Famine scales

The word "famine" has highly emotive and political connotations and there has been extensive discussion among international relief agencies offering food aid as to its exact definition.

For example, in 1998, although a full-scale famine had developed in southern Sudan, a disproportionate amount of donor food resources went to the Kosovo War.

This ambiguity about whether or not a famine is occurring, and the lack of commonly agreed upon criteria by which to differentiate food insecurity has prompted renewed interest in offering precise definitions.

One of the most efficacious is the Turkana District Early Warning System in northern Kenya in which indicators include rainfall levels, market prices of cereals, status of livestock, rangeland conditions and trends, and enrollment on food-for-work projects.

The Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) devised a system for Somalia with four levels: Non-alert (near normal), Alert (requires close attention), Livelihood Crisis (basic social structures under threat) and Humanitarian Emergency (threat of widespread mortality requiring immediate humanitarian assistance).

It is only when such social structures collapse under the strain that individuals are faced with the malnutrition and starvation that has commonly been viewed as "famine".

The United Nations Refugee Nutrition Information System lists a number of such indicator cutoff points:[5] The use of these cut-offs is contentious.

Some argue that a crude mortality rate of one death per ten thousand people per day is already a full-scale emergency.