Goats and Soda : NPR

Announcements of famine are relatively rare. But the leading international authority on hunger crises announced this week that regions of war-torn Sudan are facing catastrophic shortages of food, water and medicine, just months after the same inter-agency body – the Integrated Phase Classification of Food Security (IPC) – officially declared famine in Gaza reached catastrophic levels amid the Israeli campaign against Hamas.

The IPC previously confirmed catastrophic famine conditions in Somalia in 2011 and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020.

So why official declarations of famine – does this mean there is documentation of widespread starvation, widespread disease and mass mortality – so rare?

NPR spoke with two people who work in the network of government officials, aid workers and analysts responsible for monitoring hunger crises around the world.

Here are five takeaways:

There is a very specific, internationally agreed upon system for assessing hunger crises.

The system the world uses to track food emergencies dates back to the 1980s, said Tim Hoffin, now deputy director of party innovation at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). In response to famines in East and West Africa, U.S. humanitarian officials recognized the need for a way to monitor global hunger. The goal, Hoffin said, was to provide “independent, timely and science-based analysis” to help decision-makers prevent future hunger.

This led to the creation of FEWS NET in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to contract experts to collect and analyze monthly data on at-risk areas.

However, there was no universal standard for determining the severity of a hunger crisis, making coordination between donors and aid groups difficult.

As former World Food Program spokesman Steve Taravella put it: “There is a serious need for the humanitarian community to understand hunger levels in a scientific and authoritative way… We needed something reliable and authoritative that everyone working on these issues could use as a starting point.”

So in 2004, during the food emergency in Somalia, FEWS NET and international partners developed the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification – or IPC – initiative.

“It’s a bunch of humanitarian jargon,” Taravella said, “but essentially it’s an authoritative, respected scientific mechanism for measuring hunger levels in different regions.”

The IPC is coordinated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, but brings together working groups of experts to analyze each crisis individually.

“Donors wanted a single assessment of needs,” Hoffin said. “And the IPC responded to this desire for consensus.”

Before a location is technically considered “hungry”, several conditions must be met.

The IPC classifies hunger on a five-phase scale. FEWS NET, which tracks hunger hotspots monthly, also uses this system.

The first phase means that conditions are normal. In the second stage, communities are “stressed” – they still eat enough, but many families struggle to afford other essentials.

The third phase—“crisis”—“is where we start to get nervous,” Taravella said. People begin to have problems getting enough food. “They may not eat as often.” Many resort to short-term survival strategies that undermine long-term survival, such as selling off livestock.

At the fourth stage – “extraordinary” – the difficulties get worse. The food gap is widening and people are resorting to “really extreme forms of survival,” Hoffin said. This could mean liquidating almost all assets or consuming seeds needed for future planting. Rates of acute malnutrition and excess mortality are rising.

Only in the fifth phase is the place considered “hungry”. Three criteria must be met: at least 20% of households face a “catastrophe,” which is, as Hoffin explained, “extreme food shortages that… lead to acute malnutrition and mortality.”

Secondly, at least 30% of children under five years of age suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting. Third, at least two out of every 10,000 adults die every day from causes unrelated to injury. As Hoffin noted, hunger often kills not only because of starvation, but also because the immune system is weakened to the point that people are unable to fight off disease.

FEWS NET moved Gaza to stage four; IPC estimates that as of May 2025, 925,000 Gazans (44%) are already experiencing “extreme” acute food insecurity—close to the threshold of famine. Another 244,000 (12%) are in “catastrophe” or experiencing hunger.

FEWS NET does not have an operational presence in some war-torn areas, posing potential challenges for monitoring acute food shortages, but the company says its analysis methods remain consistent with its standard practices throughout the project.

“In conflict zones, collecting reliable data, especially on non-injury deaths, is often difficult,” Jean-Martin Bauer, director of the World Food Program's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Service, told NPR. “This means that a lack of data may prevent official classification of the famine. By the time famine is declared, people are already dying.”

It has been announced that some areas of Sudan will face famine starting in 2024. Famines were declared in parts of South Sudan in 2020 and 2017.

There is an even higher bar for actually declaring a famine.

Even if FEWS NET or IPC determines that a location meets all three hunger criteria, they will not be able to declare it themselves. Their findings must be reviewed and approved by a committee of independent experts convened by the IPC. In the case of Gaza, the committee reviewed and approved similar reports from both organizations.

However, neither FEWS NET nor the IPC have made an official statement. “It's really up to government agencies, senior UN officials and other high-ranking officials to make a statement about the famine,” Hoffin said.

Famine can occur long before famine is declared

Since all three thresholds must be met to trigger fasting status, many people may be fasting long before the fifth phase is reached.

“Until hunger thresholds are met, people will still die from hunger or hunger-related mortality,” Hoffin explained. “So we can still expect deaths in the Gaza Strip. And the longer this goes unaddressed, the more we can expect this type of mortality to occur.”

It's not too late, but time is short

Aid groups say famine can be reduced if fighting stops and aid workers are given full access to war-torn areas.

That's the purpose of the famine classification system: to warn the world before it's too late. While identifying a higher phase does not require action, it is a powerful tool for mobilizing a response, Taravella said. “It brings attention to the world.”

He quoted WFP chief economist Arif Hussein: “A few years ago, when [famines] happened in certain places, you can say, “I’m so sorry.” I didn't know.' Today we are seeing crises in real time. So we can’t say we didn’t know.”