Tag: Humanitarian crises

FEWS Net or famine alert!

At the Gharb Al Matta displacement site, in Kassala (Sudan), the World Food Programme is conducting a two-day distribution – February 2025 – Photo: OCHA ©Giles Clarke.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) was created in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

It was born in a context marked by severe famines, with a clear objective: to develop tools capable of understanding, analyzing, and anticipating food insecurity phenomena.

Forty years later, FEWS NET has become a pioneering actor and a global reference in the analysis of food crises. Its central role is to provide decision-makers and humanitarian organizations with reliable information, enabling the prevention of famines and the rapid adaptation of responses.

To do this, the network collects and analyzes a wide range of data—climatic, agricultural, economic, and nutritional—which it organizes through a rigorous methodology called scenario development. This forward-looking approach unfolds in eight successive steps :

  1. Define the scenario parameters: specify the period and geographical area studied.
  2. Describe and classify the current food situation: establish a reference diagnosis.
  3. Develop key assumptions: anticipate the evolution of major factors (climate, markets, conflicts, etc.).
  4. Analyze the impact on household income sources.
  5. Analyze the impact on household food sources.
  6. Describe and classify projected food security at the household level.
  7. Describe and classify projected food security at the area level.
  8. Identify events that could alter the scenario (climatic shocks, political instability, epidemics, etc.).

Thanks to this approach, FEWS NET is able to produce reliable estimates up to six months, or even a year in advance, integrating multiple factors: climatic and weather conditions, conflicts, markets, agricultural production, and trade.

These analyses are published in the form of reports, vulnerability maps, and projections, which support policy-makers and help humanitarian actors on the ground implement targeted interventions.

In 2025, the network celebrates its 40th anniversary, confirming its crucial role in the fight against global food insecurity.

GAZA :

The FEWS NET report of August 22, 2025, is an essential tool for assessing the severity of the food crisis in the Gaza Strip and anticipating its evolution. It relies on the international IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) scale, which classifies food insecurity into five phases. Phase 5, corresponding to famine, is characterized by the combination of three indicators: extreme hunger, acute malnutrition, and high mortality. According to the report, this phase is already observed in the Gaza governorate, and probably in North Gaza, where populations have crossed all critical thresholds.

UNICEF ©Mohammed Nateel – A child waits in line to receive water in Gaza.

Situation in North Gaza (~1.06 million people)

In this region, the food crisis is worsened by 22 months of conflict, massive displacements, and the near-total destruction of essential infrastructure. Surveys indicate that 28 to 36% of households are experiencing catastrophic hunger, exceeding the famine threshold. Levels of acute malnutrition among children have crossed the critical 15% threshold, with admissions to treatment centers more than doubling between June and July 2025. Mortality related to hunger and disease is also considered likely to be above the IPC Phase 5 threshold (≥2 deaths per 10,000 people/day). Food aid entry remains extremely limited, bakeries are closed, and community kitchens reach only 10% of the population, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without regular access to food.

Situation in South Gaza (~1.04 million people)

The governorates of Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah are experiencing a situation close to famine, worsened by repeated displacements of over a million people, the collapse of livelihoods, and limited access to food resources. Between May and July 2025, extreme hunger tripled in Deir al-Balah and increased by 50% in Khan Younis, while 22 to 33% of households are in a critical food situation. More than 700 deaths related to food aid were recorded in July, including 390 in the south. Food prices have skyrocketed, with flour costing 200–300 NIS/kg, a 5,000% increase compared to the pre-conflict period. Acute malnutrition among children has doubled since May, reaching up to 12% in some areas. Access to water, sanitation, and healthcare has nearly collapsed, with only six hospitals operational and medical stocks largely depleted. According to projections, mortality related to hunger and disease is expected to cross the IPC Phase 5 threshold by the end of September 2025.

Perspectives :

The FEWS NET report for August confirms that famine is already effective in North Gaza and was imminent in the south. The three criteria of Phase 5—extreme hunger, acute malnutrition, and mortality—are reached or about to be reached in several governorates. Without massive, regular, and secure humanitarian intervention, including food, safe water, and medical care, large-scale human losses are inevitable. The scale of the crisis underscores the urgency of strengthening humanitarian access and coordinating a response to prevent widespread health and food collapse.

©IPC – Projection of the malnutrition situation in the Gaza Strip between July 1, 2025, and September 30, 2025

News :

Since the publication of the report in August, the situation has taken a new dimension. In September, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, created in 2021 by the Human Rights Council, concluded that a genocide is underway in the Gaza Strip, committed by Israel. According to the Commission, Israel is responsible for four of the five constituent acts of genocide, as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Among them is the intentional subjection of a group to conditions of existence calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part. The famine, orchestrated by Israeli authorities through the blockade of access to food and nutrition, directly illustrates this category.

Funding :

The return of FEWS NET, the world’s leading early warning system for famine, raises as much hope as questions. Suspended for nearly a year due to USAID budget cuts and the reorientation of American foreign aid priorities, this system left a critical gap in the collection and analysis of food security data, depriving humanitarian actors of an essential tool to anticipate and respond to crises. Its redeployment, alongside the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), should strengthen the detection and forecasting of famine situations in fragile contexts such as Gaza, Sudan, or Haiti.

However, while FEWS NET provides real-time technical expertise and independent projections, its effectiveness remains conditioned on the ability of international aid to be deployed concretely. Yet, in a context of massive cuts to humanitarian funding, both in the United States and globally, the central question remains: even with precise and early diagnosis, will vital resources reach the populations most at risk ?

©PAM – In the western desert town of Dinsoor, drought victims rush to receive food distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme.

Esther de Montchalin

Esther de Montchalin is a master’s student in Political Science, specializing in Development and Humanitarian Action, at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is currently the assistant to the founder of Solidarités International and Défis Humanitaires, Mr. Alain Boinet.

Particularly interested in global health issues, access to water, and the fight against malnutrition, she dedicates her research to major contemporary humanitarian challenges and the difficulties faced by vulnerable populations in crisis contexts.

Don’t shoot the humanitarian ambulance !

Heavy rains flood the UNHCR transit centre in Renk, Upper Nile State, South Sudan. The centre receives thousands of people who have fled the conflict in Sudan, the majority of whom are South Sudanese returnees. ©UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

There are now 120 million refugees and forcibly displaced people in the world, i.e. one person in 69, representing 1.5% of the world’s population, according to the UNHCR!

In 2002, there were 32.9 million.

In 2012, there were 45.2 million.

In 2017, there were 68.5 million.

In 2021, there will be 89.3 million people forced into exile by war and disaster.

At this rate, how many will there be tomorrow?

If we consider some of the major trends at work on our planet – extreme poverty, disasters, conflict – and if we just want to be realistic, there is an urgent need to prepare to help a growing number of victims of war, disasters and epidemics.

The humanitarian raison d’être is to save lives. Current wars, such as those in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, are characterised by their intensity, their multiplication and their duration, and they mainly affect civilian populations, feeding the ever-increasing flow of forcibly displaced people and refugees.

This thermometer of global fever is a key indicator of both human suffering and the destabilising effects of the domino effect, ultimately washing up on the beaches of the English Channel or the Mediterranean.

If this is an urgent humanitarian issue, it is also a political issue that cannot be satisfied with failure!

Russia’s attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 led to the questioning of borders by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is an example that will inspire others. Azerbaijan did just that when it forcibly expelled 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023.

This is the risk now facing Georgia, having already lost South Ossetia and Abkhasia. Hamas’s murderous attack on the Israeli population on 7 October triggered a war whose terrifying consequences for the Palestinian civilian population are frightening to contemplate.

Globalisation has given way to a multipolar world in which values, interests and fierce competition are at odds.

And yet, at a time when humanitarian aid is being called on from all sides by a growing number of crises and victims, it is increasingly being asked to do everything, even though financial resources are cruelly lacking and access to populations in danger is becoming more difficult and dangerous.

MSF nurse Anastasia Prudnikova looks after a war-wounded man on board a medical train on the journey from Pokrovsk in the east to Lviv in the west. Ukraine, May 2022. © ANDRII OVOD

The proof? This year, the United Nations, with OCHA and its partners, identified 300 million human beings in danger to be helped. As a result, only 180 million have been selected as worthy of aid. And we’re not even sure we’ll get there, because at the time of writing, at least 80% of the essential funding is still missing, i.e. a total of 46.4 billion dollars this year. And what will become of the 120 million people who have been turned down? Who cares?

Isn’t that simply disgraceful in a world with a market capitalisation of around 95,000 billion?

So let’s put it bluntly. If humanitarian aid is an insurance policy for every life in danger, it is also a vital insurance policy for everyone. Less humanitarian action means more forced displacement, more despair, more radicalisation, more massive and uncontrolled migratory movements, and more hotbeds of conflict that risk exploding in their turn.

At a time when the old empires are aspiring to become empires again, when nations want to protect themselves, clear-sightedness and experience teach us that at the start of the 21st century there are global risks such as climate change, the water crisis (pollution, overexploitation, flooding, drought), the demographic explosion in Africa and the return of war which, even if we favour the “every man for himself” rule to protect ourselves, mean that we have to face up to them and find solutions for everyone that no one can find alone.

Somali refugees and locals dance during World Refugee Day celebrations in Mirqaan, Ethiopia, in June 2023. © UNHCR/Diana Diaz

This does not call into question the democratic legitimacy that peoples and nations give themselves, but it should lead them to contribute to humanitarian life insurance for everyone. And, to take the logic to its logical conclusion, wouldn’t that be fair to all possible regimes responsible for their populations?

Here, the ethic of conviction meets the ethic of responsibility. So let’s not shoot the humanitarian ambulance.

Thank you for your support for Défis Humanitaires (faireundon).

Alain Boinet.

PS1/ If you have an example of positive humanitarian action, you can send us your testimonial which we will publish or use in a future article. We look forward to hearing from you. Send to: contact@defishumanitaires.com

PS2/ Défis Humanitaires would like to thank the authors of the articles and interviews published in this issue as part of our editorial policy, without our magazine endorsing all the points of view expressed.