Just ten years ago, famines were declining to a near-vanishing point. Today, mass starvation has returned with a vengeance. Almost all modern famines are triggered by war and in particular by the deliberate or reckless use of hunger as a weapon. The readiness of belligerents to inflict starvation, and the international retreat from humanitarian norms comes on top of structural vulnerabilities to hunger associated with climate crisis, precarious livelihoods, economic downturn and the volatility of commoditized global food markets. Famine on a scale not seen for decades have been unfolding in Sudan and Tigray region of Ethiopia. The people of Gaza are experiencing deprivation and food emergency of an intensity without parallel in recent times. Alongside these cases there are multiple food emergencies in countries from Afghanistan to Haiti to Yemen—while international relief budgets dwindle and governments scramble to find every pretext not to use the word ‘famine.’
The World Peace Foundation has compiled a dataset of historic famines and episodes of forced mass starvation. This includes ‘great famines’ that killed 100,000 people or more from 1870 onwards. It is being revised as more research is done on these events, with updated estimates for mortality and attributions of causes.
The contemporary dataset, continually updated, focuses on cases where the Famine Review Committee of the UN-accredited Integrated food security Phase Classification initiative identifies famine, risk of famine, or a high number of people in IPC phase 5, ‘catastrophe.’