Links

30 year war creates shadow of hunger over Eritrea

War and drought have reduced this East African country to a state of almost total dependence on food aid. Most of the fertile land was caught up in the conflict with Ethiopia, and now that peace has returned, farmers have found their land covered with land mines and their cattle stolen. This special report by Panos Features says Eritrea is destined to be dependent on food aid for some time to come. (Donica Tesfamariam, Panos, April 2006)

http://www.panos.org.uk/global/featuredetails.asp?featureid=1038&ID=1003

(Added: Tue Apr 04 2006   Modified: Tue Aug 29 2006   Hits: 278)

Abandoned to the famine

The ghost of famine hangs over the Turkana nomads of northern Kenya. Over the whole drought-hit area, stretching into southern Ethiopia, southern Sudan and east into Somalia, people who spend their time moving with the weather from the valley-floor grazing sites to the springs in the hills have lost almost all their livestock. Animals are everything - food, wealth, insurance and savings accounts. Eight million people in this dry triangle are hungry and thirsty. Experts and charity workers believe the nomads' plight in times of natural disaster is exacerbated by wilful neglect of people with no political clout. In this article, we meet some of the people who expect to die. (Tracy McVeigh, Guardian Weekly, June 2006)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/outlook/story/0,,1797399,00.html

(Added: Mon Jun 26 2006   Modified: Mon May 28 2007   Hits: 155)

AFGHANISTAN: Food shortages cause grass eating, displacement

Food shortages in Ajristan District of Ghazni Province, central Afghanistan, have forced some families to eat dried grass in order to survive, local people and the district administrator told IRIN (IRIN, 10 March 2008).

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77195

(Added: Tue Mar 18 2008   Hits: 48)

African Voices - Improving EC aid to Agriculture in Africa

African Voices in Europe has been launched by Practical Action to expose the failures of EC aid to improve the lives of farmers and livestock keepers in Africa and set a new agenda for ensuring aid reaches Africa's poorest communities. The site includes videos, photo stories, and in-depth research on EC aid to agriculture in Africa.

http://practicalaction.org/?id=africanvoices

(Added: Fri Mar 16 2007   Modified: Fri Dec 21 2007   Hits: 311)

Empirical Forecasting of Slow-Onset Disasters for Improved Emergency Response: An Application to Kenya's Arid Lands

The report on the model developed by economists working with data collected in Kenya's northern arid districts to predict severe child malnutrition - an indicator of famine - at least three months in advance.

http://www.ilri.org/Link/Publications/Publications/Theme%201/Pastoral%20conference/Papers/Mude_ForecastingforImprovedEmergencyResponse_May05.pdf

(Added: Fri Oct 12 2007   Hits: 83)

Famine Early Warning Systems Network-FEWSNET

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is a USAID-funded activity that collaborates with international, regional and national partners to provide timely and rigorous early warning and vulnerability information on emerging and evolving food security issues.

http://www.fews.net/

(Added: Fri Apr 04 2008   Hits: 65)

Feed The World? We Are Fighting a Losing Battle, UN Admits

The United Nations warned yesterday that it no longer has enough money to keep global malnutrition at bay this year in the face of a dramatic upward surge in world commodity prices, which have created a "new face of hunger" (The Guardian, 26 February 2008).

http://www.dev-zone.org/downloads/feed%20the%20world%2C%20we%20are%20fighting.doc

(Added: Thu Feb 28 2008   Hits: 88)

Food Force - The first humanitarian video game

Three months after the United Nations launched its largest ever relief operation in response to the tsunami disaster, WFP has introduced a video game to teach children about the logistical challenges of delivering food aid in a major humanitarian crisis.

http://www.food-force.com/

(Added: Thu May 05 2005   Modified: Wed Oct 25 2006   Hits: 164)

Food is a Human Right

Economic, social and cultural rights include the right to an adequate standard of living. The human right to adequate food is explicitly recognized as part of this broader human right. While the focus here is on food, social organizations have much to learn from the work that has emerged on health, education, housing, and other issues relating to an adequate standard of living.(George Kent, University of Hawai'i, 2004)

http://www.choike.org/documentos/Food_Human_Right.pdf

(Added: Wed Mar 07 2007   Modified: Thu Mar 15 2007   Hits: 59)

Hunger Free: Force governments to deliver on their commitment to halve world hunger by 2015.

854 million people are hungry in the world right now.. Every day, almost 16,000 children die of hunger-related causes -- one child every five seconds. Yet there is enough food in the world to feed everybody. Hunger is not caused by nature, it's a political choice!YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

http://www.hungerfreeplanet.org/

(Added: Tue Aug 07 2007   Hits: 166)

Imaging Famine

We are witnessing renewed debate about global poverty, disasters and development, especially in Africa. Coming two decades after the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980's the time is ripe for a reconsideration of the power and purpose of disaster pictures given in the way the images of the Ethiopian famine spawned the original Band Aid/Live 8 phenomenon. The purpose of this project is to re-ignite debate about these issues. To achieve this the website has a range of features including 20 pages detailing themes that have affected famine coverage in recent decades, including interviews where academics, photographers, picture editors and aid agency officials offer contrasting views on the main points and a gallery on contrasting work on famine. Imaging famine does not claim to have addressed all the relevant issues, answered all the questions pose or produced a manifesto on the correct use of images in the media. Its aim is to provoke debate among the producers and consumers of disaster imagery and to encourage further reflection by all concerned.

http://www.imaging-famine.org/

(Added: Mon Feb 27 2006   Modified: Tue Aug 29 2006   Hits: 180)

Imaging Famine

Imaging Famine is a research project that details how famine has been represented in the media, from the 19th century to the present day. Its aim is to provoke a debate about the political effect of such photographs on our understanding of the majority world. This is a brilliant website with a wide range of features such as images, articles, documents and links.

http://www.imaging-famine.org/index.htm

(Added: Wed Aug 23 2006   Modified: Thu Aug 31 2006   Hits: 223)

Living on the Edge of Emergency: an agenda for change

Every day 25,000 people die from hunger and poverty. More than 120 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are permanently living on the edge of emergency. Climate change, the HIV pandemic and population growth are all contributing to more frequent and severe emergencies. But so is the international community by responding inappropriately. This suffering is preventable. This report proposes the overhaul of the international aid system to correct its record of funding expensive and short-term emergency responses that has allowed so many to remain on the edge for so long. (Care International UK, September 2006)

http://www.careinternational.org.uk/Read+the+report+7699.twl

(Added: Fri Oct 06 2006   Modified: Fri Nov 10 2006   Hits: 123)

MAURITANIA: Record hunger predicted in 2008

Food security experts predict that Mauritania, where 70 percent of food eaten is imported, may face its highest ever levels of hunger in 2008, and aid agency representatives are concerned they do not have enough money to meet people's needs amid skyrocketing food prices and dwindling cereals for sale on world markets (IRIN, 19 March 2008).

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77366

(Added: Tue Mar 25 2008   Hits: 45)

New Study Blames Western Pollution for Catastrophic Sahel Drought and Famine in Africa

(From the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, June 13). A study carried out by CSIRO's Dr Leon Rotstayn has identified atmospheric particles, known as sulfate aerosol, as contributing factors in the drought and subsequent famines that have affected the Sahel region of Africa since the 1960's. Concentrated mainly in the northern hemisphere, the major sources of these pollutants are Europe and North America.

http://www.dar.csiro.au/news/2002/MR05.html

(Added: Tue Jul 23 2002   Modified: Thu Aug 31 2006   Hits: 264)

NIGER: When development is an emergency

Widespread publicity of hunger in Niger last year has led to big changes in responses to the country's difficulties. Massive relief projects have already reached hundreds of thousands of people this year and are keeping the most vulnerable Nigeriens on life-support. However, without an ongoing, simultaneous focus on development, the country will always be one bad harvest away from catastrophe, United Nations officials say. (IRIN, 3 September 2006)

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55313&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGER

(Added: Mon Sep 04 2006   Hits: 81)

North Korea's Transformation: Famine, Aid and Markets

This essay is an extended version of "How Famine Changed North Korea," an oped published on the Washington Post on February 28, 2008. Its Korean translation was published on the April 2008 edition of Korea Development Institute's monthly magazine, Review of North Korea Economy.

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/15/china18536.htm

(Added: Mon Apr 21 2008   Hits: 52)

Pastoral Early Warning and Early Response Systems in the Greater Horn of Africa

Proceedings from the workshop held 13th 15th November 2001, Whitesands Hotel, Mombasa, Kenya. This report summarizes the proceedings of a regional workshop on Pastoral Early Warning and Response Systems, held in Mombasa, Kenya from November 13-15, 2001. The workshop comes in the light of the recent drought emergencies in the Greater Horn of Africa, and grows out of a concern regarding the effectiveness of humanitarian emergency management in the region. While the people of the region remain highly food insecure, several trends indicate that the situation can be expected to worsen. This has clear implications for a strengthening of the existing early warning systems and response systems used to mitigate against such disasters.

http://www.fews.net/resources/gcontent/pdf/1000051.pdf

(Added: Thu Aug 08 2002   Modified: Thu Aug 31 2006   Hits: 260)

Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? - A Case Study of the 2005 Food Crisis in Niger

This report reviews the 2005 food crisis in Niger and assesses the response of the Nigerien government and the international donor community. It explores the role markets play in alleviating or aggravating food needs of the population. It examines the outcome of international economic reforms and development policies implemented in Niger during the past 25 years, finding that they appear to be driven by ideology instead of by a comprehensive analysis of development issues in the country. Implementation of policies emanating from the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, withdrew state intervention from social and economic sectors. The report recommends strategies that can help make hunger in Sahel a thing of the past. (Frederic Mousseau with Anuradha Mittal, Oakland Institute, October 2006)

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/sahel.pdf

(Added: Tue Oct 17 2006   Hits: 125)

SOMALIA: Plea for help as drought pushes people towards urban centres

Local leaders in central Somalia have appealed for help as the severe drought being experienced in the region is forcing many nomads who lost their livestock - the principal means of survival - to abandon their homes and move to urban centres. (IRIN News, 5 May 2008)

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77956

(Added: Mon May 05 2008   Hits: 8)

The Status of International Food Aid Negotiations

The report is an update on the 2005 report Food Aid or Food Sovereignty? Ending World hunger in our time.

http://oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/Food_aid_update.pdf

(Added: Wed Apr 16 2008   Hits: 29)

UN food chief: world unaware of major hunger crisis

Three hundred million children are hungry and 18,000 die every day for want of food while the world remains largely ignorant about the magnitude of the problem. "If the headline in the media tomorrow was 'Forty-five 747s crashed today, everyone on board was killed and oh, by the way, they were all children', the world would be outraged," says James Morris, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), in this article. (Tom Pfeiffer, Reuter/Alertnet, 22 May 2006)

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/VOCHARUAllLatestEmergencyReports/8C038BFFDC26AB5A85257176006A703A?OpenDocument

(Added: Wed May 24 2006   Modified: Mon Sep 11 2006   Hits: 113)

What lessons have donors and policymakers learnt from the famines in Ethiopia?

Donors have also focussed on providing food aid during acute crises, with less attention on longer-term development efforts. Furthermore, pastoralists and other minority groups have little political influence: areas of strong government support have received more attention and assistance. (Id21, February 2007)

http://www.id21.org/society/s2sl1g1.html

(Added: Mon Feb 18 2008   Hits: 26)

Women and Food Crisis: How US Food Aid Policies Can Better Support Their Struggles

Over the last few decades, food crises have become distressingly common phenomena. Women are often at the center of these emergencies, though the disproportionate impact of hunger on women is too often hidden within the dire aggregate statistics. But the role of women in providing solutions to these crises is also too often overlooked. This discussion paper from ActionAid USA's Karen Hansen-Kuhn suggests how such oversights may be corrected to the benefit of entire communities in crisis. Illustrated by case studies from Kenya and Malawi (Karen Hansen-Kuhn, ActionAid USA, 2007).

http://www.actionaidusa.org/pdf/Report-Women_and_Food_Crisis_Paper300.pdf

(Added: Tue Oct 02 2007   Modified: Fri Oct 05 2007   Hits: 120)