garret Hardin Society. Web.

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Eating People Is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future

• Cormac Ó Gráda
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Copyright year: 2015
• Edition: Course Book
• Audience: Professional and scholarly;College/higher education;
• Main content: 248
• Illustrations: 8
• Other: 14 line illus. 21 tables. 8 maps.
• Keywords: Famine ; Great Famine (Ireland) ; Cannibalism ; Amartya Sen ; Supply (economics) ; Great Bengal famine of 1770 ; Shortage ; Famine in India ; Somalia ; Disaster ; Drought ; Malnutrition ; World War II ; Scarcity ; Malawi ; Market failure ; Food security ; Excess mortality ; Famine relief ; Sichuan ; Refugee ; Agriculture ; Non-governmental organization ; Mortality rate ; Great Leap Forward ; Shortfall ; Market (economics) ; Mao's Great Famine ; Agriculture (Chinese mythology) ; Moneylender ; Birth rate ; Bountiful Harvest ; Cholera ; Slavery ; Bangladesh ; Staple food ; Year ; Food riot ; Subsistence crisis ; Maund ; Supply shock ; Newspaper ; Population decline ; Warfare ; Price controls ; Child mortality ; The Other Hand ; Moral economy ; Thomas Robert Malthus ; Rationing ; Soup kitchen ; Agricultural productivity ; Poverty ; Food drive ; Cruelty ; Yang Jisheng ; Cultivator ; Gruel ; Humanitarian aid ; Emergency management ; Income ; Pol Pot ; Market mechanism ; Market segmentation ; Average Price ; Aid ; Anhui ; Workhouse ; Bengalis ; Burkina Faso ; Great Chinese Famine ; Culprit ; Food shortage ; Howrah ; Seasonality ; Dhaka ; Famine food ; Vulnerability ; Consumer ; Percentage ; Biafra ; War effort ; Law of one price ; Bengali Market ; Market integration ; Gansu ; Developed country ; Economy ; Sorghum ; Secret police ; Environmental degradation ; Purchasing power ; Informant ; Quit India Movement ; Amrita Bazar Patrika ; Man-eater ; Meal ; Food for Peace ; Corn Laws ; Colonialism
• Published: March 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781400865819

• Famine and Malnutrition: How to Enhance Security Words: 642
• Causes of the Changing Population of the World Words: 1157
• World Poverty as a Global Social Problem Words: 1204
• World Hunger and Food Distribution as Global Issue Words: 597
• Economics of Happiness, Hunger, and Famine Words: 3387
• Social Impact of Population Growth Words: 1425
• Population Density and Major Problems of This Words: 648
• Urban Problems in the Modern World Words: 539
• Environmental Issues in the Third World Countries Words: 2247
• World Hunger: Key Facts and Statistics Words: 1113
• World’s Famine and Virtue Words: 1137
• Problem of Racism in the Modern World Words: 556

The World Problem: Famine

Famine is a global problem affected developing countries. The main causes of famine are low income and low developed economies. It is known that among the developed countries, increases in per-capita food production since the 1950s have generally moved upward in tandem with increases in total food production. Among the developing countries, per-capita food production has generally lagged behind.

Moreover, even in countries of the South where the Green Revolution has produced spectacular production gains, the distribution of its rewards has often been quite uneven (Fluehr-Lobban and Lobban 6). Recent decades the problem of famine has been examined more as a result of overpopulation than a crisis of entitlement.

Such authors as P. R Ehrlich and Mike Davis pay a special attention to the problem of overpopulation and its impact on famine. Researchers claim that population growth has a great influence on food shortage. Famine affects countries with the high average population growth rate.

They prove the fact that famine affects many countries with high average population growth rate. Countries on African continent belong to less developed countries which resulted in economic and social disasters influenced native population. The statistical date gives the facts that in Africa most people are seriously affected by famine and different diseases.

Researchers examine the general impact of overpopulation on the planet statistics. According to statistical results, every day 86,400 persons die because of famine. “On average, 62 million people die each year, of whom probably 36 million (58 per cent) directly or indirectly as a result of nutritional deficiencies, infections, epidemics or diseases which attack the body when its resistance and immunity have been weakened by undernourishment and hunger” (Ziegler 2001, p. 5).

The researchers explain that the environmental toll of population growth and rising affluence seemingly binds humanity in a common fate, but, as the tragedy of the commons suggests, countries do not share the costs and benefits associated with the exploitation equally. For instance, Sudan is one of the countries populations of which died of widespread famine and destitution (Alemu 279).

The latest US estimate says up to 1.2 million people now face starvation in the south of the country – many more than previously thought. The dramatic increase has prompted the humanitarian aid to call for an unprecedented relief operation to target those most at risk in several areas it describes as famine zones (Ziegler 7, See Appendix Table 1).

Famine is a direct result of the decreased world’s food particularly impressive after World War II. In the thirty-five years from 1950 to 1985, world grain harvests increased from less than 750 million tons to 1.7 billion tons.

Even though the world experienced unprecedented population growth during this period, the growth in food production was so spectacular that it permitted a 25 percent increase in per-capita food supplies and a corresponding increase in meeting minimum nutritional standards.

Primarily, these studies concern European countries and the USA but do not take into account Asian and African countries where population growth has a direct impact on famine (Ziegler 7).

As a generalization, population growth accounts for the difference between total and per-capita production of food in developed and developing countries. Africa stands in stark contrast. It was predicted that the population growth would outstrip food production appear more apt than here.

During the 1970s, Africa’s food production increased by only 1.8 percent annually, but its population grew at a rate of 2.8 percent. Starvation and death became daily occurrences in broad stretches of the Sahel, ranging from Ethiopia in the east to Mauritania in the west.

The situation was repeated a decade later when, in Ethiopia in particular, world consciousness was awakened by the tragic specter of tens of thousands suffering from malnutrition and dying of famine at a time of unprecedented food surpluses worldwide.

As population growth has moved hand in hand with desecration of the environment, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced the tragedy of the commons in all of its most remorseless manifestations (David 32; Alemu 279; See Appendix Table 2, 3).

It should be mentioned that the problem of famine as a crisis of entitlement was also examined. Such researchers as David (31) tried to prove that famine has social roots and does nothing with overpopulation. It is possible to agree that soil erosion, desertification, and deforestation are worldwide phenomena, but they are often most acute where population growth and poverty are most evident.

The search for fuelwood is a major source of deforestation and a primary occupation in developing countries (Ziegler 5). Deforestation and soil erosion also occur when growing populations without access to farmland push cultivation into hillsides and tropical forests ill-suited to farming.

It is possible to say that the problem of famine as a result of overpopulation is better examined from the historical perspective as well. Historians pay a special attention to the rate of population and food consumption.

As trends in births, deaths, and migration unfold worldwide into the twenty-first century, demographic changes will promote changes in world politics. At issue is how these trends will affect traditional national security considerations, economic development opportunities, and the prospects for achieving global food security (Ehrlich 98).

Many researchers (Davis, 12; Ehrlich, 211) stress the adverse effects of population growth on economic devel­opment. What they often ignore, however, is that the world has enjoyed unprece­dented levels of economic growth and unparalleled population increases simultane­ously.

Even those countries with the highest rates of population increase are arguably better off economically today than they were at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Declining infant mortality and rising life expectancy coincide with improved living standards throughout the world, even if, ironically, these are the very forces that drive population growth. Some researchers examine the role of politics in famine (Healey 101). Nevertheless, this problems is less examined in comparison with population growth and its impact on food shortage.

Studies state that population growth contributes to the widening income gap between the world’s rich and poor. It also contributes to lower standards of living for many, as poor people tend to have more children to support than do those who are relatively better off. Furthermore, by depressing wage rates relative to rents and returns to capital. (Osborn 87).

Any of the agricultural products produced in developing countries (such as sugar, tea, coffee, and cocoa) are exported abroad, where they are dietary supplements (with little nutritional value) for the world’s rich.

The problem of overpopulation is possible to illustrate by the fact that there is only about one working-age adult for each child under fifteen in the Third World. It also encourages the immediate consumption of economic resources rather than their reinvestment in social infrastructure to promote future economic growth.

Kenya knows famine. Recorded first in 1884, thereafter in 1928, 1944, 1949, 1981, 1984 and 1997. Each of these years has been severe for our citizens, necessitating the uncertainties and indignity of international food aid. In 1997, close to 5 million tonnes of maize were imported into Kenya. Between 1993 and 1995, maize, wheat, sorghum, millet, rice, beans, beef and milk recorded shortfalls in supply.

Although population growth was, and continues to be, an important factor, a scarcity of pest-free storage facilities, the incidence of crop diseases and the vagaries of weather worsened the level of shortages. The trend will not be easy to reverse. Ireland knew famine.

In the 1850s nearly 1 million emigrated to America. That is not open to Kenyans today—they will not let us in, neither will Europe. Nor would we wish to go. We simply want to be able to eat. It would help if the North ate less and used less energy when they did (Ziegler 8).

To conclude, famine is a complex problem which effects world’s society from ancient time. Researchers point out different causes of this problem, but the problem of famine as a result of overpopulation is better examined. A lot of researchers mention political and social factors but they do not provide deep analysis of these problems and their direct impact on famine around the world.

Excessive population growth doubtless strains the environment and contributes to destruction of the global commons, but excessive consumption is even more damaging. In this respect it is not the South’s disadvantaged four-fifths of humanity who place the greatest strains on the global habitat but the affluent one-fifth in the consumption-oriented North.

Differential fertility rates among various ethnic populations will also have internal and international consequences (Ehrlich 38). In Israel, for example, the Jewish population may one day become the minority, as fertility rates among Arabs and Palestinians within Israel’s borders outstrip those of Israel’s Jews.

Analogous trends are already evident in South Africa, where the white population is expected by the year 2020 to comprise only one-ninth to one-eleventh of the total population compared with the one-fifth it accounted for in the early 1950s.

Works Cited

Alemu, Tadesse “Nutritional Assessment of Two Famine Prone Ethiopian Communities”, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health , 51 (1997), p. 278-282.

David, A. Famine and the Crisis of Social Order . Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

Ehrlich, P. R. The population bomb . New York: Ballantine Books, 1971.

Fluehr-Lobban, C. and R. Lobban “The Sudan Since 1989: National Islamic Front.” Arab Studies Quarterly 23 (2001), 1-9.

Healey, J. (ed) Foreign Aid and World Debt . The spinney Press, 2000.

Osborn, F. Our Crowded planet . Greenwood Press Reprint, 1998.

Ziegler, J. The Right to Food. 2001.

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Famine in Africa: The causes, history and how you can help

Africa is on the brink of a devastating famine that threatens to leave millions at risk of extreme hunger. A humanitarian catastrophe looms as the conflict in Ukraine, rising food prices, locust plagues, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and extreme drought intertwine to create mass food insecurity across the continent.  

In the Horn of Africa, there have been four consecutive failed wet seasons, leaving millions unable to grow crops and sustain livestock, and at risk of extreme hunger. Without urgent humanitarian aid, we could soon see starvation on an unprecedented scale.  

Snapshot of the Africa Food Crisis

More than 81.6 million people in eastern africa facing food insecurity, approximately 7 million children under 5 years are acutely malnourished in ethiopia, kenya and somalia, 18 million people facing severe hunger in the horn of africa, what is famine .

According to the United Nations  World Food Programme , famine is declared when malnutrition is so widespread that people start dying of starvation through a lack of access to food. For famine to be declared, it must meet these three criteria:  

• At least 20% of households in an area face extreme food shortages.  
• More than 30% of children suffer from extreme malnutrition.  
• At least two in 10,000 people die from starvation, disease and/or malnutrition every day.  

In 2019, 27 million people were on the brink of famine. This number has since nearly doubled, with a staggering 50 million people worldwide currently at risk.  

Why is there famine in Africa? 

The causes of famine are complex and often interlinked with numerous other world events. Ongoing conflict, climate change, extreme poverty, displacement and political instability can create conditions that ultimately lead to famine.  

Conflict is often the main catalyst for famines. When war and violence occur, communities suffer. Conflict can drive large quantities of people away from their homes and land, depriving them of food and clean water. Without access to farmland or income-generating opportunities, communities are at risk of extreme hunger.  

Displacement does not simply mean people leave and resettle elsewhere. Families are torn apart through dislocation, vulnerability to disease increases, and people risk falling into poverty. When large numbers of people arrive in a new community, that community may not be equipped to handle a sudden surge in population and so there is typically a dramatic rise in local prices.  

Across Africa, conflict in countries such as Ethiopia, Yemen and South Sudan have displaced millions of the most vulnerable people. But it is not just conflict on the African continent that is causing food shortages. The war in Ukraine, despite occurring thousands of kilometres away , is pushing up global food prices.  

Countries in the Horn of Africa like Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan depend heavily on wheat imports from Russia and/or Ukraine. Ethiopia and Kenya also rely on fertiliser for over 80% of their crops, making a shortage of this particular commodity a recipe for disaster.    

We have even seen this in Australia where, despite being far away from conflict, the war in Ukraine has led to an increase in food prices. However, in countries that are already struggling to find food, this threatens to push them to the breaking point.  

The impact of climate change on famine in Africa  

Communities who contribute the least to global warming are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. As temperatures soar, unpredictable weather patterns will become increasingly frequent.   

Droughts have become more intense and common in recent years across the Horn of Africa. In Ethiopia, four consecutive years of drought have decimated livestock and rendered the land unusable for farming. Without water, there is little prospect of growing food for sustenance or for income.   

For women like Mali, a mother of eight living in Ethiopia, the ongoing drought is putting the lives of her family and community at risk. She has to walk nearly 24 hours to bring home water for her children, who can only eat one meal a day.  

Prior to the drought, Mali owned 20 goats , but now she is down to her final three, increasing her anxiety around providing food for her children. 

“We don’t know what will happen next because we need to plant the crops for next season now but there is no water. I don’t know what we will do.” Mali

The history of famine in Africa since World War II  

1958 –  Famine in Tigray claimed the lives of approximately 100,000 people .  

1968-1972 – The Sahel drought devastated communities across Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, with an estimated 1 million deaths .  

1972-1973  – Intense droughts led to famine in Ethiopia .  

1982-1986 – Famine in Mozambique and Sudan arose as a result of civil war .  

1991-1992 –  Drought and civil war contributed to famine in Somalia .  

1998-2004 – War in the Democratic Republic of the Congo led to starvation and disease-related deaths of more than 2.7 million people.  

2016 - present –  Civil war in Yemen have led to mass hunger across the country .  

2021 - present –  The war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple conflicts across the African continent, locust plagues and a recurrent drought have left s more than 81.6 million people across eastern Africa at risk of food insecurity .  

How you can help people affected by the food crisis    

1. Learn about the food crisis in Africa  

Research conducted by Caritas Australia has found that while nearly all (98 per cent) of Australians are aware of the war in Ukraine and the global food crisis (86 per cent), almost half don’t know about the food crisis in the Horn of Africa. You can learn more about the global food crisis and share information about it with your friends on social media.  

2. Write to your local MP 

Be an advocate for change and write to your local Member of Parliament ( MP ) to voice your concerns about the food crisis.  The Help Fight Famine coalition is calling on the Australian Government to deliver an urgent $150 million Famine Prevention Package to stop a catastrophe in the worst-affected hunger hotspots in the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria.

You can use our letter - writing template to send an email to your MP.

3. Donate to help families in need of emergency food  

Caritas Australia’s partners in the Horn of Africa are working around-the-clock to bring emergency food aid to communities on the brink of famine. With little access to water and food, this urgent relief is essential. Your donation today can help save lives. 

donate now 

The funds raised through this appeal will be used to provide immediate and longer-term humanitarian assistance to communities affected by the food crisis in countries like Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Eritrea, through Caritas Australia’s local partners.

Where this is not possible, the funds will be used to provide immediate and longer-term development and humanitarian assistance to communities affected by crises in Africa. If any excess funds remain after a crisis, or if there are changes in circumstances beyond our control that limit our ability to use the funds, they are kept in the Africa Regional Appeal so that we can respond to ongoing development needs and future crises across all our regions.

Caritas use cookies for user experience, analytics, personalisation and tracking purposes. By continuing to use this website you agree to our privacy policy

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Famine in Africa: Causes, Responses, and Prevention

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5 Ways to End Famine

1. Promote democracy.

Harvard economist Amartya Sen remarked that “No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.” While no country is immune to natural catastrophes that hinder agriculture, countries with stable democracies can better combat the conditions that lead to famine. People can promote democratization by stressing the importance of foreign aid and development assistance to legislators. Democracy may not fill stomachs, but it does help to manage the resources needed to do so.

2. Send funds instead of food.

Amartya Sen also pointed out that a “shortage of purchasing power” rather than a shortage of food itself causes famines. Though emergency food and water supplies can sustain populations during severe famines, such resources do not prevent future famines. By sending funds instead of food, donor countries can avoid procedural delays and ensure that starving people can afford the food they need to survive.

3. Connect farmers to markets.

Organizations such as the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) provide smallholder farmers with the opportunity to sell their crops to reliable buyers, providing them with steady capital. The WFP also teaches farmers sustainable practices that increase the value of their crops and boost national food security over time. Connecting farmers to markets directly reduces poverty and gives farmers the income necessary to purchase their own food.

4. Empower women.

While women produce roughly half of the world’s food supply, they are often the first to go hungry in a household. Educating women lowers rates of unplanned pregnancy significantly, decreasing the average number of children a woman must feed and reducing poverty.

5. Spread awareness.

The aforementioned strategies can solve the structural problems that lead to famine, but resources are needed to implement these strategies. Ordinary people can help to end famine simply by spreading awareness and contacting their friends, families, and legislators. Such awareness can put pressure on legislators to implement programs that combat famine.

– Katie Bandera

Sources: Forbes,   World Food Program, End Famine Photo: BWG

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Famine essay.

Famines are complex processes, usually arising from a combination of several causes over an extended period. Their effects on different households and social groups vary greatly according to levels of anticipation and preparedness, capacity to cope with sustained adversity, and ability to return to previous livelihood patterns once the crisis period has passed. The difficulty of pinpointing critical causes and effects, other than on a case-by-case basis, makes it hard to define what famine is or when it starts and stops. As a result, there are no agreed-on mechanisms to trigger appropriate interventions to prevent or mitigate famines, and the question of responsibility for relief is normative and politicized governments and international agencies often fail to achieve them. It would also be useful to differentiate between successful but last-ditch humanitarian efforts and long-term programs designed to make people food secure. However, an instrumental definition of famine vulnerability would require ongoing assessment of several aspects of people’s livelihoods, which would be difficult in practice.

Because famines do not start suddenly and are difficult to define objectively, it usually falls to national governments to declare their existence. The World Food Program, like all United Nations agencies, can only intervene in sovereign states by invitation. Yet governments have an in-built incentive not to acknowledge that they have allowed famines to occur under their watch, at least until they have to, when it is again usually too late for some. National and regional vulnerability assessment committees are attempting to redress this problem, as are donor-funded schemes, such as the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET). Both, however, depend primarily on measurement of rainfall and crop yields rather than on social indicators. Vulnerable people themselves are more likely to label famines by their sociopolitical causes, such as land theft, or by strategies used to survive them.

Definition Problems

The simplest way to define famine is as a significant increase in mortality from starvation or starvation-related disease over an extensive geographical area. This is hard to measure, however, because famines often occur in regions where mortality rates are variable and poorly recorded. Disputes arise over deaths resulting from behaviors in response to hunger—for example, from eating venomous wild foods. Diseases such as cholera are common when people migrate en masse toward dwindling water sources—and epidemics can last for years after food crises have passed—but it is a matter for debate which disease deaths should count as famine mortality. It is tricky to distinguish between deaths from starvation and from gastric diseases.

More important, if famine is defined by mass mortality, famine relief will always be too late. Interventions early enough to prevent starvation can be described as famine prevention, but without a specific phenomenon to which to respond, both

Causes of Famines

In this context, it is no longer helpful to distinguish between natural and man-made famines. Even when drought is a proximate trigger, a famine will occur only if both markets and political systems fail to respond to food shortages. The likelihood of drought or other disasters has itself been increased by human forces, including both local and global climate change. Since the groundbreaking work of Amartya K. Sen in the early 1980s, most analysts have focused on the ability of individuals and households to command food rather than on aggregate food availability. This usefully switches the focus away from technological solutions to a technical problem and onto socioeconomic and political understandings of famine causation. For example, development of commercial farming for export can increase the vulnerability of nearby smallholders left on the poorest land.

Overpopulation in poor areas can leave too little food to go round, but the effect of HIV/AIDS has shown that reduced populations are sometimes more vulnerable, when it is the most productive members of households who are stricken. Temporary or permanent migration by young men to urban areas in search of paid employment can also contribute to chronic food shortages, though it may improve individual households’ entitlement to food. Thus famines can be engendered by ordinary, unspectacular economic or social processes. From the 1970s until the early 21st century, almost all famines were associated with conflict or political repression. More recent crises, however, reflect the declining capacity of governments to respond to disease, worsening terms of trade, and infrastructural gaps.

Effects of Famines

Famines affect different social groups in varying ways, depending on the range and reliability of their entitlements to food. Particular professional classes whose work is dispensable in times of hardship, such as barbers, may suffer more than poorer laborers who are better able to adjust the nature or location of their work. People’s own coping strategies are critical to their chances of survival but can involve taking risks. Migration and crime are both common responses that involve increased mortality rates, as suggested by the fact that more men than women die in most famines. Vital indigenous knowledge of which wild foods are safe to consume is likely to be limited in areas where famine is unprecedented, and this knowledge is diminishing, even in chronically vulnerable areas, because of the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Mortality patterns are further confused because deaths from starvation-related disease are far more common than from starvation itself. While the likelihood of dying from disease is greatly increased by hunger, the chance of becoming infected in the first place is less strongly correlated with food intake. As a result, starving people perceive their chances of survival to be arbitrary and beyond their control. They are therefore liable to protect their long-term livelihoods in preference to maximizing their consumption in response to prolonged hunger. For example, it is rare for key productive assets such as land or cattle to be sold until famine crises are acute. Savings, jewelry, and unessential tools are usually disposed of first, though this is made more difficult by declining prices for household assets, particularly relative to the cost of food.

Recently, humanitarian agencies have attempted to match their relief efforts to people’s coping strategies, for example, by providing food for work programs close to homes. However, these are hard to target and organize and attract far more women than men, who prefer to work for cash. Care also needs to be taken not to encourage extreme behaviors. Coping strategies can be divisive or violent—for example, household breakups and murder rise sharply during famines. They are also finite. Households surviving one famine by selling assets may not be able to cope with a second, even many years later. Relief therefore needs to start before people have made decisions that will permanently affect their livelihoods. This suggests a need for better cooperation between humanitarian and development agencies. Long-term sustainable development would reduce the risk of famines. Again, however, it is important to consider poor people’s priorities. Poverty reduction strategies may be rejected if they are perceived to increase risk, even if they are designed to improve household food production or profits. Examples include genetically modified seeds and projects encouraging diversification into high-value nonfood crops.

Responses to Famines

For relief to be timely and effective, it is essential to establish who bears primary responsibility for it. Ideally it should be the government, provided it has sufficient capacity and will. However, we cannot assume that all nation-states will take the (often difficult and expensive) measures necessary to prevent starvation in every case, especially if the threat of famine is in a remote or politically unimportant area. Indeed, where a local population is from a minority ethnic group or tends to support political parties opposed to the government, leaders may even see benefits in allowing famine to develop. Many authors now argue that the politics of relief has a greater bearing on the likelihood and extent of famine mortality than any other factor.

Famine prevention therefore becomes a question of how to provide incentives for states to uphold their populations’ right to sufficient food, as established in the UN Declaration of Human Rights (Article 26.1). One way could be to establish such rights legally. Supreme Court cases in India and South Africa have held specific governments accountable for failures to prevent starvation. However, only 22 nations guarantee this right in their constitutions, and scarcely any have specific legislation to ensure that it is enforced. The International Criminal Court could investigate cases where governments have been directly culpable for famines, but the court is unlikely to see them as straightforward or as taking priority.

An alternative would be to rely on democracy and free media to punish governments that fail to prevent famines. Although the fear of losing power would be a powerful incentive, this may not help where famines only affect minority groups. Though shocking, recent famines will not be the only issue in most elections and may not be the main one in voters’ minds. Moreover, underfunded local media organizations— and notoriously fickle and uninformed international ones—rarely provide early enough warnings of imminent famines to prompt preventive action. Taking responsibility for famine response away from governments, however, would be problematic. International agencies or nongovernmental organizations may exacerbate political problems associated with food insecurity, as recently happened, for example, when President Mugabe disputed FEWSNET’s warnings of severe shortages in Zimbabwe.

Bibliography:

• Devereux, Stephen. 2007. The New Famines: Why Famines Persist in an Era of Globalization. London: Routledge.
• De Waal, Alexander. 1989. Famine That Kills. Oxford, England: Clarendon.
• Edkins, Jenny. 2000. Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Howe, Paul and Stephen Devereux. 2004. “Famine Intensity and Magnitude Scales: A Proposal for an Instrumental Definition of Famine.” Disasters 28(4):353-72.
• Keen, David. 1994. The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983-1989. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
• Sen, Amartya K. 1981. Poverty and Famines: Essays in Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford, England: Clarendon.

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Analysis: “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”

Singer’s essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” is in the standard form of an argument. His writing is direct and objective, attempting to persuade readers primarily through logic, with a minimum of emotional appeal and figurative language . Singer does, however, permit himself a few subtle points intended to prod the reader or grab attention. This even-handed tone is juxtaposed with the radicalism of his ideas. Though the essay was first published in an academic journal, which by definition has a limited readership, his audience is essentially everyone in developed countries—that is, citizens of affluent nations.

Without introduction, Singer states the problem he’s addressing: People and governments have the power and means to stop the suffering of millions of people in Bangladesh and have simply decided not to. This grabs the reader’s attention by prompting the question, “How can that be?” and the desire to read on and learn more.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Modest Proposal — A Modest Proposal: A Satirical Solution to Ireland’s Problems

A Modest Proposal: a Satirical Solution to Ireland's Problems

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The dire state of ireland: a brief overview, the satirical solution: swift's proposal, impact and implications of swift's satire, conclusion: swift's legacy, bibliography.

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As the World Looks Elsewhere, Famine Descends on Darfur

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

Sudan has in this century endured genocide, civil war and partition, and now its crisis has worsened. Famine has officially been declared in part of the Darfur region in western Sudan.

Growing starvation has been apparent for many months, so this is in part a failure of the international community to apply adequate pressure on rival parties in Sudan and to provide adequate resources to address the crisis. Far more attention has been directed to conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and while that is understandable, the upshot is that children are dying unnecessarily in Sudan.

Malnutrition is widespread around the world — about one-fifth of all children globally are physically stunted from inadequate food — but this only very rarely rises to the level of famine. In the 21st century, this is only the third official famine, after one in Somalia in 2011 and one in South Sudan in 2017.

The famine review committee, a group of independent nutrition experts, declared on Thursday that famine had officially arrived at the Zamzam camp, home to about 500,000 displaced people near the city of El Fasher in Darfur.

The cause of the famine is a civil war underway in Sudan between the army and a militia called the Rapid Support Forces, and the obstacles they have placed to impede humanitarian aid workers. Convoys of trucks have been blocked from delivering aid by the armed factions.

The international failure is particularly stark because a generation ago, Darfur was the site of the 21st century’s first genocide, as the Sudanese government backed Arab militias to slaughter members of three non-Arab Black African ethnic groups. Now the Rapid Support Forces, with backing from countries like the United Arab Emirates, are starting over and committing similar atrocities of murder and rape against the same ethnic groups.

S ome experts believe that a “repeat genocide” is underway. And whatever term one applies to the conflict in Sudan, this famine is one consequence.

“Families who fled horrific violence have been going hungry for months,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American ambassador to the United Nations, who for many months has been calling attention to the crisis. “Children have been eating dirt and leaves, and every day, babies have been starving to death.”

Nonetheless, she said, the two Sudanese armed factions “have chosen to let the Sudanese people starve, systematically blocking humanitarian corridors.” She called on them to immediately allow access and to attend peace talks scheduled for this month in Switzerland.

Genocide and famine deserve a place on top of the international agenda, and if the armed factions are not listening, we should use every diplomatic and military tool to make them back off and allow humanitarian access.

Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “ Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life .” @ NickKristof

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Causes effects and solutions of famine

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

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This research paper utilizes the main causes of famine, as being the poor governmental choices and civil wars that once led to famine in the past, and the effects that natural disasters like droughts has on increasing the speed rate that famine spreads in. It also deals with consequences of each of these causes leading us to the effects of famine, being anemia and low fertility rates. In addition to that, the characteristics of the regions famine has occurred in and why do some regions still suffer from famine and how some countries like India survived and beat famine in the solutions to stop and limit famine in the world.

Introduction

Famine nowadays is a serious threat to the existence of humans in many parts of the world. As most of us have seen on many TV news stations these populations decrease and many people in these regions die as a result of famine, hunger, and diseases accompanied by famine. We chose this subject "FAMINE, causes, effects, and solutions" for many reasons. Mainly for our lack of knowledge about the subject and the effects it can have on a specific country, we also chose this subject to search for solutions in the end of this report. In this report, we examined the causes of famine, the illness effects it has on sufferers, and solutions. Giving examples about each of these subtitles from past countries that had famine and countries that are currently suffer from famine.

What is famine

Famine is defined as an extreme shortage amount of food in a land. Its spread in many regions around the world, and can affect all living organisms, including humans, and even animals.

Causes of famine

Famine can be caused by many different reasons, some, like floods, droughts, and earthquakes are natural, and others, like lack of food and shortage in food distribution to specific parts of a region, humans are responsible for.

Famine has managed to spread around many parts of the world, from Ireland to Sudan to Afghanistan and Ethiopia, and at different times. For every time famine stroke a region it would be as a result of many causes, these causes differ from a period of time to another, and from a place to another. The main causes of famine as we see it are government policies, natural disasters, and malnutrition.

Political issues , Government policies, and Civil Wars

Specific governments around the world have put policies that unintentionally caused famine to spread in their regions, and civil wars has led many countries, like Sudan, to experience hunger. Bad government policies have once led China to one of the greatest famine in history, when Mao Zedong has planned to improve China's industry and agriculture.

In order for this to happen, China was reformed into communes. Chinese citizens have worked for the commune and everything they had was owned by their commune. Workers were assigned to do work they were not capable of doing. A year later, machinery broke down, workers were injured, and buildings fell down because the steal produced and used in the buildings was week. Soon enough hunger was spread all over china, around 9 million died from starvation in 1960, and other millions of Chinese workers suffered illness for the lack of food. This plan which led china to famine was called the Great Leap Forward.

Similarly, unwise government policies has led North Korea to experience famine in the mid-1990s, and Zimbabwe in the early-2000s. In the early 1970s and 1980s,both Ethiopia and Sudan has suffered from famine due to their dictatorship governments, as food was shipped from Wollo in Ethiopia to its capital city in order to be sold with higher prices, Which led famine to occur in Wollo.

Then again, In the 1950s, china's resources depended greatly on government actions, as it was the government's responsibility to distribute food among provinces equally. As well as it is their responsibility to provide education and proper health care during the famine, with more educatied people there are, the healthier their choices might be, as that might have decreased the resultant death rates in the Chinese famine. (P24)

Due to unequal distribution of food, as governments usually prefer supplying urban residents over rural residents, The food accessibility was more devastating in the rural areas, which also led the severity of famine to vary from a region to another, as what happened to china in the 1950s.

Natural disasters.

Many natural disasters tend to hit countries and reduce the carrying capacity of the region sharply but temporarily(also 2). The most common natural disasters that encouraged famine to arise are droughts, earthquakes, and floods.

In 1845 to 1850, plague of fungi caused the large population of Ireland to drop down sharply, resulting in 500,000 deaths.

In east India, 1742 to 1747, drought had hit the land causing a famine with an unknown and huge numbers of deaths to occur.

Later, in 1915, famine took place in Tambora, Sumbawa due to Volcano eruptions, causing 82 thousand people to die. Bangladesh, 1991, 250 thousand deaths due to famine resulted by cyclone and floods. 50 thousand people died out of famine in 1991, Sudan when Epidemic of Meningitis has spread. The chart below shows the deaths occurring in each of those countries as a result of natural-disaster caused famine.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition has caused people to experience severe famines, in regions where there is only access to contaminated water and food. The great famine in 1845,Ireland was mainly caused by potato blight, about a million people died, and one more million people left Ireland during that period of time.(1)

Effects of famine (illness effects)

Famine is always accompanied by many illnesses, since in famine there is rarely any food enough for the residents of suffering lands. In many developing countries, parents treat boys and girls differently, especially when exogenous shocks come. During famine, when food isn't available, parents might choose to satisfy boys' needs first, however this isn't accurate, as all famine records proved that death rates increase in males more than females. Although, disorders in the distribution of health care causes many illness affects in both genders, and also increases mortality.

lower fertility

The first side effect of famine is lower fertility rates. The reason why Famine results in decreasing fertility rates is that poor families during famine delay having children, concerned that they wouldn't have enough food and all the required and basic needs for a child to grow healthily, Which eventually drops the fertility rate magnificently during famine years. However this does not apply for the children born in the beginning of the famine, because their mothers were pregnant before the famine stroke. That explains why at the beginning of the famine some women continue to give birth. As what happened in the Chinese famine.

According to Peng 1987, China, total fertility up to age 39 is about 5.6 births per woman in pre-famine years, but it drops to its lowest level, 3.06, in 1961. (3)

Yet after famine is over, the birth rates increase sharply to opposite Thomas Malthus predictions which suggests that famine decreases the population size. The mortality in China in 1958 to 1961, and Ethiopia in 1983 to 1985, Bengal in 1943 was all restored again by a growing population after several years after the famine ended.

According to papers studying long term effects of China' 1959-1961 famine by Chen and Zhou in the Chinese famine, data shows that people that were exposed to the 1959-61 famine have lower height, less income, and less labor supply. In another paper done by Luo, Mu and Zhang Famine has lead to a decrease in one's height, weight, essencial work supplies, head circumference, and educational skills and achievements. Which are all factors that results by anemia that happened due to famine

It is also assumed that famine alters health distribution among new borns and causes anemia, and there is no doubt that famine influences infant's health state on a negative scale, as this new born isn't provided with enough nutrition during the famine years.

A strange fact about anemia and famine is that lack of food and poor quality of water that cause people to have anemia tend to effect men more than women. It is observed that in all famine records most people that die as a result of anemia or contaminated water and food are males, even in regions that normal males have higher life expectancies, as in Pakistan or India. Reasons might be that females are usually more flexible than males, and are more capable at finding and processing raw food.

Areas famine is spread in

Features and characteristics of areas famine is spread in.

Usually famine spreads among developing countries, where they lack good governmental decision, Regions with inhabitants that still use hunting and gathering techniques, regions that lack pure or processed water, and regions that continuously suffer from bad weather conditions, floods, droughts, and heavy rainfall.

Most famines are spread in areas where one or more of these factors apply to. In Ethiopia for example inhabitants rely on themselves to support each other. And still tend to use old and primitive machinery in agriculture.

But why do some countries like Somalia have been living in famine for along time and other cities has managed to successfully survive and overcome famine just fine? When bad conditions hit those countries, rich countries like Arizona that were experiencing floods and droughts , import all their main needs and food from other countries. Even with their lack of agriculture.

The total lack of agriculture in an economically strong area does not cause famine; Arizona and other wealthy regions import the vast majority of their food, since such regions produce sufficient economic goods for trade." (2)

Famine in Africa

Many parts of the 3rd world are suffering from famine and diseases accompanied by lack of food and contaminated water. Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Ethiopia, and many other countries examining famine are all located in Africa alone.

A common case for famine in Africa is Ethiopia, for it suffers from famine through many repeated periods of time. The world food programme and government policies have distributed food aids to millions of people in Ethiopia. As their situation is about to get worse with the continues warnings of droughts and starvation. The dry and hot weather barely supports plants and crops. Additionally, animals have also starved for the lack of Grazing land.

Haile Salassie, who was Ethiopia's regent since 1916, was never supported by the northern states of Ethiopia. These provinces were demanding to be independent; therefore, they were against the government. Selassie had no problems keeping his country suffering from famine, as he thought that disabling his country to reach food was a good weapon for him to win this war. Which again confirms that bad governmental policies and civil wars increases the threat of famine, or at least worsening the severity of current famines.

Moritania is another country facing famine in Africa, in the west of the continent. They were depending on sorghum and maize crops for their food. But the lack of rain prohibited the use of land and harvesting. Moritania constantly suffers from droughts. World Vision, which runs feeding centers in the country, is reporting severe malnutrition in many areas in Moritania.

Famine in south Africa

South Africa is the most region in Africa that has many countries stacked next to each other and suffer from famine. Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe are located in the far south and experience harsh famine. Swaziland usually imports crops from southern countries in Africa. This year they need to import more than 100,000 tones of cereal to survive famine.

Lestho has experienced recently frost, heavy rainfall, hailstorms, and tornadoes for the second year. All these disasters lower the carrying capacity of the land, therefore results in less farming and agriculture causing the famine to spread at a higher rate.

Almost two thirds of Swaziland's population lives on below the poverty line. The prices of crops and wheat have been rising in all of these South African countries and the only benefiters from these famines are the wealthy landowners in the south-eastern provinces. A recent report has warned that the number of hungry children in Africa could increase by 3.3 million by 2025 unless politicians and governments change their plans.

Solutions to reduce the effects of famine

How to prevent famine.

Famine can be avoided by following simple procedures, however political and governmental policies are the main aspects that would determine having famine or not, as unwise decision might repeat the incidence of the Great leap Forward and korea in the mid 1900s.

The main skills inhabitants of the land should know are how to hunt for food if they're living in regions where they depend mainly on animals. Growing, trapping, and storing food are also basic skills residents should consider knowing in order for them to survive and prevent famine from spreading. If living in the wild or an undeveloped region, residents should own guns, bows, baits and traps, Farmers should be trained to cultivate their lands on a scientific basis and having developed machinery. Closer solutions to our reality might be storing food, and storing dry foods that doesn't need refrigerators.

Reducing famine

Many actions should be taken in order for famine to reduce to reach its lowest dangerous state. The steps are simple, yet people still have problems reducing famine's effects.

Many Aid groups have taken charge of providing famine suffering countries with the needed vitamins and minerals within micronutrients. They've also offered giving money to residents to fill their needs with and paying local farmers rather than importing foods and supplies from foreign countries.

Procedures to beat famine involves the use of modern technologies since 70% of 3rd world famine countries rely on agriculture, the use of fertilizers, irrigation, financially supporting farmers, developing institutions, democracy, those procedures allowed India and developed countries to beat famine, as Agricultural experts from Denmark and India gathering in Copenhagen at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University considered long term solutions.

Using modern science, genetic engineering in order to stop pest attacks and kill insects and destroy animal diseases, and fix low yields were also some solutions recommended by Prof Pinstrup-Andersen, he also adds that developing countries should invest in infrastructure, education, improvements of health care and domestic markets, and these things can easily be done with the help of developed countries and cooperation between each other in science in order to help the poor countries.

According to Mitra: "India adopted the first generation of Green Revolution technologies in the late 1960s, directly after its last famine (of 1965-66) which killed half a million people. This is best contrasted with China, whose policies induced the largest man-made famine in history during the same time period, killing tens of millions of people. Other countries, including the famine-ravaged states in Africa, would do well to follow India's example". (4)

Summary and conclution

To sum up, Famine is a serious and dangerous state that a region can experience, and should be avoided when a country is threatened to have famine, either from natural resources or any other cause. In this research we found out that famine is caused by severe natural disasters and gave examples of Sudan, India Ireland as countries that had famine due to natural disasters, and China and Ireland having famine as a result of governmental issues. Then we mentioned the facts that prove famine lowers fertility rates as what happened earlier and china, then about the similarities that famine suffering countries share and we gave information about countries in Africa as an example of countries suffering currently at this time. Finally we suggested some solutions and brought up India's situation when it survived and passed its Famine years. We suggest that every country should be helped out during its famine with exporting foods and goods, but the more effective solution is by adopting these countries to agriculture and using more developed machinery and solving their governmental problems.

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