Vox- excellent report - 20 million people starving due to 4 man made famines
20 million starving to death: inside the worst famine since World War II
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/1/15653970/south-sudan-hunger-crisis-famine
First, South Sudan isn’t the only country in the region facing mass starvation. A potentially historic famine is also threatening Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen. Far from Western eyes and far from the headlines, an estimated 20 million people in those four countries are at risk of dying due to a lack of food.
Second, these famines weren’t caused by natural disasters like crop failures or droughts. They were man-made — the direct result of the bloody wars and insurgencies raging in all four countries.
The crisis in the 1980s pales in comparison to the famine happening today. Because it isn’t just happening in one country; it’s happening in four.
But it’s Yemen, where 7 million people are facing starvation, that’s perhaps the clearest illustration of how war is directly causing famine. The Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen has suffered from food shortages for years, but a war between the Saudi-backed government in exile and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who control much of the north of the country has brought food shipments into Yemen to a grinding halt.
With US assistance, Saudi warplanes have destroyed bridges, roads, factories, farms, food trucks, animals, water infrastructure, and agricultural banks across the north, while imposing a blockade on the territory. For a country heavily dependent on foreign food aid, that means starving the people.
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