Consider This from NPR - For Millions Of People In Conflict Zones, Famine Is A Man-Made Disaster

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Famine is a man-made disaster affecting millions in conflict zones.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It really is heartbreaking to see the levels of desperation, hunger, of hopelessness across the entirety of the Strip. That is Matt Hollingworth from the United Nations World Food Program. He sent NPR this voice memo from Gaza. So many mothers who go to sleep listening to the cries of their children because they are still hungry. And many parents who are skipping meals day by day by day just to ensure that their children have something every evening. About 30% of the population in Gaza is experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger,

according to an international committee of experts. After five months of war, they say hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are facing imminent famine. In Sudan, a year of civil war has also created a devastating situation because of the conflict people are being deprived of the basic necessities and are struggling to survive. Here's the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, talking to NPR last week. People just need access to food and water. And we have these generals playing games with people's lives by closing borders, closing lines inside where food can cross while people are dying. John Martin Bauer is country director for the U.N.'s World Food Program in Haiti,

where armed gangs control most of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Haiti is going through a severe food crisis. It's been a long-term food crisis. In fact, since 2020, since COVID, at least 4 million people in Haiti have been acutely food insecure. And right now, out of those 4 million, 1 million are one step away from famine. In all of these situations, humanitarian organizations stand ready to provide aid but are inevitably thwarted by ongoing conflict. And although the word famine may bring up images of natural disasters like floods or droughts, experts will tell you this kind of catastrophic hunger is man-made. Arif Hussain is chief economist for the UN's World Food Program.

World Food, with our partners, we have enough food right now to feed all the 2.2 million people in Gaza Strip, but it's not going through. So whatever the obstacles, whether they're on the border crossings, whether they're long inspections, whether they're desperate people border crossings, whether they're on inspections, whether they're, you know, desperate people needing food and attacking that, those need to be addressed. Consider this. How do you fight famine when hunger is being used as a weapon of war? From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.

It's Consider This from NPR. If you ask people who study the topic, they will tell you that a modern famine is a man-made disaster. Natural disasters can play a part. For example, flooding and drought can destroy crops. But relief agencies and wealthy governments can now get aid where it needs to go. So it is ultimately war and political will that keeps enough food from being grown or delivered

in places like Ethiopia and Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, Haiti and North Korea, and of course, now in Gaza. Alex Duvall has studied global hunger for decades. He's the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University. Welcome. It's good to be with you. So can you just briefly define what famine is? Like if people are already starving to death in a region, as has been the case in Gaza for quite some time, why do you not necessarily declare that to be famine? Well, over many decades, there was a lot of controversy among the people who studied and

tried to prevent famine. And about 20 years ago, they or we all converged on a standard metric. And it has five levels which vary from normal through stressed, crisis, emergency, and the last one being famine. I see. And there are various requirements of horror that are needed to hit that threshold of famine. You need to have a food system that is collapsed so that households just really struggle to get the basic necessities. You need to have child malnutrition hitting terrible levels, children suffering from wasting and also the bloating or dema that you sometimes see from famine camps. And you have to have deaths from starvation and hunger at more than 2 per 10,000 per day. So that would mean in a population such as Gaza today, that would mean a couple of hundred people,

most of them children, starving to death every day. So from what you know of what is happening in Gaza now, how close to famine would you say that Gaza is? Well, the first thing to say is that children are dying of starvation and starvation-related causes like disease well before famine hits. So we could already have thousands, even tens of thousands of children perishing, even though we haven't actually determined famine. The other point is that in all the decades I've been studying this, I've never seen statistics as bad as they are in Gaza today. Obviously, the famine isn't a huge famine.

The population of Gaza is only 2 million people. So compared with the 25 million in need in Sudan, the 30 million in need in Ethiopia, it's a smaller population. But the intensity of suffering is something that is really without precedent in modern times. Well, when you look at famine that is indeed happening in different countries around the world at this moment, what are the common things that you see? Well, the most remarkable thing is that famine is actually back. If you'd asked me this question eight or ten years ago, I'd have said, oh, famines, those have been consigned to the past. This actually is a problem. Eight years ago, you wrote an op-ed for the New York Times saying we might be past

the age of famines, right? Indeed. And I actually started writing a book on the topic of how we conquered famines. And during the writing of my book, fam made a comeback so I had to make a rather terrible swerve and try and explain why they were coming back and what all contemporary famines have in common is that they are man-made gendered language deliberate there are men usually generals who use starvation as as a weapon of war either. In some cases, they actually want to starve people. A case in point being Bashar al-Assad in Syria had this terrible surrender or starve policy of these enclaves in Syria. But more often, it's when a politician or a general

wants to achieve some military objective and just doesn't care whether the civilians starve or not, they're still culpable because they know that what they're doing will create these terrible conditions, but they go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe this is a question for the universe and not for you, but why do we increasingly see hunger being weaponized? I think there's a sense of impunity among the politicians and generals who use it. There was certainly a pushback, including at the United Nations and at the International Criminal Court, trying to strengthen the international legal prohibitions against the war crime of starvation. But it really hasn't worked.

We've seen Putin using it in Ukraine. We've seen the Ethiopian government using it in Tigray. The different sides in the civil war in Sudan both ruthlessly ready to destroy everything that is necessary for people to survive. And I'm afraid the Israelis are showing much the same inclination in Gaza. And while until very recently, the United States and Western democracies could present themselves as saying, you know, we're the champions of humanitarian principles. We don't do this. I'm afraid we're letting the Israelis get away with it.

Well, as you watch the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, what do you think are the most pressing needs as someone who's been studying global hunger for decades? The most immediate need is for a ceasefire. It is to actually stop the destruction of the infrastructure, everything that is necessary for people to survive and to enable essential services to resume. And then along with that, allow a sort of full spectrum of humanitarian assistance to go in. So international agencies are actually extremely skilled and competent at dealing with

this type of crisis of very challenging environments, but they're simply not being allowed to do it. The restrictions on who's allowed to operate and what aid can be brought in are so onerous that this famine is being allowed to develop really without being checked. Alex Duvall, Professor and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University. Thank you very much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Lina Mohamed and Megan Lin, with audio engineering provided by Becky Brown.

It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watanon and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Thank you.