Famine

Are Famine Crises Unavoidable?

A large body of evidence has indicated that famine as a crisis principally results from poor policy, decision making, and planning. Interestingly, when famine strikes a region, the media portrayal of the crisis tends to be strikingly dramatic, as though the causes of a famine are entirely unforeseen. Because appeals for donations tend to be extremely urgent and often accompanied by heightened sensitivities, any appearance of critical and sometimes perfectly rational voices probing [Page 397]questions into causation of the crisis are often silenced and dismissed. Yet there are facts about famine and crisis management that have been learned through history, research, and experience that justify such critical perspectives and can offer valuable reflection and lessons for the future.

In July 2011, 40-year-old Halima Bare attempts to find shade in Elado village in the Wajir District of northern Kenya, one of the regions hardest hit by ongoing drought. Halima walked 31 miles with her seven children to Elado after the drought killed most of their livestock. In Elado, they have one meal a day, which she shares with her children, taking the remnants. By July, 12 million people in east Africa—Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya—were struggling to find food or drink following the worst drought in 60 years.

Preparedness is an important aspect to effective crisis management in regard to famine. In the aftermath of satellite technologies and indeed following, for example, Landsat missions since the 1970s and others like them, there have been advances in the understanding of drought, for example, and famine in general. There has also been a marked increase in the type and quality of information and historical data that can be utilized as a baseline for planning within the management of crisis systems. Unfortunately, such invaluable information seems not to have been sufficiently utilized and harnessed for national strategic crisis and emergency management planning. Opportunities brought about by technological advances have, in a significant number of cases in the developing world, not been matched with corresponding national crisis management strategies and mechanisms. A good example to illustrate this lack of preparedness can be found in, for example, the case of Ethiopia where, despite the availability of historical crisis data and a pattern of recurring famines, the country is chronically underprepared for famine crisis management. Yet Ethiopia has, over at least two millennia, gathered a wealth of information relating to famine crisis. The story and history of Ethiopia is punctuated with droughts and famines. Thus, it would seem perfectly plausible to suggest that against this history, both locals and the government in Ethiopia [Page 398]would be familiar with the risks and vulnerabilities facing them. Indeed, during the intervening time between the 16th and the 20th centuries, two notorious famines or droughts struck Ethiopia, leading to the coining of the words kifuken and kwachine and these words being added to the Ethiopian vocabulary. The use of the two words conveys within the Ethiopian tradition a sense of extreme notoriety of the crisis.

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