Famines are supposed to be a thing of the past. So it came as a shock this month when the UN - citing the risk of starvation for 20m people in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and north-east Nigeria - declared what it called “the largest humanitarian crisis” since 1945.
Technically that is wrong. As horrible as current events are, worse things have happened in this timeframe. Mao Zedong’s catastrophically ill-conceived Great Leap Forward led to the starvation of perhaps 30m people between 1958 and 1962. Hunger was so rampant that, according to Jasper Becker, author of Hungry Ghosts, some people swapped babies so they did not have to eat their own progeny. In Cambodia, Pol Pot’s fanatical “Year Zero” destroyed the foundations of society, causing death from starvation of an estimated 1.2m people. There were also biblical-scale famines, at least as bad as those happening now, in Biafra (1969-70), Bangladesh (1974), Ethiopia (1983-85) and North Korea (1995-97).
Yet the UN statement, delivered by Stephen O’Brien, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, contains important truths. Until now, the numbers of people dying from famine had been falling dramatically.
According to the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, from the 1870s to the 1970s, in each decade great famines killed between 1.45m and 16.64m people, averaging 928,000 a year. Since 1980, the annual death toll has dropped sharply to an average 75,000, just 8 per cent of the historic level. As recently as last year, experts had considered the possibility of the end of famine. Tragically, that hope was premature.
The second truth in Mr O’Brien’s statement is that famines are man-made. Rarely are they caused by anything so mundane as a shortage of food. Geography has little influence. Contrary to common perception, Asia and eastern Europe - not Africa - have been the locus of world hunger. Between 1870 and 2010, 87 per cent of deaths from famine occurred in those regions, with only 9.2 per cent in Africa. Certainly, failed rains and creeping desertification can trigger crises. That is precisely what is happening in Somalia, which is suffering its worst drought in living memory. But without human complicity, famine cannot occur. The economist and philosopher Amartya Sen wrote that famines do not take place in true democracies. If democracy is in worldwide retreat, famines could make a gruesome comeback.
South Sudan is a case in point. The world’s newest country won independence in 2011. Since then it has descended into civil war as a gangster elite fights over diminishing oil revenue. That changed the country, in the phrase of Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, into the only thing worse than a kleptocracy - a bankrupt kleptocracy. The elite has turned on itself and extorted its people, sending them into the wilderness where there is insufficient food to survive.
If, to paraphrase Tolstoy, every fully fed nation is alike, then every starving one is grotesque in its own way. In Yemen, the Saudi-led blockade of Hudaydah port is preventing food from reaching some 7m people. In Somalia, the humanitarian effort is severely hampered by al-Shabaab militants who last year carried out 165 violent attacks against humanitarian efforts. The civilian government in Nigeria has run down its armed forces to such an extent that, for years, it was incapable of fighting Boko Haram insurgents in the north. Now the military is fighting back but, in every region that it liberates, it uncovers displaced people struggling to survive.
Mr O’Brien said $4.4bn was needed by July to avert catastrophe. But, as Mr de Waal points out, he did not pretend that money and sympathy would suffice. Instead, he spelt out what should be crystal clear: famines are acts of political self-harm often aided and abetted by international action, or inaction. Famines are made not by angry gods and are thus not inevitable. Ethiopia’s government proved that last year when it averted the effects of a potentially calamitous drought through carefully planned and executed food relief. The key to stopping starvation is not food itself, but opening up political, physical and economic access so that food can reach those who need it. Beyond that, the only solution is, as Mr O’Brien said, to “stop the fighting”.
On balance, the UN official was right to risk the charge of crying wolf by sounding the alarm loud and sounding it early. The last time famine was declared was in Somalia in 2011. You knew it was a famine because perhaps 150,000 people had already died. By the time it was declared, it was already too late.
