Explainer: What (and when) is a famine?
Aug 27, 2025
Last week, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification officially confirmed a famine in Gaza. The report confirms famine in Gaza Governorate, and added that this threshold could be crossed in the nearby Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governorates by the end of September.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza has been closely monitored for nearly two years, so why is it only now that famine has been confirmed? And what does that word actually mean?
“Famine” gets used a lot as a word. In the world of humanitarian aid, it has a specific meaning and use cases. Here, we go into what a famine is, who confirms it, how it’s measured — and why one word can’t give us the whole story of our global hunger crisis.
What is a famine?
Famines take place when a substantial percentage of a country, territory, or region’s population are unable to get sufficient food. It represents the highest-possible levels of hunger and malnutrition in an area.
Without adequate food and nutrition security, the effects of hunger begin to accumulate, leading to high levels of acute malnutrition, other disease outbreaks facilitated by weakened immune systems, and death.
When is the famine threshold crossed? And who keeps track of that?
There are three criteria that determine a famine:
- 20% of a population are suffering extreme food shortages
- 30% of children under the age of 5 are suffering acute malnutrition
- The death rate of an area has doubled, or two people (or four children) out of every 10,000 people die each day
Famine can take place across an entire country, be more localized, or even cross international borders. It’s up to individual governments to confirm the beginning (and the end) of a famine. This can be especially difficult in many of the world’s hungriest countries — aka, the countries most likely to experience a famine — since these are also areas where there is often a lack of infrastructure. Governments often don’t have the resources to track food shortages, child malnutrition, or fatality rates.
Another organization that helps out with this monitoring is one we mentioned above: the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). This initiative, designed by the UN and comprising 21 global partners (including NGOs and inter-governmental organizations) measures food insecurity levels around the world.
The IPC tracks hunger levels on a five-phase scale ranging from minimal food insecurity to catastrophic levels of hunger. You may hear about people in a food crisis being classified as IPC Phase 3 or IPC Phase 5. Phase 5 is famine, or famine-like conditions.
What causes famine?
Many of the same causes of hunger also contribute to a famine. The World Food Program lists five in particular:
- High food prices
- Natural disasters
- Climate change
- Lack of humanitarian access
- Conflict
Looking at the above, you may notice that some of these causes are connected. These intersectionalities are one of the biggest reasons that a hunger crisis becomes a famine.
In these situations, there is never an easy fix. The WFP also points out that these causes of famine (unlike some causes of hunger) are largely man-made, meaning that we can control the outcomes at a high-enough level. But this often requires international diplomacy, cooperation, and compromise.
What famines are happening today?
The famine in Gaza is the latest to be confirmed, with 640,000 people expected to face catastrophic levels of hunger between now and the end of September. (That’s roughly 32% of the population of the Gaza strip.) The IPC also estimates that 132,000 children under the age of five are under threat between now and next June.
Last year, famine was also confirmed in Sudan, as a result of the country’s ongoing conflict. The IPC’s Famine Review Committee reported on five areas experiencing the conditions already and projected that five additional areas would cross the threshold by the first half of 2025, leaving half of the country’s population (24.6 million people) facing high levels of acute food insecurity.
In the last 15 years, three other famines have been confirmed: Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in both 2017 and 2020.
What are the effects of famine?
Famine is more than just hunger. Its effects are further reaching, and last long after it’s over. People who die during a famine often don’t die from starvation. They die from diseases that take advantage of their immune system’s vulnerability after it’s weakened by malnutrition.
Survivors are also likely to have long-term effects as well, including hypertension, type-2 diabetes, and mental health effects. Children who survive a famine are at especially high risk for stunting, which impacts body and brain development. Stunting often leaves children vulnerable to a lifetime of health issues as well as lower intellectual attainment.
The health effects of famine can also carry on for generations, especially as malnutrition affects maternal and child health. Recent research conducted at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health showed that the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 has led to intergenerational transmissions of tuberculosis still traceable today.
How can we prevent famine?
Famine response is often an expensive and involved process, including multisector support to restore communities on several fronts (livelihoods, health, nutrition, infrastructure), political action in the case of conflict-related famine, and humanitarian funding and access.
But the most effective strategy for famine response is prevention, which we do most effectively through early warning and early action (EWEA) systems.
Early warning saved Somalia from another famine in 2017. During the 2011-12 famine in the country, precious lead time was lost while organizations waited to understand the full picture of need and risks. EWEA was developed in response to that loss, and formed the foundation of Concern’s Building Resilient Communities in Somalia project (BRCiS).
Instead of responding to the emergency based on 100% certainty, we began to respond based on the probability of a disaster. This follows the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
We put this system into action in 2016, when there were early signs that rains in Somalia would fail the following season. BRCiS team members began providing additional monthly cash transfers to the most vulnerable families in the region. When the rains in 2017 did indeed fail, we increased the cash transfers by 30% and expanded them to twice the number of families, and continued this into 2018.
The rains failed, and crops along with them. However, markets continued to function and food remained available for purchase. No famine took place in Somalia that year.
Concern’s work to end hunger
From Afghanistan to Yemen, Concern’s Health and Nutrition programs are designed to address the specific, intersectional causes of hunger and malnutrition in each specific context. Our projects often combine two or more of the following areas of focus: agriculture and climate response, maternal and child health, education, livelihoods, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).
We played a key role in developing Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), which has been recognized by the World Food Program as the gold standard for treating malnutrition. Other recent successes, like Lifesaving Education and Assistance to Farmers (LEAF) have seen entire communities not needing humanitarian food aid for the first time in decades due to holistic and systemic shifts in agricultural practices and community care.
Last year alone, Concern reached 9 million people with health and nutrition programs in 21 countries. Your support can help us to do even more in the year ahead.
