• UN declares Somalia famine in Bakool and Lower Shabelle, July 20, 2011, BBC News: “The United Nations has declared a famine in two areas of southern Somalia as the region suffers the worst drought in more than half a century. The UN said the humanitarian situation in southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle had deteriorated rapidly. It is the first time that the country has seen famine in 19 years. Meanwhile, the UN and US have said aid agencies need further safety guarantees from armed groups in Somalia to allow staff to reach those in need. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group which controls large swathes of south and central Somalia, had imposed a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009, but has recently allowed limited access…”
• Somalis dying in world’s worst famine in 20 years, By Katharine Houreld (AP), July 20, 2011, Denver Post: “Tens of thousands of Somalis are feared dead in the world’s worst famine in a generation, the U.N. said Wednesday, and the U.S. said it will allow emergency funds to be spent in areas controlled by al-Qaida-linked militants as long as the fighters do not interfere with aid distributions. Exhausted, rail-thin women are stumbling into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia with dead babies and bleeding feet, having left weaker family members behind along the way. ‘Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years,’ said Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. ‘This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives … it’s likely that conditions will deteriorate further in six months.’ The crisis is the worst since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death, Bowden said…”

Millions face hunger in arid belt of Africa, By Jon Gambrell (AP), May 28, 2010, Modesto Bee: ” At this time of year, the Gadabeji Reserve should be refuge for the nomadic tribes who travel across a moonscape on the edge of the Sahara to graze their cattle. But the grass is meager after a drought killed off the last year’s crops. Now the cattle are too weak to stand and too skinny to sell, leaving the poor without any way to buy grain to feed their families. The threat of famine is again stalking the Sahel, a band of semiarid land stretching across Africa south of the Sahara. The U.N. World Food Program warned on Friday that some 10 million people face hunger over the next three months before the next harvest in September - if it comes…”

Amid droughts and failed crops, a cycle of poverty worsens, By Mark Magnier, December 1, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “She stops for long stretches, lost in thought, trying to make sense of how she’s been left half a person. Sunita, 18, who requested that her family name not be used to preserve her chance of getting married, said her nightmare started in early 2007 after her father took a loan for her sister’s wedding. The local moneylender charged 60% annual interest. When the family was unable to make the exorbitant interest payments, she said, the moneylender forced himself on her, not once or twice but repeatedly over many months. ‘I used to cry a lot and became a living corpse,’ she said. Sunita’s allegations, which the moneylender denies, cast a harsh light on widespread abuses in rural India, where a highly bureaucratic banking system, corruption and widespread illiteracy allow unethical people with extra income to exploit poor villagers, activists say…”

• Ethiopia appeals for international aid 25 years on, By Tom Pettifor, October 23, 2009, The Mirror: “It’s been a quarter of a century since the Ethiopian famine which shocked the world - and history could be about to repeat itself. The government of Ethiopia, a country in the grip of a five-year drought, yesterday asked the international community for emergency aid to feed 6.2 million. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of the drought, affecting parts of East Africa. The UN’s World Food Programme said £173million will be needed in the next six months and some aid officials say the numbers of hungry could rise. But an Oxfam report to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine - Band Aids and Beyond - warns that drought will be the norm there for the next 25 years. And it called for a new approach to tackling the risk of disaster in the country…”
• Is U.S. food aid contributing to Africa’s hunger?, By Dana Hughes, October 29, 2009, ABC News: “Drought-stricken Ethiopia is pleading for food aid again to stave off starvation, but some critics are complaining that the policies of the country’s most generous donor, the United States, is exacerbating the cycle of starvation. A hungry Ethiopia gets 70 percent of its aid from the U.S., but according to a new report by the aid organization Oxfam International, that help comes at a cost. U.S. law requires that food aid money be spent on food grown in the U.S., at least half of it must be packed in the U.S. and most of it must be transported in U.S. ships. The Oxfam report, ‘Band Aids and Beyond,’ claims that is far more expensive and time consuming than buying food in the region…”
• Oxfam says Band-Aids insufficient, By Peter Goodspeed, October 23, 2009, National Post: “Twenty-five years after Ethiopia suffered a staggering famine that killed more than one million people, the world has done little to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. A new report by the international aid group Oxfam claims ‘the humanitarian response to drought and other disasters is still dominated by ‘Band-Aids,’ ‘ instead of finding ways to reduce the risks of recurring crisis…”