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In this August photo, aid is distributed to Sudanese people in Ombada who returned after being displaced by the ongoing civil war. As hunger continues to grow, a world body has declared that famine exists in Sudan.

Ebrahim Hamid/AFP/via Getty Images

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Ebrahim Hamid/AFP/via Getty Images

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

Previously, the IPC confirmed catastrophic famine conditions in Somalia in 2011 and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020.

So why official declarations of famine – meaning there is evidence of widespread famine, widespread disease and widespread mortality – so rare?

NPR spoke with two people who work within the network of government officials, aid workers and analysts monitoring the world’s food crises.

Here are five takeaways:

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

The system the world relies on to track food emergencies began in the 1980s, said Tim Hoffine, now deputy head of the Party-Innovation at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). In response to famines in East and West Africa, U.S. aid officials realized the need to find a way to monitor world hunger. The goal, Hoffine said, was to provide “independent, timely, evidence-based analysis” to help policymakers prevent future famines.

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

Yet there was no universal standard for defining the severity of food crises, making coordination between donors and aid groups difficult.

As former World Food Program spokesperson Steve Taravella said, “There is a real 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 reference.” »

Thus, in 2004, during a food crisis in Somalia, FEWS NET and its international partners developed the “Integrated Food Security Phase Classification” – or IPC – initiative.

“It’s humanitarian jargon,” Taravella said, “but it’s essentially an authoritative and 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 expert working groups to analyze each crisis individually.

“Donors wanted a single estimate of needs,” Hoffine said. “And the IPC responded to that desire for consensus.”

Several conditions must be met before a location is technically considered “starvation”

The IPC classifies hunger according to a five-stage scale. FEWS NET, which monitors hunger hotspots monthly, also uses this system.

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

In phase three – “crisis” – “that’s where we start to get nervous,” Taravella said. People are starting to have trouble getting enough food. “They may not eat their meals as often.” Many turn to short-term coping strategies that compromise long-term survival, such as selling livestock.

In phase four – “emergency” – the difficulties worsen. Dietary gaps are widening and people are resorting to “really extreme forms of coping,” Hoffine said. This could mean liquidating almost all assets or eating seeds needed for future plantings. Rates of acute malnutrition and excess mortality are increasing.

Only during phase five is a location considered to be in “starvation.” Three criteria must be met: at least 20% of households are facing a “catastrophe”, that is to say, explains Hoffine, “an extreme lack of food which (…) leads to acute malnutrition and mortality”.

Second, at least 30% of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting. Third, at least two in 10,000 adults die every day from non-traumatic causes. As Hoffine noted, hunger often kills not only through starvation, but also by weakening the immune system to the point that people can no longer fight off disease.

FEWS NET has placed Gaza in phase four; by May 2025, the IPC estimated that 925,000 Gazans (44%) were already experiencing “emergency” acute food insecurity, close to the famine threshold. Another 244,000 people (12%) are in a “disaster” situation or experiencing famine.

FEWS NET lacks an operational presence in some war-torn areas, posing potential problems for monitoring acute food insecurity, but it says its analysis methods remain consistent with its standard project-wide practices.

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

Parts of Sudan have been declared facing famine conditions since 2024. Parts of South Sudan were declared in famine in 2020 and 2017.

There’s an even higher bar for declaring a famine

Even if FEWS NET or the IPC determine that a location meets all three famine criteria, they cannot 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.

Yet neither FEWS NET nor the IPC are making an official statement. “It is up to government institutions, senior United Nations leaders and other high-level representatives to make a statement on the famine,” Hoffine said.

Famine can occur long before famine is declared

Since all three thresholds must be met to trigger a famine designation, many people could starve well before phase five is reached.

“Until famine thresholds are exceeded, people will continue to die of hunger or hunger-related mortality,” Hoffine explained. “So in Gaza, you could always expect there to be mortality. And the longer this goes on without a solution, the more we can expect that type of mortality to occur.”

It’s not too late, but time is running out

Aid groups say famine can be alleviated if hostilities cease and aid workers are given full access to war-torn areas.

This is the goal of the famine classification system: to alert the world before it is too late. Although higher phase designations do not require action, they are powerful tools for mobilizing a response, Taravella said. “This puts the world on notice.”

He quoted WFP chief economist Arif Husain: “Several years ago, when [famines] When you get to some places, you might say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ Today we see crises in real time. So we can’t say we didn’t know. »