"We travelled to Leer county and it was there that we crossed over, by just a mile
or two, into rebel territory.
And a man approached me.
He started describing the horrendous violence that had happened there.
He said government troops came in and killed his 5 year old child and forced
him to eat some of her body..."
That’s Jane Ferguson, a journalist who was just in South Sudan covering a famine that’s
left about 100,000 people starving and 5.5 million at risk.
She was here in Unity, a state where the UN officially declared a famine in February 2017.
It's also where the worst violence in South Sudan’s 4 year old civil war has taken place,
and that’s not a coincidence...
The violence has destroyed crops and markets and has forced people to flee.
As a result there’s no food.
In the past, humanitarian aid has been the best solution for famines.
But today, the South Sudanese government is blocking access to much of the country in
an attempt to starve the rebels.
It's why South Sudan’s famine is man-made.
And so are the 3 other famines developing in Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen.
Wars in these countries are threatening to starve 20 million people
"No one country is the same, no one
conflict is the same, but what we are seeing are some very dangerous patterns; the use of
food, or lack there of, as a weapon Fighting groups in each country have created
food shortages to starve each other.
South Sudan became an independent country in 2011, but fell into civil war just 2 years
later.
It started as a personal rivalry between president Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek
Machar.
But with each leader belonging to a different ethnic group, it soon became a tribal conflict.
What we see now is this war almost cannibalizing, where its disintegrating into
smaller and smaller groups across the country.
What we saw when we got there is clear evidence of ethnic cleansing."
The government has blocked humanitarian aid to parts of rebel territory, leaving millions
of civilians trapped without access to food.
And it’s created chaos.
The fighting has forced tens of thousands to leave their homes, often for dense marshlands
that surround cities.
"It’s such a good hiding place but it’s also where people starve to death.
They have no means of finding food."
There’s a similar situation in Nigeria, where the government’s been fighting the
Islamist militant group, Boko Haram since 2009.
The terrorist group controls large portions of Borno State. And its responsible for mass
killings, suicide bombings, and kidnappings in the region.
Their violent tactics have displaced nearly 2 million people and collapsed the agricultural economy.
The Nigerian government restricts aid to keep
supplies from reaching Boko Haram territory, where civilians continue to be at risk of
starvation.
Over in Somalia, another al-Qaeda linked terrorist group al-Shabaab controls at least 10% the
country.
Getting aid to those areas has proven difficult as well.
Back in 2011, during the last famine, the group killed aid workers and looted supply
trucks.
Now a drought has re-created severe famine conditions in Somalia.
And limited access to humanitarian aid has made the situation worse.
This time Al-shabaab claims it will allow people to move and find aid, but if they don’t,
millions will be trapped without food again.
The clearest example of a man-made famine is just north of Somalia, across the Gulf
of Aden, in Yemen.
Civil war broke out in 2014 between the government and a rebel group called the Houthis.
They’ve received weapons, personnel, and support from Iran.
In response, Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival in the Middle East, intervened in 2015 on
behalf of the government.
It began bombing Houthi territory, but also roads, bridges, and ports to block Iranian
supplies.
Saudis also set up a naval blockade that keeps 85% of the food supplies out of Yemen.
Meanwhile, in the interior, 7 million people are at risk of starvation.
Yemen's food shortage is caused by internal conflict but it's controlled by the geopolitics
of the region.
This makes man-made famines incredibly hard to solve.
"So, if it comes down to simply trying to save lives, that’s easy to do, unless you cannot get
access, unless there are warring sides trying to push hunger deliberately on people, and
unless the food simply can’t reach them.
If you get food to people they won’t starve to death.
That's why its not particularly complicated."
But the crisis is only getting worse.
Massive streams of refugees are overwhelming neighboring countries.
Uganda’s BidiBidi camp now holds 800,000 people making it the largest refugee camp
in the world.
Overcrowded camps are breeding ground for disease, and cholera outbreaks have been reported
across the entire region.
It’s why humanitarian groups are struggling to keep up.
The UN reports that it needs $4.4 billion to address the famines, and they've only raised
14% of that so far.
But if the conflicts that are driving these famines aren’t addressed, no amount of aid
will solve these man-made crises.