Speaker 1: I must admit I write this piece while starving, too
Speaker 1: hungry to think clearly, too weak to sit upright for long.
Speaker 1: I do not feel ashamed, because my starvation is deliberate.
Speaker 1: I refuse my hunger, even as it decays me. I
Speaker 1: can survive no other way. Famine is no longer a threat.
Speaker 2: It is here.
Speaker 1: Some days, my stomach cramps as I try to revise
Speaker 1: a single paragraph. My fingers feel dry and achy, parched
Speaker 1: from lack of fluids. Hunger is loud. I read, but
Speaker 1: hunger is shouting in my ear. I write, but the
Speaker 1: maw snaps with every keystroke. I wonder how can I
Speaker 1: keep my mind sharp when my body has gone so
Speaker 1: thin and dehydrated. The hunger starts with a rumble, and
Speaker 1: it spreads so quickly my legs barely carry me to
Speaker 1: the nearest internet cafe. There, I try to keep up
Speaker 1: with work and commitments, charge my devices, and catch a
Speaker 1: brief connection to the outside world. But with a heavy
Speaker 1: laptop bag on my shoulder, the journey feels less like
Speaker 1: a short walk and more like crossing a desert. One day,
Speaker 1: in particular, I had been working NonStop, pushing through dizziness
Speaker 1: and exhaustion, By the time I reached the stairs to
Speaker 1: my apartment, my legs were barely holding me up. My
Speaker 1: blood sugar had crashed. I collapsed just as I reached
Speaker 1: my bedroom. I was rushed to the nearest GP, where
Speaker 1: I was given an IVY to stabilize me. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I was back at work, not because I had recovered,
Speaker 1: but because I felt I could not afford to stop.
Speaker 1: The urgency to bear witness outweighed the need to rest.
Speaker 1: This is not about ego. It's about refusing to disappear,
Speaker 1: about resisting the slow erasure that comes with war and famine,
Speaker 1: about insisting that our thoughts and our work continue, even
Speaker 1: when it must be done in the ruins in Gaza.
Speaker 1: To be an academic today is to refuse to be
Speaker 1: reduced to a statistic. There are days when continuing feels impossible.
Speaker 1: The body simply gives out. Reading leaves me lightheaded, concentration
Speaker 1: slips away, Teaching becomes a battle to remain coherent. The
Speaker 1: most basic truth remains difficult to say aloud. We are hungry,
Speaker 1: not by accident but by design. When did naming that
Speaker 1: become taboo? This is not just about hunger. It is
Speaker 1: about being forced to fight for survival in silence. To
Speaker 1: generate knowledge in the context of hunger is to think
Speaker 1: through pain, To teach students who have not eaten and
Speaker 1: still tell them their voices matter. To insist against all
Speaker 1: odds that Gaza still thinks, still questions, still creates. That
Speaker 1: in itself is an act of resistance.
Speaker 2: It is so horrific what has happened. It's really hard
Speaker 2: to have words. Yeah, I don't have them, Like I
Speaker 2: can't articulate everything that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: That firsthand was excerpted from a really incredible article that
Speaker 1: I encourage everyone to read that was titled too Hungry
Speaker 1: to Think two Week to Sit Upright, Concentration Slips Away,
Speaker 1: The Struggle to stay focused as an academic in Gaza
Speaker 1: by Ahmed Kamal Janina, and it was published in The
Speaker 1: Guardian on August nineteenth, twenty twenty five. We'll link it
Speaker 1: in our show notes and on our website as well.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm erin Welsh and I'm erin Arman Updike and
Speaker 2: this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the second episode in our two part series
Speaker 1: on starvation and famine.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're back with part two. This week. We are
Speaker 2: continuing our discussion of starvation, famine, hunger, and malnutrition, words
Speaker 2: that have been used a lot lately in discussions surrounding
Speaker 2: the ongoing genocide and famine that's happening in Gaza, as
Speaker 2: well as the conflict that's raging in Sudan.
Speaker 1: So in these two episodes, we are addressing the distinct
Speaker 1: meanings of each of these words. And we started out
Speaker 1: in last week's episode going through the physiological and psychological
Speaker 1: impacts of starvation. So if you haven't listened to last
Speaker 1: week episode, it's not entirely necessary for this one, but
Speaker 1: it will help provide a lot of the context for
Speaker 1: understanding the starvation component of famine.
Speaker 2: And this week we are discussing famine. You know, it's
Speaker 2: definition or definitions, what it means to declare a famine,
Speaker 2: what causes famine, how famines have changed throughout history, and
Speaker 2: what is happening currently with the famine in Gaza and
Speaker 2: the food insecurity crises in other regions of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as with last week's episode, we have quite
Speaker 1: a lot to cover, so we are jumping right in
Speaker 1: right after the shortbreak.
Speaker 2: As you took us through last week, Aaron, the physiological
Speaker 2: effects of starvation or undernutrition or malnutrition go way beyond
Speaker 2: simply not having enough to eat and enough energy to
Speaker 2: function properly. Every single part of our bodies is impacted.
Speaker 2: Our immune systems leaving us more vulnerable to infections, our
Speaker 2: hormones affecting our reproductive systems, our organs leading to premature
Speaker 2: heart failure, our minds, leaving us foggy and depressed and apathetic.
Speaker 2: And just as we can't isolate starvation's impact on one
Speaker 2: part of our physiology and ignore its other effects, we
Speaker 2: can't pretend that mass starvation happens in a vacuum, that
Speaker 2: one day the crops failed and there simply wasn't enough food,
Speaker 2: that the cost of famine comes solely down to the
Speaker 2: direct physiological effects of starvation multiplied by the number of
Speaker 2: people impacted. That's not the way that it works. The
Speaker 2: causes and consequences of famines are far more complex than that,
Speaker 2: and ultimately each famine is unique, deserving of its own
Speaker 2: focused examination. But looking back at the vast history of famines,
Speaker 2: which have been with us for all of our species
Speaker 2: time on this earth, we can draw out some general
Speaker 2: patterns to help us understand the present and the possible future.
Speaker 2: This is an enormous area of scholarship, like absolutely enormous,
Speaker 2: and there are people who have dedicated many people who
Speaker 2: have dedicated decades of their lives to the study of famines.
Speaker 2: And I really struggled with how to approach this episode
Speaker 2: and also like feeling like I can't, like I'm not
Speaker 2: capable of doing this, but you know, I thought you should,
Speaker 2: I tell the story of just one famine, should talk
Speaker 2: about famines in history, And ultimately what I decided to
Speaker 2: do was to break this down into five chapters definition, causes, consequences, trends,
Speaker 2: and the future of famine. It's an oversimplified attempt at
Speaker 2: trying to understand famine and contextualize what we're seeing. And
Speaker 2: this is far from exhaustive coverage of a massive and
Speaker 2: massively important topic. But fortunately there are there's some additional
Speaker 2: reading that I can point you towards. So for this
Speaker 2: episode just wanted to shout out sources in advance. I
Speaker 2: mostly relied on a few books, so the book Mass Starvation,
Speaker 2: The History and Future of Famine by famine scholar Alex
Speaker 2: de Wall, Famine A Short History by Cormick Ograda, Poverty
Speaker 2: and Famines An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation by Nobel
Speaker 2: Prize winning economist Amartya Sen and Red Famine Stalin's War
Speaker 2: on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum, as well as a handful
Speaker 2: of papers. So let's get started, yeah. Chapter one. Definition
Speaker 2: of famine. What is famine and why is it important
Speaker 2: to define it? Famine exists at the extreme end of
Speaker 2: a spectrum of food scarcity. Simply put, a population experiencing
Speaker 2: famine is not able to access adequate food, leading to
Speaker 2: an elevated death rate. It is an event, a deviation
Speaker 2: from normal life. Throughout human history, different cultures and languages
Speaker 2: have used many different words to signify a famine. The
Speaker 2: ancient Roman orator Cicero used Praisin's caritas to mean present
Speaker 2: dearness or dearth and future of fames for future famine
Speaker 2: fames or I'm not sure how you say it is
Speaker 2: where famine comes from its fames and so it's a
Speaker 2: Latin word for hunger or starvation. It's like the word famished.
Speaker 2: For instance, in ancient Egypt, the word for famine is
Speaker 2: combined with is one combined that combines both hunger and plague,
Speaker 2: which is I think relevant in the context of how
Speaker 2: infectious disease occurs. Alongside oh, yes, Khalian word for famine, keristia,
Speaker 2: means dearness, so like things that are scarce and expensive
Speaker 2: and difficult to obtain. In medieval England, the word dearth
Speaker 2: was used to refer to famine as well as dearness,
Speaker 2: and the German word for famine hunger snot and probably
Speaker 2: really butchering that pronunciation. It refers to hunger associated with
Speaker 2: scarcity of food. Some famines have their own specific name.
Speaker 2: There's the holodomor with death by hunger in Ukraine nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty two to nineteen thirty three, the Skull Famine in
Speaker 2: India seventeen ninety to seventeen ninety one, the Great Hunger
Speaker 2: or Black forty seven for the eighteen forty five to
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty two famine in Ireland, Metunia or the Scramble
Speaker 2: in Tanzania nineteen seventeen to nineteen twenty. And that's just
Speaker 2: to name a few. Like many, many famines have their
Speaker 2: own names. Until very recently, there was no formalized, agreed
Speaker 2: upon definition of famine. People didn't need one to recognize
Speaker 2: it as it was happening. They didn't need to understand
Speaker 2: the physiology of starvation to recognize its effects in themselves,
Speaker 2: their children, their neighbors. They didn't need a formal death
Speaker 2: toll to grasp the magnitude of devastation. But as we've
Speaker 2: discovered in recent decades, having a standard threshold beyond which
Speaker 2: we can declare famine is crucial for decision making and
Speaker 2: delivering aid, especially as humanitarian aid organizations have grown. In
Speaker 2: the early two thousands, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification
Speaker 2: or IPC system was developed for the Food and Agriculture
Speaker 2: Organization of the United Nations, and it consists of five phases,
Speaker 2: so phase going from phase one, which is none or minimal,
Speaker 2: and that means that households are able to quote meet
Speaker 2: essential food and non food needs without engaging in atypical
Speaker 2: and unsustainable strategies to access food and income end quote.
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to read the deaths of each
Speaker 2: of the other phases until phase five. But phase two
Speaker 2: is stressed, Phase three crisis, Phase four emergency, and in
Speaker 2: phase five, which is catastrophe slash famine quote, households experience
Speaker 2: an extreme lack of food and or cannot meet other
Speaker 2: basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution,
Speaker 2: and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For famine classification,
Speaker 2: area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition
Speaker 2: and mortality end quote. So these phases are determined at
Speaker 2: the household level, whereas famine is an area wide classification.
Speaker 2: So how many households are experiencing extreme food scarcity? The
Speaker 2: threshold for famine is one in five households or twenty
Speaker 2: percent in a specific area facing a complete lack of
Speaker 2: food and other basic needs. Starvation is evident with more
Speaker 2: than thirty percent of children acutely malnourished, households are destitute,
Speaker 2: and death rates exceed two per ten thousand per day
Speaker 2: measured as excess mortality. So it's not just like how
Speaker 2: many people are dying, it's how many people are dying
Speaker 2: above the basisine the average.
Speaker 1: I feel like, what is so thank you for walking
Speaker 1: through all of that classification. We will link to those
Speaker 1: by the way for people who want to read all
Speaker 1: of it. That level, Like that classification is so extreme, yes,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that is like an important thing
Speaker 1: to just highlight, Like we're talking about twenty percent of
Speaker 1: households not having any access to food, thirty percent of
Speaker 1: people experiencing severe.
Speaker 2: Acute malnutrition like children. Yeah, that's really extreme.
Speaker 1: It is so a lot of places in the world
Speaker 1: currently are in level four, which is emergency, but not famine,
Speaker 1: and like that is also very extreme.
Speaker 2: It's extreme. It's just yeah, like the word, I think
Speaker 2: the word famine is not used lightly by these organizations.
Speaker 2: This is a very deliberate decision to say this is
Speaker 2: a famine, and there are criteria that that must be met.
Speaker 2: And I also want to just make a note here
Speaker 2: about excess mortality, because I think there's tends to be
Speaker 2: this idea that famine means Frank, starvation, You're death by starvation,
Speaker 2: and it's not. Excess mortality includes and I'm quoting from
Speaker 2: Alex D. Wall here, quote anyone who died of any
Speaker 2: causes above the baseline. It includes deaths from communicable diseases
Speaker 2: often the single biggest cause of death, exposure and exhaustion,
Speaker 2: and in some instances violence as well. Including all of
Speaker 2: the deaths can be justified because famine is not just
Speaker 2: an aggregate of individual cases of starvation. It is a
Speaker 2: far reaching social disruption that involves epidemics of an infectious diseases,
Speaker 2: movements of desperate people, crime, and an array of other
Speaker 2: social disorders. End quote. Famine is more than starvation on
Speaker 2: a large scale. Yeah, period, way more, way more. The
Speaker 2: IPC classification of famine is very specific and technical, and
Speaker 2: that is by design. It makes no reference to the
Speaker 2: cause of famine. It is politically agnostic, which is really
Speaker 2: important when it comes to delivering humanitarian aid. A declaration
Speaker 2: of famine as outlined by those clearly defined criteria allows
Speaker 2: humanitarian aid protocols to be enacted. It frees up resources
Speaker 2: and funds to deliver aid, and it draws international attention
Speaker 2: and action to the crisis, hopefully before it's too late,
Speaker 2: although if it's if a famine is declared, it already
Speaker 2: is too late for many people, a lot of people.
Speaker 2: The IPC system for declaring famine is crucial for acknowledging
Speaker 2: the need for public action, but it's not really something
Speaker 2: that we can use to identify or describe historical famines,
Speaker 2: which often lack the demographic data to determine something like
Speaker 2: excess mortality, like how do the estimated six hundred thousand
Speaker 2: deaths from the nine hundred and sixty seven CE flood
Speaker 2: in Egypt translate into additional mortality. How much of that
Speaker 2: is above the baseline for the two nine to two
Speaker 2: oh three BCE famine in China that killed eighty to
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the population, what was that baseline population?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we needed just a different approach for studying historical famines.
Speaker 2: And in two thousand and four, how and Devereaux proposed
Speaker 2: intensity and magnitude scales for characterizing famine. And the magnitude
Speaker 2: scale is what seems to be the most often used
Speaker 2: for historical famines, and it comes down to like total deaths,
Speaker 2: not as a proportion of the population or over a
Speaker 2: set time period. A great famine is one that has
Speaker 2: killed at least one hundred thousand people, and a catastrophic
Speaker 2: or calamitous famine I've seen both used is one that
Speaker 2: has killed over one million. Between the years eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: and twenty ten, at least one hundred and sixteen million
Speaker 2: people died in over fifty great and catastrophic famines, a
Speaker 2: truly staggering number. One hundred and sixteen million people, jeez,
Speaker 2: and just over you know, in one hundred and forty years.
Speaker 2: But the vast majority of those one hundred million deaths
Speaker 2: happened before nineteen eighty. What changed. I'll get there in
Speaker 2: a bit, but first let's talk about the causes of famine.
Speaker 2: So Chapter two, Causes of famine. Why do famines happen?
Speaker 2: Food shortage from crop failure, other disruptions in the food supply,
Speaker 2: rising food prices, armed conflict, political will, more things, sometimes
Speaker 2: all of the above, a blend of things. I think
Speaker 2: there's often a tendency to think of famine as a
Speaker 2: natural force. You know, drought or floods, fire, agricultural pests,
Speaker 2: fungal epidemics, volcanic ash blotting out the sun, destroying any
Speaker 2: available food and bringing starvation to the land. And historically
Speaker 2: that may have occasionally been the case. There may have
Speaker 2: been famines that were caused directly by crop sequential crop failures,
Speaker 2: solely crop failures. But today, and I think for centuries,
Speaker 2: you could argue famine is exclusively man made, started or
Speaker 2: perpetuated by political decision, their mismanagement, or malice, not, as
Speaker 2: Thomas Malthus claimed in seventeen ninety eight, an inevitable outcome
Speaker 2: of uncontrolled population growth, nature correcting itself by bringing down
Speaker 2: a population to a more appropriate level. Yeah, Malthus, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's In Alex de Wall's book, he refers to it
Speaker 2: as like the Malthust zombie. I think it's like this idea,
Speaker 2: this concept that just won't die, that somehow food will
Speaker 2: be the only limiting factor. It won't be. There will
Speaker 2: be many things before food or contributing and we're not
Speaker 2: even close to that. That's a whole separate discussion anyway.
Speaker 1: Should we do a whole episode and how we haven't
Speaker 1: reached carrying capacity?
Speaker 2: Okay, no, no, no no, but yet you know, governments
Speaker 2: have used Malthus's prediction as an excuse for inaction in
Speaker 2: a number of famines in India. For instance, in the
Speaker 2: Great Irish Famine of the eighteen forties. During that famine,
Speaker 2: that or during all these famines, the English government kind
Speaker 2: of just shrugged and went, well, you know, what do
Speaker 2: you expect leaving millions to die. It was sort of
Speaker 2: this like, well, this is what Mauthas said would happen.
Speaker 2: You brought it upon yourselves, upon yourselves. Yeah, nothing we
Speaker 2: can do. And in those famines, food was not the
Speaker 2: limiting factor. Ireland and oftentimes India was still exporting food
Speaker 2: as forced by England or preventing its delivery in India.
Speaker 2: If India wasn't actively exporting, famines do not happen, as
Speaker 2: Mouth is claimed. Our planet is capable of producing enough
Speaker 2: food for the global population. You know, whether climate change
Speaker 2: will play a role and shifting that is a question
Speaker 2: that remains to be seen. It probably will, but we
Speaker 2: are not there yet. We're not there. We're not there yet.
Speaker 1: We have not been there historically. We are not there
Speaker 1: currently in the year twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Which doesn't mean that climate we shouldn't worry about climate change.
Speaker 2: That's under We should, but it's just so many reasons.
Speaker 2: It's not Malthus. Yeah, Malthous. Famines happen because people will
Speaker 2: them to. In his book Mass Starvation, de Wall makes
Speaker 2: note of the word to starve and its multiple meanings.
Speaker 2: A person can starve and they can also be starved.
Speaker 2: Hunger is a very effective weapon and tool of conquest.
Speaker 2: It's deadly, it's demoralizing, it's disruptive. It completely reshapes and
Speaker 2: erodes every aspect of your life. Whatever the goal submission, humiliation, suffering, genocide,
Speaker 2: many governments have and continue to wield starvation to accomplish
Speaker 2: those goals. Like during many colonial conquests by European governments,
Speaker 2: like the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century, like the Holodomor in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two to nineteen thirty three, which was intended by Stalin
Speaker 2: to destroy Ukrainian identity and culture, like the Nazis used
Speaker 2: repeatedly during World War II, including during the Nazi Hunger Plan,
Speaker 2: which was not enacted fully but intended to kill a
Speaker 2: calculated thirty million people, like the US's World War II
Speaker 2: Operation Starvation was actually named that where I'm one hundred
Speaker 2: percent serious. They dropped mines into Japanese harbors to disrupt
Speaker 2: food shipments and it actually intentionally to cut off food supply,
Speaker 2: or during the Vietnam War when they killed all the
Speaker 2: crops defoliation with napalm ecoside, like Israeli leaders who use
Speaker 2: hunger as a weapon and prevent aid from being delivered
Speaker 2: During the two thousand and eight to two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine Israeli siege of Gaza. An advisor to the Israeli
Speaker 2: Prime Minister is reported to have said, quote, the idea
Speaker 2: is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not
Speaker 2: to make them die of hunger end quote. I get
Speaker 2: that quote. Yeah again, Outright starvation deaths during famine are rare.
Speaker 2: People are far more likely to die of infectious disease
Speaker 2: or other causes, all of which still constitute famine deaths,
Speaker 2: even if the goal isn't outright genocide or submission, and
Speaker 2: a famine begins because of you know, say, harmful government
Speaker 2: policy and subsequent denial or just like crop failings and
Speaker 2: then subsequent denial and inaction in action, yeah right. What
Speaker 2: that reveals is that those in power simply did not
Speaker 2: care enough to do anything. During the nineteen forty three
Speaker 2: Bengal famine that killed two to three million people in
Speaker 2: India oh my gosh, which India at the time was
Speaker 2: still under British control. Britain denied that there was any
Speaker 2: food shortage. They blamed it all on people allegedly hoarding food,
Speaker 2: meanwhile requisitioning food themselves for the war effort. And then
Speaker 2: they refused to provide relief or allow any transport of
Speaker 2: food into India because they were worried about it being
Speaker 2: intercepted by Axi's forces, or enact any standard famine relief measures.
Speaker 2: They didn't do anything. So, according to scholar Lizzie Collingham quote,
Speaker 2: it is difficult to reach any conclusion other than that
Speaker 2: racism was the guiding principle which determined where hunger struck
Speaker 2: end quote And this famine which the scholar Amartya Sen
Speaker 2: lived through and then inspired him to write some of
Speaker 2: his ideas about the economics and the impacts of poverty
Speaker 2: and famine. I think this it shows, as he pointed out,
Speaker 2: how important it is to ask the question, is there
Speaker 2: no food to buy? Or is it that there's no
Speaker 2: money to buy food? Or is it that you are
Speaker 2: prevented from buying food? These are very crucial differences. Malthus
Speaker 2: would probably say that famines happened when there's no food
Speaker 2: to buy. There's just no food, there's no food. But
Speaker 2: in this modern era and likely during Malthus's time, food
Speaker 2: is never the limiting factor. It's about access and who
Speaker 2: prevents access. There's a classic metaphor to describe the vulnerability
Speaker 2: of a peasant throughout history, and it was created by
Speaker 2: Richard Tawny in nineteen sixty six, and it's this metaphor
Speaker 2: of a peasant standing up to his neck in water
Speaker 2: so that even the slightest ripple can drown him. And
Speaker 2: thinking about what causes those ripples or waves and what
Speaker 2: determines the height of the water in the first place,
Speaker 2: I think that can be helpful in thinking about famine.
Speaker 2: Maybe a ripple is a bad crop here. Maybe he's
Speaker 2: knocked down because of his religious beliefs or just ethnic identity.
Speaker 2: Maybe a wave comes in the form of an exorbitant
Speaker 2: tax or a case of dysentery. When an entire population
Speaker 2: is up to their necks in water, that can make
Speaker 2: them max extremely vulnerable to a famine, and that famine
Speaker 2: can have devastating consequences. Chapter three, Consequences of famine. What
Speaker 2: happens during and after a famine. Like we talked about
Speaker 2: last week, starvation profoundly impacts the body and the mind,
Speaker 2: making people more vulnerable to a whole host of other
Speaker 2: dangers like infectious disease or exposure. And we talked about
Speaker 2: that largely in the context of purely starvation. Your immune
Speaker 2: system weakens, leaving you open to infection, for example. What
Speaker 2: famine does is amplify those dangers one thousandfold. So like
Speaker 2: the men in the Minnesota starvation experiment undoubtedly had weakened
Speaker 2: immune systems, but they had access to warm water, clean clothes,
Speaker 2: medical care, fresh food. They had a safety net that
Speaker 2: simply does not exist in a famine. So let's say,
Speaker 2: for example, that a person who's moving in famine conditions
Speaker 2: is exposed to typhus. Typhus ravages their weakened immune system,
Speaker 2: and since hot water and clean clothes are out of
Speaker 2: the question, the infected lice carrying the Typhus bacterium will
Speaker 2: spread to every member of the household, leaving all of
Speaker 2: them too weak to cook with what little food they
Speaker 2: may have. And let's say one person is well enough
Speaker 2: to venture out to get food. Maybe they'll be shunned
Speaker 2: out of fear of the disease, or maybe they manage
Speaker 2: to get food, but it's spoiled or it barely resembles food,
Speaker 2: it has almost no nutritional content. If they recover from typhus,
Speaker 2: food poisoning or dysentery could deliver the death blow. When
Speaker 2: political conflict drives famine, many people are forcibly displaced, and
Speaker 2: camps set up to house them can be hot beds
Speaker 2: of infection. You mentioned crowding and how there tends to
Speaker 2: be crowding in famine. That's just like it facilitates the
Speaker 2: spread of infectious disease to an astonishing degree combination with malnutrition.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have touched on that in almost
Speaker 1: every single infectious disease episode we have ever covered.
Speaker 2: Yep, yes, yes, yes, cholera, typhus, typhoid, measles, malaria, influenza.
Speaker 2: These are all frequent occurrences in famines, and so we've
Speaker 2: been saying multiple times infectious disease is one of the
Speaker 2: biggest killers. Famine deepens vulnerabilities and magnifies social inequalities. Those
Speaker 2: who are compromised to begin with are often the first
Speaker 2: to die, and they make up the greatest proportion of deaths.
Speaker 2: So throughout history, this tends to be the oldest and
Speaker 2: the youngest. In Duwall's study of the Darfur famine in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty five, he estimated that
Speaker 2: two thirds of the deaths were children under ten, and
Speaker 2: half of the deaths were children under five.
Speaker 1: It's also depressing, aaron that in so many of the
Speaker 1: statistics when they're measuring like we talked about last week,
Speaker 1: severe che malnutrition and things the tiniest of babies, like yes,
Speaker 1: newborns to six months old often aren't even included in
Speaker 1: those statistics because we don't have like ways to measure
Speaker 1: them reliably and things. So it's it's just so heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: It yeah, yeah, this pattern of the oldest and the
Speaker 2: youngest being the most likely to die, it doesn't it
Speaker 2: doesn't always hold. So for instance, if there are people
Speaker 2: who are like certain populations who are targeted, there might
Speaker 2: be a deviation from that. But in general, like I
Speaker 2: think you could generalize by saying that famine strikes those
Speaker 2: who are not deemed worthy of consideration, not deemed worthy
Speaker 2: to live. Here's a quote from d wal quote. Famines
Speaker 2: strike selectively. It is the poor and politically excluded who
Speaker 2: are its first and principal victims. Commonly, it's only ones
Speaker 2: star relentlessly hunts out outsiders and marginalized minorities. Or, to
Speaker 2: phrase it more accurately, those in power administer famines so
Speaker 2: as to target these people. In a large number of
Speaker 2: the famines in our catalog, including all the most recent cases,
Speaker 2: the victims have been constituencies identified as subversives or enemies
Speaker 2: of the state. Today's resurgence of xenophobia and resource nationalism
Speaker 2: across the world bodes ill for the politics of feminogenesis.
Speaker 2: End quote. Ah yeah, this is heavy, arin, I know.
Speaker 2: Beyond the physical effects of starvation, those in a famine
Speaker 2: also grow increasingly apathetic. Beyond despair, they disengage or become
Speaker 2: a social survival just shuts everything else out. The cost
Speaker 2: of famine is often reported as the number dead, But
Speaker 2: just as starvation is merely one component of famine, the
Speaker 2: death toll in a famine represents just one devastating outcome.
Speaker 2: What about the lives forever altered, The trauma, the lasting
Speaker 2: physical harm, the cognitive impairments, the drop in birth rate,
Speaker 2: the horror of watching your family, your friends, your neighbors
Speaker 2: perish while the world just looks on or turns away.
Speaker 2: The damage that famine causes spans generations. Adults that were
Speaker 2: exposed to famine while in the womb are at higher
Speaker 2: risk of certain diseases like type two diabetes, as well
Speaker 2: as mental health issues. A famine is an event. It
Speaker 2: has a start and an end, murky though they may be,
Speaker 2: but that event stays with those who lived through it
Speaker 2: for the rest of their lives, Even if, like those
Speaker 2: who lived through the holodomor or the Great Leap Forward
Speaker 2: famine in China in the nineteen fifties. You are forbidden
Speaker 2: from discussing it. How can it be forgotten? One visitor
Speaker 2: to Ukraine a decade after the famine in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two to nineteen thirty three reported that quote ten long
Speaker 2: years had been unable to erase those murderous traces and
Speaker 2: to disperse the expiring sounds of the innocent children, women
Speaker 2: and men, of the dying of young people enfeebled by famine.
Speaker 2: The sad memories still hang like a black haze over
Speaker 2: the cities and villages, and produce a mortal fear among
Speaker 2: the witnesses who escaped the starvation end quote. Those and
Speaker 2: those two famines that I just mentioned, the Holodomor and
Speaker 2: the Great Leap Forward, Those mark the two most extreme
Speaker 2: famines of the twentieth century. They killed three point three
Speaker 2: million and thirty two million people, respectively. Jeez aren. Many
Speaker 2: modern scholars of famine believe that the age of catastrophic
Speaker 2: famines like these that number in the millions or multiple millions.
Speaker 2: They believe that it might be over. Is it like?
Speaker 2: What patterns are we seeing? Chapter four? Trends in famines?
Speaker 2: How have famines changed over time, famine has always been
Speaker 2: with us. The story goes that when many human societies
Speaker 2: gradually began their transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture
Speaker 2: and livestock, food production went up, infectious disease went up,
Speaker 2: and dietary deficiencies went up due to over dependence on
Speaker 2: certain staple foods like grains. The sedentary lifestyle may have
Speaker 2: sheltered agrarian societies from fluctuations in food supply. You know,
Speaker 2: whether they were truly more sheltered than hunter gatherer societies,
Speaker 2: It's up for debate. Interesting, But at the same time,
Speaker 2: their dependence on crops may have also made them more
Speaker 2: susceptible to sequential crop failings. So, for instance, repeated crop
Speaker 2: failure and livestock disease led to the Great European Famine
Speaker 2: of thirteen fifteen to thirteen seventeen that killed ten percent
Speaker 2: of the population. And this is just a few decades
Speaker 2: before the Black Death would carry off thirty percent more.
Speaker 2: Can you just yeah. The age of European colonialism, beginning
Speaker 2: in the fourteen nineties and lasting at least through World
Speaker 2: War One, led to many famines, either as a direct
Speaker 2: result of the upheaval and violence imposed on those populations. Remember,
Speaker 2: hunger is a weapon, or indirectly as imperial conquest destroyed
Speaker 2: the buffers that people had in place to protect against famine,
Speaker 2: so like when European governments would force people to farm
Speaker 2: European crops rather than indigenous plants that they had been growing.
Speaker 2: The severity of these col colonial era famines was deepened
Speaker 2: by the fact that the colonizing governments rarely provided any
Speaker 2: sort of relief. The lives of those who suffered did
Speaker 2: not matter. So for instance, there was an enormous famine
Speaker 2: in South Asia following the British East India Company's conquest
Speaker 2: of Bengal in the seventeen seventies that led to the
Speaker 2: death of one third of the population. This famine was
Speaker 2: not the exception, it was the rule, and famines like
Speaker 2: these followed into the late eighteen hundreds and early twentieth century.
Speaker 2: The causes were multifaceted and dependent on the region, so
Speaker 2: there might be like severe drought, crop light foods, disruption
Speaker 2: of economic structure by colonialism, culture erasure via colonialism, a
Speaker 2: combination of everything, But what followed seemed fairly consistent. The
Speaker 2: lack of any relief. Instead of easing the tax burden,
Speaker 2: colonial governments continued to extract brutal taxes under the threat
Speaker 2: of violence. Instead of stopping the export of food from
Speaker 2: a country starving to death, the export continued. Instead of
Speaker 2: providing adequate food and relief programs, in an effort to
Speaker 2: stop or slow the famine, government handed out quantities of
Speaker 2: food that matched the rationing in Nazi concentration camps, so
Speaker 2: it'd be like, here's four hundred calories. Yeah. Over the
Speaker 2: first few decades of the twentieth century, the age of
Speaker 2: colonial famines was supplanted by those created by totalitarian regimes.
Speaker 2: So the Holodomor in Ukraine, which I've mentioned a few
Speaker 2: times now. Raphael Lemkin, who was the person to coin
Speaker 2: the term genocide in nineteen forty four, he considered this
Speaker 2: famine to be genocide by starvation. The Nazi hunger planned
Speaker 2: which was intended to kill thirty million quote unquote useless
Speaker 2: eaters in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union via starvation.
Speaker 2: Japanese occupied territories like Burma, Indonesia, and Vietnam all suffered
Speaker 2: mass starvations since food prioritized to feed the occupier. But
Speaker 2: even these famines would pale in comparison to the Great
Speaker 2: Leap Forward Famine in China between nineteen fifty eight and
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, which killed at least twenty five to
Speaker 2: over thirty million people, the largest famine in history. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know how you can even begin to wrap
Speaker 2: your mind around numbers like that. Oh you can't, it can't.
Speaker 2: And while environmental factors contributed somewhat to this famine, the
Speaker 2: lion's share of the blame goes to Mao Zedong's policies.
Speaker 2: Farmers were forced to leave their farms to work in
Speaker 2: factories to try to match the economic growth of what
Speaker 2: was seeing in some of the other in some Western countries,
Speaker 2: for instance, like steel factories. And this actually was the
Speaker 2: Great Leap Forward Famine, was a situation where outright starvation
Speaker 2: was actually often the cause of death for many, and
Speaker 2: silence was the rule. The true scope of this famine
Speaker 2: wasn't realized for twenty years after it ended due to
Speaker 2: censorship policies, so no one knew and that it was
Speaker 2: just like the numbers just kept growing and growing. A
Speaker 2: few more catastrophic totalitarian famines with over one million deaths
Speaker 2: occurred in the last decades of the twentieth century in
Speaker 2: Cambodia and North Korea. But then the trajectory of famines
Speaker 2: began to shift more often famines were occurring in Sub
Speaker 2: Saharan Africa. Drought played a role, but the leading driver
Speaker 2: was war, associated of course with like armed conflict, poverty,
Speaker 2: harmful economic policies and displacement. Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Darfur, the
Speaker 2: DRC and other regions have all experienced these famines. The
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty five famine in Ethiopia
Speaker 2: that killed six hundred thousand people was among the first
Speaker 2: to draw an international humanitarian aid respects. You know, like
Speaker 2: Bob Geldof and band aid the song do they know
Speaker 2: It's Christmas? Which like is just the most you don't
Speaker 2: know that song. I don't know that song. Oh God,
Speaker 2: it's like, do they know it's It was sung it
Speaker 2: was like so it created a lot of money. It like,
Speaker 2: you know, brought in a lot of money for humanitarian aid.
Speaker 2: But the lyrics of that song are so condescending. No,
Speaker 2: do they know it's Christmas? First of all, Ethiopia is
Speaker 2: one of the places of like the oldest Christian religion
Speaker 2: like sects in the world anyway, Yeah, okay, many of
Speaker 2: which many yeah, yeah, Well, I mean it's like band
Speaker 2: aid and these songs like yeah, do they know it's Christmas?
Speaker 2: Et cetera. They were instrumental in raising awareness and in
Speaker 2: raising money for humanitarian aid response. There is this is
Speaker 2: a really like complicated humanitarian aid in general, and the
Speaker 2: shifts in humanitarian aid responses and crisis over chronic food insecurities,
Speaker 2: you know what draws more money. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: complications there.
Speaker 1: It's a hodgepodge of messy mess it is.
Speaker 2: But it did mark a huge turning point in terms
Speaker 2: of how famines were considered at the on the international scale,
Speaker 2: on the international like international politics, and so the expansion
Speaker 2: was crucial to help to help relieve the famine in
Speaker 2: Ethiopia and in subsequent crises. But yeah, there's another quote
Speaker 2: from the Wall where he says, quote, it is not
Speaker 2: driven by the needs of the hungry, but by the
Speaker 2: political demands of its donors, chiefly Western governments end quote.
Speaker 2: And some governments have used aid not necessarily through like
Speaker 2: these international humanitarian aid programs, which tend to be more
Speaker 2: a political but different governments have used aid as like
Speaker 2: a carrot, you know, on the stick to accomplish certain
Speaker 2: political goals. So in the US withdrew aid from Bangladesh
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies until they agreed to fall in
Speaker 2: line with US politics, and by the time they reinstituted aid,
Speaker 2: it was too late, like there was no point to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this, we just don't have any usaid, so.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly and so. And this is also not to
Speaker 2: discount the countless lives that humanitarian aid has saved or
Speaker 2: the famines that it has directly averted. And like the
Speaker 2: IPC system, much humanitarian assistance is a political so resources
Speaker 2: can get to people who most desperately need it. By
Speaker 2: the end of the twentieth century, international reporting on famines
Speaker 2: and the development of a professional international humanitarian aid system
Speaker 2: meant that we had the ability to recognize famine and
Speaker 2: do something about it as long as there was also
Speaker 2: the WILL. Chapter five, The future of famine is the
Speaker 2: end of famine in sight? Asking that seems like a
Speaker 2: ridiculous question when there is literally a famine happening in Gaza,
Speaker 2: when there have been famines in Somalia, South Sudan and
Speaker 2: Sudan in the past twenty years. But it is a
Speaker 2: valid question. When you look at a graph of famine
Speaker 2: deaths over time starting in eighteen seventy, there is a
Speaker 2: noticeable sharp downward trend starting around the nineteen eighties. Why
Speaker 2: have famines declined in magnitude and by magnitude, I mean
Speaker 2: fewer people dying overall compared to the century's earlier multimillion
Speaker 2: death toll famines. It's a combination of different things, public
Speaker 2: health advances, humanitarian aid responses, and political action and will
Speaker 2: so think again of that metaphor of the guy who's
Speaker 2: standing up to his neck in water. The water level
Speaker 2: has on average around the globe declined thanks to things
Speaker 2: like economic growth, improvedments in agriculture, functioning markets, and public health.
Speaker 2: These factors might reduce how vulnerable an entire population is
Speaker 2: to famine or the number of vulnerable individuals. They might
Speaker 2: help reduce deaths due to communicable or other preventable diseases.
Speaker 2: They might help in getting aid more quickly to a
Speaker 2: population because there's awareness of that agricultural productivity has increased.
Speaker 2: The impacts of the Green Revolution haven't been all positive,
Speaker 2: and increased productivity doesn't necessarily translate into more access to food,
Speaker 2: but it has helped thanks to global trade, local food
Speaker 2: shortages can more easily be remedied. Again, the global food
Speaker 2: supply is not the limiting factor here. Maybe one day
Speaker 2: climate change will put us bring us closer to the edge,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't yet. We have the tools to prevent,
Speaker 2: to minimize, to end famine. So maybe the more appropriate
Speaker 2: question is why does famine still happen? Why has the
Speaker 2: threat of famine actually increased within the last five years
Speaker 2: with more people living with severe hunger and malnutrition. While
Speaker 2: the globe on average might have the water level lowered,
Speaker 2: averages can be deceiving, and there are still millions of
Speaker 2: people standing up to their necks and water. And this
Speaker 2: is also not like geographically evenly distributed, right, So a
Speaker 2: lot of the biggest famines throughout the twentieth century tended
Speaker 2: to take place in Asia, and that's not the case now.
Speaker 2: Now most of the food crises are happening in the
Speaker 2: Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa, and so in these
Speaker 2: most vulnerable regions there are still millions of people who
Speaker 2: are at risk of drowning, you know. Using this metaphor
Speaker 2: again with a ripple caused by a job loss year,
Speaker 2: violent conflict and escalation of hatred against people of your
Speaker 2: religion or ethnicity. Rising food prices, forced migration, hostility to refugees,
Speaker 2: extreme weather events, and I think most worryingly is the
Speaker 2: apathy that seems to be on the rise. Humanitarian aid
Speaker 2: giving way to nationalism quoting again from Mass Starvation by
Speaker 2: Alex D. Wall quote and this was written in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Over the last thirty years, we have assumed benevolent governance
Speaker 2: that the default option in the international order is to
Speaker 2: promote humane values and act against needless human suffering. That
Speaker 2: era may now be passing, and the default setting for
Speaker 2: global politics may return to the older premise that far
Speaker 2: away human suffering, including mass starvation, can be tolerated or ignored.
Speaker 2: End quote. So that was twenty seventeen, and I mean
Speaker 2: is prediction has come true. To go from George Bush
Speaker 2: having a no famine on my watch policy literally that
Speaker 2: was like the policy to first George Bush, No, this
Speaker 2: is George w sorry, Yeah, to Donald Trump slashing USAID,
Speaker 2: which has played a huge role in famine prevention and relief.
Speaker 2: I mean, George Bush is a war criminal. This just
Speaker 2: shows like how far things have fallen, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it shows how wanting to reduce human suffering
Speaker 2: it used to be a given like that was like,
Speaker 2: of course you want to reduce It wasn't even that
Speaker 2: it was political. It was like every person was like
Speaker 2: this is you couldn't I just it wasn't. One side
Speaker 2: wanted to reduce human suffering and the other side wanted
Speaker 2: to promote it. That's what it is now. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe suffering sometimes does seem like an openly declared goal,
Speaker 2: but even if it's not, that it is, suffering is permitted,
Speaker 2: it is acceptable with this administration, and not just with
Speaker 2: this administration, but in many places around the world. It's
Speaker 2: what we've seen happen currently happening in Gaza. Famine was
Speaker 2: officially declared on August twenty second of this year, not
Speaker 2: caused by food shortages, but food and other aid being
Speaker 2: withheld by the Israeli government. Not just food also but
Speaker 2: clean water, housing, sanitation, healthcare, and fuel. Everything just broken down,
Speaker 2: leading to the intentional, preventable deaths of thousands of people
Speaker 2: in Gaza. So I guess to go back to the
Speaker 2: question of whether the end of famine is here the
Speaker 2: answer seems to be no. It is theoretically within our grasp,
Speaker 2: but there is a widening gulf between that theoretical possibility
Speaker 2: and the reality that we face. And what separates those
Speaker 2: two is political will, shame, a conscience, the conviction to
Speaker 2: do the right thing. Can we bridge that gap? I mean,
Speaker 2: I want to say yes, but how we can begin
Speaker 2: to is another question. Yeah, Aaron, I don't know what
Speaker 2: else to say, So I'm going to turn it over
Speaker 2: to you to update us and the goings on in
Speaker 2: the world today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am going to kind of bring us up
Speaker 1: to speed with specifically the two areas that the IPC
Speaker 1: has said that there are two areas in the world
Speaker 1: that have met famine criteria right now essentially. But like
Speaker 1: we talked about in last week's episode, food insecurity and
Speaker 1: malnutrition overall are not uncommon globally. The World Food Program,
Speaker 1: which is a humanitarian aid organization that is one of
Speaker 1: the largest the World Food Program a S stimated in
Speaker 1: the middle of twenty twenty five that over three hundred
Speaker 1: million people we're facing acute food insecurity, like just in
Speaker 1: the short term, seventy percent of which are the direct
Speaker 1: result of conflict and violence, and the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: in Fao recently put out a report that estimated that
Speaker 1: over six hundred million people experienced hunger overall in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. So this is obviously a very widespread problem,
Speaker 1: and especially a problem in areas where we see conflict
Speaker 1: and violence, even in places that we maybe think of
Speaker 1: as not facing food insecurity initially.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, for example, in Ukraine, where war has been raging
Speaker 1: for nearly four years now, at least one third of
Speaker 1: residents in areas of high conflict are still reliant on
Speaker 1: humanitarian food aid for subsistence. So even in areas where
Speaker 1: we haven't seen or we haven't met criteria for famine,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of parts of the world that
Speaker 1: are experiencing severe food shortages and insecurity. But to wrap
Speaker 1: us up for this episode, I want to focus on
Speaker 1: the two places in the world that have currently met
Speaker 1: the IPC threshold for famine, and that is Sudan and Gaza.
Speaker 1: And just like we have seen in most of the
Speaker 1: modern famines that you walked us through Arin prior to
Speaker 1: this classification of famine, many people living in Gaza and Sudan,
Speaker 1: prior to this declaration, we're already facing food insecurity, and
Speaker 1: that plays a huge role in how we got to
Speaker 1: where we are today. So starting with Sudan, the world's
Speaker 1: largest humanitarian crisis is currently happening across all of Sudan.
Speaker 1: There is a conflict there, and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get into the drivers of these conflicts. That's way beyond
Speaker 1: my scope. But it had been ongoing for several years
Speaker 1: and escalated in April of twenty twenty three. So since
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty three, at least twelve million people
Speaker 1: have been internally displaced, over half of those children. And
Speaker 1: the World Health Organization actually their estimate was slightly different
Speaker 1: than IPCs, and they estimated ten point five million internally
Speaker 1: displaced and four million people displaced across borders into neighboring countries.
Speaker 1: And this internal displacement as well as external like displacement
Speaker 1: outside of your countries, has led to lack of work opportunities,
Speaker 1: so that families have no reliable income. Food in this
Speaker 1: region has become substantially, like exponentially more expensive in part
Speaker 1: due to scarcity, and that scarcity is very multifactorial. There
Speaker 1: have been years of low crop yields, there has been flooding,
Speaker 1: but there are also checkpoints in place. There's difficulties in
Speaker 1: transporting food. There is ongoing con in these areas, like
Speaker 1: a truly horrific amount of conflict, and this has also
Speaker 1: made it even more difficult for humanitarian aid to reach
Speaker 1: the areas that are at most at need. Right The
Speaker 1: other thing that I just want to mention that the
Speaker 1: IPC includes in you can read these reports where they
Speaker 1: go through all of the details of how they came
Speaker 1: to this conclusion when they say that they meet the
Speaker 1: criteria for famine in these areas. They also look at
Speaker 1: food utilization because in these areas, including in Sudan right now,
Speaker 1: even when food is available, there are difficulties in actually
Speaker 1: using or consuming it, or being able to like your body,
Speaker 1: being able to utilize what you have consumed, okay, and
Speaker 1: this is because of a lot of different reasons. There's
Speaker 1: damage to let's say, water facilities, so that you don't
Speaker 1: have access to clean water to be able to cook
Speaker 1: your food or clean your you know, things to be
Speaker 1: able to cook your food with. There's outbreaks of diarrheal diseases,
Speaker 1: including as of April twenty twenty five in Sudan, a
Speaker 1: cholera outbreak of over sixty thousand cases and at least
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred deaths, and that cholera outbreak is not limited
Speaker 1: to Sudan. It has actually also spread to South Sudan,
Speaker 1: where there have been at least one point one million
Speaker 1: people who have fled into South Sudan from Sudan, and
Speaker 1: the cholera outbreak there has affected an additional fifty four
Speaker 1: thousand people and caused over one thousand deaths. So this
Speaker 1: is like really huge, and that obviously on top of
Speaker 1: just causing disease, makes it difficult for people to absorb
Speaker 1: any food that they are actually eating. So overall in
Speaker 1: Sudan right now, we don't have a reliable way to
Speaker 1: quantify the extent of mortality that all of this has caused.
Speaker 1: We don't really have reliable data that is coming out
Speaker 1: of there right now. But the most recent report that
Speaker 1: was published was published by the IPC in December of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and projected out through May of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, and at that time they estimated that five
Speaker 1: different areas within Sudan were experiencing famine. That IPC Phase
Speaker 1: five classification, which was nearly six hundred and forty thousand
Speaker 1: people at least and over half the population, and estimated
Speaker 1: twenty four point six million people across Sudan were facing
Speaker 1: at least Category three or four very high levels of
Speaker 1: acute food insecurity. So even before the escalation of this conflict,
Speaker 1: the global malnutrition rates in children under the age of
Speaker 1: five in Sudan were estimated at around thirteen percent, and
Speaker 1: now in many of these areas they're up to thirty percent,
Speaker 1: which is again what classifies it as famine, and the
Speaker 1: World Health Organzation estimates that in Sudan five million children
Speaker 1: and pregnant people are acutely malnourished and over seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand kids under the age of five will have meet
Speaker 1: criteria for severe acute malnutrition this year. It's pretty horrific
Speaker 1: and it is still ongoing. Most of the reports, like
Speaker 1: art have not been updated. I assume that we will
Speaker 1: have updated reports maybe by the time this comes out.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure, but the projections were even grim like,
Speaker 1: they were very grim.
Speaker 2: We're recording this, by the way. I don't know if
Speaker 2: we've said this in any episode, but did in September eleventh.
Speaker 1: September eleventh, twenty twenty five, So that's the most recent
Speaker 1: data that we have on all of these in Gaza.
Speaker 1: The most recent IPC report, as you mentioned Aaron, was
Speaker 1: updated August twenty second of twenty twenty five, and I
Speaker 1: actually want to start out by reading an excerpt from
Speaker 1: this particular report because the intro is actually pretty striking.
Speaker 1: They start out with quote, this report marks the fifth
Speaker 1: time the Famine Review Committee has been called to review
Speaker 1: an analysis on the acute food security and nutrition situation
Speaker 1: in the Gaza Strip. Never before has the Committee had
Speaker 1: to return so many times to the same crisis, a
Speaker 1: stark reflection of how suffering has not only persisted, but
Speaker 1: intensified and spread until famine has begun to emerge. So
Speaker 1: in this report they outlined that famine the famine conditions
Speaker 1: have been met at least by the time of this
Speaker 1: report in August in Gaza Governant, and they projected that
Speaker 1: by the end of September, so by the end of
Speaker 1: this month that we're recording, it will likely have spread
Speaker 1: to several other governates in the south across Gaza Strip,
Speaker 1: affecting an estimated six hundred and forty thousand people already
Speaker 1: and at least one million people facing emergency or IPC
Speaker 1: Phase four levels of food insecurity. In the Guardian, there
Speaker 1: was an article that came out earlier in September that
Speaker 1: reported that in the last two weeks of August alone,
Speaker 1: seven thousand children under the age of five were hospitalized
Speaker 1: specifically to treat severe acute malnutrition. How many seven thousand kids?
Speaker 1: And they actually estimated that by the time that they
Speaker 1: calculated the rest of the numbers from August, it could
Speaker 1: have been up to fifteen thousand children hospitalized. And remember
Speaker 1: that we try not to hospitalize children. That's only when
Speaker 1: they are extremely ill. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Already by July of twenty twenty five, the food system
Speaker 1: that had existed in Gaza had collapsed. And I think,
Speaker 1: obviously the it is an understatement to say that the
Speaker 1: history of the conflict of Palestine in Israel goes back
Speaker 1: farther than I am going to get into. We don't
Speaker 1: need to get deep into the scope of that conflict,
Speaker 1: but we do need to understand a little bit of
Speaker 1: the context just prior to this, and that is that
Speaker 1: since at least two thousand and seven, the Gaza strip
Speaker 1: was already under a blockade in which Israel had essentially
Speaker 1: all of the borders of Gaza Strip restricted. There was
Speaker 1: restrictions and total control on importations into Gaza Strip that
Speaker 1: included food, medicine, gas, all supplies and.
Speaker 2: Under control above somebody else that yeah.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, exactly, And that was already in place for
Speaker 1: you know, the last sixteen years prior to this, in
Speaker 1: part because of those importation restrictions and because of how
Speaker 1: densely populated Gaza Strip is. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: densely populated areas in the world. There's an estimated two
Speaker 1: point one to two point three million residents. There's maps
Speaker 1: if you haven't looked at like what the size of
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip is compared to other major cities, but I
Speaker 1: have a link to a maps online. But in part
Speaker 1: because of how densely populated this region was and is,
Speaker 1: and because of these controls on importations, residents in Gaza
Speaker 1: prior to this current conflict primarily relied on imported food,
Speaker 1: and there was already a very high prevalence of malnutrition.
Speaker 1: An estimated ninety percent of preschoolers were not getting adequate
Speaker 1: daily energy intake. Ninety percent was the numbers that I saw.
Speaker 1: And this is most of this data is coming from
Speaker 1: very recent reports, but that was actually from an article
Speaker 1: in a peer reviewed journal, so it was like a
Speaker 1: not just a news article. And before these last two years,
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of the people living in Gaza depended
Speaker 1: on UN food assistance. So that is similar to how
Speaker 1: I said that in Sudan there was a i'd spread
Speaker 1: prevalence of malnutrition prior to this. The same was true
Speaker 1: in Gaza, right, And that's an important context to understand
Speaker 1: the current situation and how things got so severe so quickly.
Speaker 1: It also is the case that prior to this conflict,
Speaker 1: residents of Gaza had access to about twenty one liters
Speaker 1: of drinking water per person per day, which is a
Speaker 1: little more than what the World Health Organization recommends should
Speaker 1: be provided to everyone in emergency situations, but is not
Speaker 1: enough to be able to engage in things like agriculture, sanitation, cleaning.
Speaker 1: All of that you need upwards of seventy plus leaders
Speaker 1: per person per day. But despite all of that, prior
Speaker 1: to this, there was still domestic production of things like eggs, fish, meat, oils.
Speaker 1: Right now, there is no capacity for domestic production, so
Speaker 1: Gaza is entirely dependent on outside food. Much of the
Speaker 1: cropland over ninety percent of it was damaged and only
Speaker 1: one point five five percent of it is actually undamaged
Speaker 1: and also accessible. And all of the animals that were
Speaker 1: used for food sheep, cattle, goats, poultry, like the statistics
Speaker 1: on how many of them have survived is horrific. And
Speaker 1: fishing has also been severely restricted because access to coastal
Speaker 1: areas is very restricted right now. So from March till
Speaker 1: May there was actually no food at all that entered Gaza,
Speaker 1: and since that time the amount has fallen far short
Speaker 1: of the bare minimum that is required to keep people alive.
Speaker 1: And as we discussed both last week and this week,
Speaker 1: when someone has been under conditions of extreme malnutrition for
Speaker 1: a long time, their body needs more in order to
Speaker 1: make up for that difference. So even the bare minimum
Speaker 1: would not be sufficient at this time, and we're not
Speaker 1: even getting that at least as of September twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: And in the face of such desperate conditions, there have
Speaker 1: been more and more instances of the few times that
Speaker 1: food has been allowed in that food is not necessarily
Speaker 1: even making it to much of the population because there
Speaker 1: has been either intercepting or in many cases violence including
Speaker 1: from Israeli forces at these food distribution sites. There have
Speaker 1: actually been two three hundred and thirty nine fatalities among
Speaker 1: aid seekers people trying to get food at militarized distribution
Speaker 1: sites just since May of this year. And even in
Speaker 1: the cases where food is available, prices have risen exponentially.
Speaker 1: And when you combine that with the fact that almost
Speaker 1: the entire population of Gaza has been displaced multiple times,
Speaker 1: many of them have no ability to work, they cannot
Speaker 1: access that food. There has also been limitations on access
Speaker 1: to water, to cooking gas, to utensils, and many of
Speaker 1: the humanitarian aid food packages that have been delivered are
Speaker 1: composed of foods that you have to cook in order
Speaker 1: to make edible, right rice. Yeah, so yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: saying that the situation is die or doesn't quite honestly,
Speaker 1: saying that it is famine doesn't even quite get at
Speaker 1: the real truth of the situation, right. And like you mentioned, Aaron,
Speaker 1: the debts due to starvation are a very small part
Speaker 1: of what we are seeing. And yet at least three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one human beings three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: one Palestinians have died due to malnutrition and starvation alone,
Speaker 1: including one hundred and thirty children as of September tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. I will also point out that that
Speaker 1: number is over one hundred more people than the estimate
Speaker 1: I saw from August, and that does not capture the
Speaker 1: that starvation has on the body.
Speaker 2: And the other huge.
Speaker 1: Complicating factor in Gaza specifically has been the intentional targeting
Speaker 1: of the healthcare infrastructure. Ninety four percent of hospitals have
Speaker 1: been damaged or destroyed. Medical supplies were also withheld and
Speaker 1: not able to cross borders for many months, and they
Speaker 1: are still in short supply. So even as the food
Speaker 1: situation may improve, hopefully we don't know yet, there is
Speaker 1: still a very real risk of refeeding syndrome for so
Speaker 1: many people, especially kids in Gaza, given how long they
Speaker 1: have been subject to under nutrition and the fact that
Speaker 1: we have limited hospital availability to treat them.
Speaker 2: It's yeah.
Speaker 1: And if anything, like you mentioned, Aaron, the current genocide
Speaker 1: happening in Gaza, the conflict that is raging across Sudan,
Speaker 1: spreading into South Sudan, food insecurity across so much of
Speaker 1: this glow, it is very likely that things will get worse.
Speaker 1: Given that the US has dismantled USAID, which used to
Speaker 1: provide quite a lot of humanitarian relief, and not just
Speaker 1: in times of conflict, but we have seen other disasters
Speaker 1: in recent months, like the earthquake in Afghanistan. There was
Speaker 1: a recent landslide in Sudan which barely got reported on.
Speaker 1: There was an earthquake in meand Mar. There's a very
Speaker 1: long list of places where aid is just not making
Speaker 1: it in. And it's not just funding cuts. It's also
Speaker 1: the dismantling of the capacity building that had existed to
Speaker 1: be able to do the kind of humanitarian work that
Speaker 1: is needed well.
Speaker 2: And I think that the other thing too, is that
Speaker 2: the ultimate goal of many of these aid organizations is
Speaker 2: to create infrastructure so that it's not an emergency response
Speaker 2: situation time and time again, and that you can actually
Speaker 2: prevent emergencies before they happen. And yeah, the dismantling of
Speaker 2: USAID has been so devastating. People are dying, like it's
Speaker 2: I just yeah, it's a yeah.
Speaker 1: I am amazed at all of the incredible people who
Speaker 1: are out there doing the work, doing the humanitarian work,
Speaker 1: working with Doctors Without Borders, working with World Central Kitchen
Speaker 1: and the World Food Program, and so many.
Speaker 2: Others reporting on this, letting the rest of us. I
Speaker 2: mean this is because this is the type of these
Speaker 2: famines in general are often because they are man made, silenced,
Speaker 2: and so the people who are risking their lives to
Speaker 2: deliver aid in whatever capacity and to let the rest
Speaker 2: of the world know is just it can't it's it's unbelievable. Yeah, So, if.
Speaker 1: You would like to read a lot more about the
Speaker 1: history of famines and also the current situation that is
Speaker 1: ongoing across the world, but especially in Sudan and Gaza,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of sources for you, because we
Speaker 1: did not come up with this on our own.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean yes, I have. I have
Speaker 2: a bunch of books that I shouted out at the beginning.
Speaker 2: I'm going to shout out again. Alex Da Wall's Mass Starvation,
Speaker 2: The History and Future of Famine, published in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: another paper published in twenty twenty four. More recently, The
Speaker 2: History and Future of Famine, also by alex Da Wall,
Speaker 2: then by Tizanos Fasquez. Why do Famine still occur in
Speaker 2: the twenty first century? A Review on the Causes of
Speaker 2: extreme food Insecurity published twenty twenty five and published in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. Vaserman and Lushchek Prenatal Famine Exposure and
Speaker 2: Adult Health Outcomes and Epigenetic link just to kind of
Speaker 2: trace the generational trauma that famines can cause. And also
Speaker 2: the IPC website has incredible resources infographics. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is just a wealth of information. I've linked to a
Speaker 2: few infographics specifically, but there's plenty more there.
Speaker 1: I also have the link to the two most recent
Speaker 1: IPC reports that I was quoting from, so the one
Speaker 1: from August twenty twenty five that was the Famine Review
Speaker 1: Committee's report on the Gaza Strip, and then the one
Speaker 1: from December twenty twenty four that was the Famine Reviews
Speaker 1: Committee on Sudan. There's a few other ones as well too,
Speaker 1: and I also have a bunch of World Health Organization
Speaker 1: public Health situation analysis reports as well, where I got
Speaker 1: a lot of those numbers from, as well as UN
Speaker 1: news reports. I also because I usually try and rely
Speaker 1: on peer review journal articles, which are hard to find
Speaker 1: when things are ongoing, but I did find at least
Speaker 1: a few. There was one that I really enjoyed that
Speaker 1: was published of course this year, in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: by hasun at All from Sustainable Futures that was titled
Speaker 1: the Implications of the Ongoing War on Gaza for Food Sustainability,
Speaker 1: and there were several others, so we will as always
Speaker 1: post the link to our sources on our website, This
Speaker 1: podcast will Kill You dot Com.
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