Forty years on from Ethiopia’s catastrophic famine, progress has slid into reverse
A mother holds her baby in a camp for displaced people, South Sudan | Image by: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo
4 min read
Experts warn the situation in Sudan is shaping up to be the worst humanitarian disaster in history – right now in the 21st century
Forty years ago last month, on 23 October 1984, BBC TV News led with Michael Buerk’s now famous broadcast from northern Ethiopia alerting the world to a catastrophic famine. I was 14 years old when I watched that report and it caught my attention like no other news item has since. His haunting opening words are as vivid to me today as they were then: “Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside of Korem, it lights up a biblical famine now in the 20th century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth.”
A few months later, aged 15, I ran away from home and managed to get myself to Ethiopia, thinking that somehow, simply by the passion of my desire to do something, I could make a difference. Unsurprisingly, in Ethiopia I rapidly discovered that an unskilled 15-year-old was not an effective agent of change. But I never forgot what I learned there.
Thankfully, due to sustained media attention and popular demand for action driven by Bob Geldof and others, the United Kingdom and the world were shaken into action. In the decades that followed, remarkable success was achieved in reducing global malnutrition and hunger, with the proportion of people suffering from severe hunger almost halving between 1990 and 2015.
But now that progress has slid into reverse. Today, as famine takes hold in Sudan, the world must wake up again. Half of Sudan’s population of 24.8 million is suffering from severe hunger – 13.6 million people whose plight is being largely ignored.
In our food-abundant nation, it is hard to imagine the horror of dying from starvation. Yet every day in Sudan hundreds of civilians are perishing from lack of food. Experts warn the situation is shaping up to be the worst humanitarian disaster in history – right now in the 21st century.
Starvation is wielded as a weapon of war in the country, with fighting parties obstructing aid delivery and forcing millions of people to flee their homes.
Today, as famine takes hold in Sudan, the world must wake up again
The UK needs to redouble its efforts with its international partners to secure humanitarian access and bring an end to the fighting. As the ‘pen holder’ on Sudan at the United Nations, the UK has a special responsibility to make resolving this conflict an international priority.
In the meantime, the UK must increase its aid efforts and support local agencies on the ground that can get aid where needed. This will involve overcoming bureaucratic obstacles and accepting a degree of risk, but if it is the only way to gain access these risks are worth taking.
It is imperative to prevent people dying now, and a generation of children from experiencing lifelong physical and cognitive damage caused by severe malnutrition, which is an entirely preventable condition.
Acting to tackle malnutrition and hunger is not only the right thing to do but also in our self interest. The geopolitical implications of an ever-hungrier world cannot be overstated. Hunger drives instability, conflict, and migration, and threatens global security.
The crisis in Ethiopia profoundly shaped my life. It started my interest in international development and politics, and led me to the role I have today as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition & Hunger, a cross-party and cross-sector alliance of leaders united in the belief no child should die of malnutrition.
Over the past four decades, I have learned that when the world acts in partnership and with determination, positive change can and does happen. Leaders must step up now so that in 40 years we will not look back and ask how the worst humanitarian disaster in memory was allowed to unfold on our watch.
Lord Oates is a Liberal Democrat peer
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