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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, fiat panis, translates to "let there be bread". It was founded in October 1945.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization, the largest one focused on hunger and food security, and the largest provider of school meals. Founded in 1961, it is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 80 countries. As of 2019, it served 97 million people in 88 countries, the largest since 2012, with two-thirds of its activities conducted in conflict zones.
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every inhabited continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. In the 19th and 20th century, generally characterized Southeast and South Asia, as well as Eastern and Central Europe, in terms of having suffered most number of deaths from famine. The numbers dying from famine began to fall sharply from the 2000s. Since 2010, Africa has been the most affected continent in the world.
IPC may refer to:
In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience. The most extreme form of hunger, when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, leads to a declaration of famine.
Food security is the measure of the availability of food and individuals' ability to access it. According to the United Nations' Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another one. There is evidence of food security being a concern many thousands of years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference, the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply; food security is defined as the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The first World Food Summit, held in 1996, stated that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Malnutrition is a condition that results from eating a diet which does not supply a healthy amount of one or more nutrients. This includes diets that have too little nutrients or so many that the diet causes health problems. The nutrients involved can include calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins or minerals. A lack of nutrients is called undernutrition, including stunting, wasting, and underweight while a surplus of nutrients cases overnutrition, including overweight and obesity. Malnutrition also can refer to micronutrient malnutrition, including a lack of or excess of important vitamins and minerals. Undernutrition occurs when an individual is not getting enough calories, protein, or micronutrients. If undernutrition occurs during pregnancy, or before two years of age, it may result in permanent problems with physical and mental development. Extreme undernutrition, known as starvation, chronic hunger, severe acute malnutrition (SAM) or moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) may have symptoms that include: a short height, thin body, very poor energy levels, and swollen legs and abdomen (edema). Those who are undernourished often get infections and are frequently cold. The symptoms of micronutrient deficiencies depend on the micronutrient that is lacking. Overnutrition can result from excess nutrient intake or low energy expenditure, and is linked to chronic non-communicable diseases.
Famine relief is an organized effort to reduce starvation in a region in which there is famine. A famine is a phenomenon in which a large proportion of the population of a region or country are so undernourished that death by starvation becomes increasingly common. In spite of the much greater technological and economic resources of the modern world, famine still strikes many parts of the world, mostly in the developing nations.
Dadaab is a semi-arid town in Garissa County, Kenya. It is the site of a UNHCR base hosting 223,420 registered refugees and asylum seekers in three camps as of 13 May 2019, making it the third-largest such complex in the world. The center is run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and its operations are financed by foreign donors. In 2013, UNHCR, the governments of Kenya and Somalia signed a tripartite agreement facilitating the repatriation of Somali refugees at the complex.
Famine scales are the ways in which degrees of food security are measured, from situations in which an entire population has adequate food to full-scale famine. The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition. For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War. This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions. As different levels of food insecurity demand different types of response, there have been various methods of famine measurement proposed to help agencies determine the appropriate response.
In 2006, an acute shortage of food affected the countries in the Horn of Africa, as well as northeastern Kenya. The United Nations's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated on January 6, 2006, that more than 11 million people in these countries may be affected by an impending widespread famine, largely attributed to a severe drought, and exacerbated by military conflicts in the region.
FEWS NET, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, is a website of information and analysis on food insecurity created in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the US Department of State, after famines in East and West Africa. In 2008, Molly E. Brown argued that during its twenty years of activity, FEWS NET had been extremely successful. She said that it was widely viewed as "the most effective program in existence for providing information to governments about impending food crises".
Between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis.
Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) is a measurement of the nutritional status of a population that is often used in protracted refugee situations. Along with the Crude Mortality Rate, it is one of the basic indicators for assessing the severity of a humanitarian crisis.
Since 2016, a food insecurity crisis has been ongoing in Yemen which started during the Yemeni Civil War. The UN estimates that the war caused an estimated 130,000 deaths from indirect causes which include lack of food, health services, and infrastructure. In 2018, Save the Children estimated that 85,000 children have died due to starvation in the three years prior. In May 2020, UNICEF described Yemen as "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world", and estimated that 80% of the population, over 24 million people, were in need of humanitarian assistance. The crisis is being compounded by an outbreak of cholera, which is resulting in over 3000 deaths between 2015 and mid 2017. While the country is in crisis and multiple regions have been classified as being in IPC Phase 4, an actual classification of famine conditions was averted in 2018 and again in early 2019 due to international relief efforts. In January 2021, two out of 33 regions were classified as IPC 4 while 26 were classified as IPC 3.
In the early months of 2017, parts of South Sudan experienced a famine following several years of instability in the country's food supply caused by war and drought. The famine, largely focused in the northern part of the country, affected an estimated five million people. In May 2017, the famine was officially declared to have weakened to a state of severe food insecurity.
As of February 2017 a drought ravages Somalia that has left more than 6 million people, or half the country's population, facing food shortages with several water supplies becoming undrinkable due to the possibility of infection.
Long term aid to those in need creates a fear of having those provided with aid falling into the dependency theory. The rationale is that those who are benefiting will lose motivation to improve their lives on their own. Some may even work to worsen their condition in order to qualify for the aid. Additionally, one argument is that peripheral countries, such as Ethiopia, will not move out of needing aid because of the advanced economy's control. On average, Ethiopia has received 700,000 tons of food aid per year for the past 15 years. In rural Ethiopia, food aid has been provided for over three decades.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has intensified in many places – in the second quarter of 2020 there were multiple warnings of famine later in the year. According to early predictions, hundreds of thousands of people would likely die and millions more experience hunger without concerted efforts to address issues of food security. As of October 2020, these efforts were reducing the risk of widespread starvation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The famine in the Tigray War is an acute shortage of food leading to death and starvation in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, which resulted from the Tigray War that started in November 2020. As of May 2021 there are 5.5 million people facing acute food insecurity and over 350,000 people experiencing catastrophic famine conditions .> It is the worst famine worldwide since the 2011 famine in Somalia.
References
- 1 2 3 "IPC Acute Food Insecurity Reference Table for Household Groups". FEWS NET. April 2011. Archived from the original on 31 July 2011. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
- ↑ "IPC Overview and Classification System". IPC.
- ↑ "IPC Participating Organizations and Donors". Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). April 2011. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
- 1 2 "Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Technical Manual Version 1.1" (PDF). Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). 2008. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
- ↑ "Famine in Southern Somalia - Evidence for a declaration" (PDF). FEWS Net. 19 July 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 September 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
- ↑ "Integrated Phase Classification | Famine Early Warning Systems Network". fews.net. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
