U.S. famine alert network freezes, then unfreezes, 3 nations : NPR

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The U.S. government has long maintained a critical early warning system which looks at the risk of starvation all around the world. Aid organizations and governments rely on it to prepare for and respond to famines. But in August, the Trump administration stopped updating data from three high-risk countries – Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. All three have also seen cuts to U.S. aid. NPR’s Durrie Bouscaren reports.

DURRIE BOUSCAREN, BYLINE: In early August, Jeremy Konyndyk was sitting on a flight to Somalia when he did what any good aid worker would do. He took out his phone and checked the country’s profile on the Famine Early Warning System, FEWS NET.

JEREMY KONYNDYK: I was, like, reading this stuff on the plane on the flight over, and I thought, that’s weird. Why isn’t there anything since June?

BOUSCAREN: FEWS NET pulls in crop reports, market data and satellite information to create hyperlocalized data that tracks and predicts hunger emergencies across the globe.

KONYNDYK: If a major food crisis is coming, FEWS NET can reliably anticipate that six to nine months out.

BOUSCAREN: That window allows governments and aid groups to get shipments where they need to be. But that data is now out of date.

KONYNDYK: If you go today to the FEWS NET website and you open up the East Africa regional page, Somalia is just grayed out.

BOUSCAREN: But when he landed in Mogadishu, the reality soon became clear.

KONYNDYK: We heard of children coming so late to some of the malnutrition stabilization centers that they were dying soon after admission.

BOUSCAREN: Years of drought have pushed Somalia to the brink of famine. The U.N. estimates that more than 6.5 million people are facing acute food insecurity. But in January, the U.S. suspended nearly all aid to Somalia after claiming that Somali officials seized food aid and destroyed a U.S.-funded warehouse.

KONYNDYK: If they allow FEWS NET to continue reporting, then they’re basically documenting the damage of their own decisions, and I think that’s what they don’t want.

BOUSCAREN: In a statement to NPR, the State Department said that FEWS NET’s reporting for specific countries has increased or decreased based on shifts in needs, policy priorities and other factors. Several aid organizations spoke out against the pause in reporting. The State Department told NPR today that FEWS NET will reinstate its reports on Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen in September.

MICHELLE JURKOVICH: As an expert in the field, I don’t have any other indicators that are national in scope of the same quality.

BOUSCAREN: Michelle Jurkovich, an expert on food aid policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, says these U.N. sources also use FEWS NET data.

JURKOVICH: And if governments are allowed to put their thumb on the scale of these systems to influence their projections, the system itself loses its credibility.

BOUSCAREN: The Trump administration suspended FEWS NET entirely for six months after taking office as part of its freeze on all U.S. foreign aid. Colin Thomas-Jensen of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative says not having data for any high-risk place makes it more dangerous for aid groups to work.

COLIN THOMAS-JENSEN: If you can’t get to the place, you can’t deliver the food.

BOUSCAREN: Thomas-Jensen was a senior adviser to USAID in 2024, when FEWS NET reports played a critical role in helping organize airdrops of food into Sudan’s Nuba Mountains.

THOMAS-JENSEN: The livelihoods for tens of millions of people – what people have relied upon for decades, centuries even, to put food on the table – those livelihoods are collapsing because of climate change, less rain, less places for cattle to graze.

BOUSCAREN: And with a record El Nino year expected, he fears that these crises will only worsen. Durrie Bouscaren, NPR News, Washington.

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