Gaza and Sudan show AI alone can't detect famine

This year has brought a grim milestone, with two famines recorded simultaneously in Gaza and Sudan, collectively impacting millions. It’s the first time this has happened since the universal food insecurity measurement system, known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), was established in 2004.

- NICK FERRIS

While the ceasefire in Gaza has led to hope that food security in the territory will improve, humanitarian situations elsewhere in the world are escalating due to challenges including humanitarian aid cuts. A report published by the World Food Programme (WFP) this week highlighted how key challenges include record levels of food insecurity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; soaring malnutrition rates in Afghanistan, where food assistance is now only reaching 10 per cent of the population; and a spiralling crisis in Haiti, where food aid recipients are now receiving receiving food worth half of WFP's standard monthly rations, as a result of budget constraints.

“The world is facing a rising tide of acute hunger that threatens millions of the most vulnerable - and the funds needed to help us respond are drying up,” said the WFP executive director Cindy McCain.

While “IPC 5” is seen as constituting a famine, even in IPC 3 or 4 - which last year affected 300 million people around the world - there is a risk of children dying from starvation, according to Save the Children. As Simon Levine, famine expert at the think tank ODI Global, explains: “IPC 2 is really not very good at all, three is when you start to get worried, four is when you're very worried, and five should never ever happen.”

But the ability for humanitarian organisations to detect and monitor food insecurity on the IPC scale was thrown into serious question this year when the US government-funded Famine Early Warning System Network, or Fews Net, which is widely seen as the gold standard tool in famine detection, went dark after President Donald Trump's sudden closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) left it unfunded in January.