{"id":4333,"date":"2011-10-24T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=4333"},"modified":"2011-10-22T11:24:14","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:24:14","slug":"horn-of-africa-famine-is-not-going-away-and-the-rainy-season-might-make-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4333","title":{"rendered":"Horn of Africa: Famine Is Not Going Away, Still Appears Man-Made"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_4334\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4334\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/BBCFoodShortages.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4334\" title=\"BBCFoodShortages\" src=\"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/BBCFoodShortages-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/BBCFoodShortages-300x252.jpg 300w, https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/BBCFoodShortages.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4334\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image Credit: BBC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>From a BBC news <a title=\"East Africa Drought &quot;Remains Huge Crisis&quot; -- UK Official\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-africa-15380244\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p id=\"story_continues_1\" style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Three months after famine was declared in Somalia, the scale of the crisis in the Horn of Africa remains huge, says a British official.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said hundreds of people, mainly children, were dying every day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The coming rainy season is expected to bring disease to crowded refugee camps.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In Somalia alone, Mr Mitchell points out, more than 400,000 children remain at risk of death.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">While the rains can bring more misery and death in their wake, they can of course be part of the recovery from this disaster too.<\/p>\n<p>What I find puzzling is the title of the article: &#8220;East Africa Drought &#8216;Remains Huge Crisis&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, the drought in East Africa is the worst in over 50 years. But to blame it for the famine is a huge stretch. After all, many other areas of the world have experienced drought in the past without then experiencing famine.<\/p>\n<p>More convincingly, why is it that Somalia is experiencing famine, but that Kenya and Ethiopia are not? The different institutions on either side of the Kenya-Somalia and the Ethiopia-Somalia borders make for a nice social experiment and point to the idea that famines are man-made.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, while natural disasters can certainly cause food shortages, it really looks as though bad institutions &#8212; the lack of government accountability in most cases &#8212; are really the root cause of famine.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the current famine in the Horn of Africa and its human causes, I encourage readers to listen to <a title=\"Famine in the Horn of Africa: Owen Barder\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.cgdev.org\/global_prosperity_wonkcast\/2011\/08\/09\/famine-in-the-horn-of-africa-owen-barder\/\" target=\"_blank\">this excellent podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a BBC news article: Three months after famine was declared in Somalia, the scale of the crisis in the Horn of Africa remains huge,&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4333\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Horn of Africa: Famine Is Not Going Away, Still Appears Man-Made<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,26,12,44,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-famine","category-food","category-policy","category-politics","category-social-sciences","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-17T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4333"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4338,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions\/4338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}