Famines are caused by politicians
Famine used to be one of the world’s most effective killers.
A tenth of England’s population died in the Great Famine of 1315. In the 17th century starvation wiped out a third of the population of Poland, a tenth of all Scots and a third of all Finns. A million people died in the Irish famine which began in 1845. Between 108 BC and 1911 there were 1828 famines in China alone.
Every successive century brought a decline in the incidence of famine but 70 million still starved to death during the 20th century. Then, at the start of the 21st century, famine seemed to be disappearing. There have been no reports of famine since 2012 but now, alas, famine is back.
Earlier this month a United Nations report suggested that 20 million people in South Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia were at imminent risk. On Monday last week, the UN declared a state of famine in South Sudan, and Somalia is on the verge for the first time since 2011, when 260,000 lives were lost. People are going days without food. They are feeding their livestock on cardboard. There are 50,000 children facing death by starvation.
In South Sudan, 4.9 million people – 40 per cent of the population – are in urgent need of food. A quarter of a million children are already terribly malnourished and close to death. Medication and water supplies are also running dangerously low.
Somalia is in the midst of its worst drought since 1950 and the harvest has failed for the fourth successive time. That is not, though, the reason for its famine.
South Sudan, a country with highly fertile land, has even less of an excuse. The failure is not natural; it is political.
It is perfectly possible to feed the people of Somalia, notwithstanding the drought. There is no need for a humanitarian disaster in South Sudan. The problem in both cases is dismal government.
Since 2013 the people of South Sudan, at six years old the world’s newest nation, have been subject to a civil war along ethnic lines in which 300,000 people have died and 2.3 million have been displaced. An internationally brokered ceasefire failed and violence devastated food production. The annual inflation rate for food is 800 per cent.
With catastrophe battering down the door, President Kiir’s government has been blocking food aid to those areas of the country which back his former deputy and ethnic rival, Riek Machar. There is only so much that humanitarian assistance can do to combat fatal political malevolence of this kind.
Somalia collapsed into anarchy after the military regime of President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. The two northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland broke away and the capital Mogadishu was seized by a coalition of Islamists. An internally backed government has been trying to restore stability but, with none of the institutions of a functioning state, so far to no avail.
The pattern recurs whenever famine strikes. The Soviet experiment in the Ukraine in 1932, Mao’s collectivism in China in 1958, the best work of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after 1975 and the neglect of the North Korean government in the mid-1990s all condemned vast swathes of their populations to starvation.
The decline in the incidence of famine has been accompanied by a growth in political regimes answerable to their people. Democracies have early warning systems. A vigilant opposition and a free press alerts the nation to the news and elected politicians have to respond. India is still a poor country but, since democracy in 1947, it has avoided famine which was common during the last years of British rule.
Famines are not a sign of God’s displeasure, the inevitable result of too much breeding or a phenomenon of the elements, impossible to avoid even if hard to bear. Famines are man-made political disasters. We know how to stop famine. Today money; tomorrow democracy. But today money.
The Times