The Challenges Of Famine Relief

For nearly a decade, international efforts to combat famine and food shortages around the globe have concentrated on the critical situations in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, prolonged drought, complicated by civil strife and debilitating economic problems, has caused widespread human suffering. The Sudan illustrates the proverbial worst-case scenario in which urgent food needs have been denied, food has been used as a weapon, and outside assistance has been obstructed. The Challenges of Famine Relief focuses on the two famine emergencies in the Sudan in the 1980s—the great African drought-related famine of 1984-86 and the conflict-related famine that afflicted the southern Sudan in 1988-91. Francis Deng and Larry Minear analyze the historical and political setting and the response by Sudan authorities and the international community. The book outlines four problem areas exemplified in the response to each crisis: the external nature of famine relief, the relationship between relief activities and endemic problems, the coordination of such activities, and the ambivalence of the results. The authors identify the many difficulties inherent in providing emergency relief to populations caught in circumstances of life-threatening famine. They show how such famine emergencies reflect the most extreme breakdown of social order and present the most compelling imperatives for international action. Deng and Minear also discuss how the international community, alerted by the media and mobilized by the Ethiopian famine, moved to fill the moral void left by the government and how outside organizations worked together to pressure Sudan's political authorities to be more responsive to these tragedies. Looking ahead, the authors highlight the implications for future involvement in humanitarian initiatives in a new world order. As recent developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union demonstrate, such humanitarian challenges of global dimensions are no longer confined to third world countries. As the international community apportions limited resources among a growing number of such challenges, more effective responses to crises such as those described in this book are imperative.

The Challenges of Famine Relief focuses on the two famine emergencies in the Sudan in the 1980s - the great African drought-related famine of 1984-86 and the conflict-related famine that afflicted the southern Sudan in 1988-91.

Who is responsible for the failures? African generals and politicians are the prime culprits for creating famines in Sudan, Somalia and Zaire, but western donors abet their authoritarianism, partly through imposing structural adjustment programmes.

Some urgent new thinking is needed if any lessons are to be learnt from the recent disasters. This book brings together the experience of a number of writers who have worked on, or studied, poverty alleviation programmes in Asia and Africa.

New perspectives on the history of famine—and the possibility of a famine-free world Famines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming. That is just one of the arguments that Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the world's leading authorities on the history and economics of famine, develops in this wide-ranging book, which provides crucial new perspectives on key questions raised by famines around the globe between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. The book begins with a taboo topic. Ó Gráda argues that cannibalism, while by no means a universal feature of famines and never responsible for more than a tiny proportion of famine deaths, has probably been more common during very severe famines than previously thought. The book goes on to offer new interpretations of two of the twentieth century’s most notorious and controversial famines, the Great Bengal Famine and the Chinese Great Leap Forward Famine. Ó Gráda questions the standard view of the Bengal Famine as a perfect example of market failure, arguing instead that the primary cause was the unwillingness of colonial rulers to divert food from their war effort. The book also addresses the role played by traders and speculators during famines more generally, invoking evidence from famines in France, Ireland, Finland, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia since the 1600s, and overturning Adam Smith’s claim that government attempts to solve food shortages always cause famines. Thought-provoking and important, this is essential reading for historians, economists, demographers, and anyone else who is interested in the history and possible future of famine.

History.