This is excerpted from an "UN News" article initially published in March 2024:

Amid growing global concerns over alarming hunger spikes in conflict-affected communities and talk of intensifying levels of food insecurity possibly leading to famine, we looked into how – and when – a famine is classified.

World Food Programme (WFP) chief economist Arif Husain walked UN News through the process.

What is the threshold for famine?

Famine is essentially a technical term, referring to a population that faces widespread malnutrition and hunger-related deaths due to a lack of access to food. 

“We say there is a famine when three conditions come together in a specific geographic area, whether a town, village, city, even a country,” WFP’s Mr. Husain explained.

  • At least 20 per cent of the population in that particular area are facing extreme levels of hunger;

  • 30 per cent of the children in the same place are wasted, or too thin for their height; and

  • The death – or mortality – rate has doubled, from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.

“You can clearly see that in a way, famine is admission of collective failure,” he said. “We should act way before the famine, so people don’t starve, children are not wasted and people don’t die of hunger-related causes.”

How is hunger tracked?

Famines today are different than those experienced in the 1970s or 1980s, when drought was the main driver in Ethiopia and other nations, Mr. Husain told UN News, adding that years ago, when a famine occurred, “we could say, ‘I’m sorry. I did not know. If I had known, I would have done something about it.’”

“Today, we see crises in real time, so we cannot say we did not know,” he explained. “The onus is much higher today than it has ever been before.”

Climate-related food insecurity is now closely monitored thanks to a detailed tracking system used by international humanitarian agencies wherever they work, and today, famines or risks of one developing are now largely driven by conflict.

In the 21st century, climate-related famines have largely been averted thanks to an innovative tool to track acute hunger, developed during the crisis in Somalia in 2004 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and now used by humanitarian agencies worldwide.

This initiative is called the Integrated Security Phase Classification.

Learn More: