Staving off starvation

We sent in three staff writers and a staff photographer to find out what lessons have been learned from past droughts and famines. Aid groups and others are taking steps that are saving individual lives and, in some cases, entire villages.

|
MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF
MOTHERS AND CHILDREN GATHER FOR AID DISTRIBUTION IN ANKILIMANARA, MADAGASCAR.

Mobilizing the world to respond to famine often follows a familiar narrative: Mass starvation strikes a country. The United Nations and aid organizations rattle the tin cup for international support. Emergency aid flows in. The cycle repeats when the next crisis hits.

Yet these days the UN and relief groups are emphasizing a different approach. They are warning about impending mass starvation early, before it becomes acute, and trying to fashion programs that build “resiliency” so rural areas don’t cycle in and out of despair. 

Africa provides a test of how well this effort is working, since famine is stalking the continent again. The UN said earlier this year that civil wars and uncivil droughts threaten some 20 million people with starvation – especially in Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. 

The world has responded since then, though the outlook remains grim. 

The Monitor responded, too. We sent in three staff writers and a staff photographer to find out what lessons have been learned from past droughts and famines. There is, of course, no way to prevent a paucity of rain or eliminate hunger. But aid groups and others are taking steps that are saving individual lives and, in some cases, entire villages.

It might be something as simple as a storage tank that conserves rainwater, or a drought-resistant sweet potato. More broadly, Ethiopia, the symbol of mass starvation in the 1980s, has become a model for early warning and preventive action.

Covering a story like this isn’t easy. It took several months to obtain visas and get reporters to affected areas. Scott Peterson never did get permission to enter war-torn Yemen. Ryan Lenora Brown and Melanie Stetson Freeman were shadowed by a government minder everywhere they went in Ethiopia, which has notoriously tight press restrictions. 

It’s a difficult subject to cover emotionally, too. For Scott, it elicited disquieting memories of reporting on the horrific Somalia famine of 1992. Melanie, who has traveled to more than 70 countries as a Monitor photographer, found this “one of the hardest trips I’ve ever taken.”

After one particularly arduous day, she and Peter Ford arrived with aid workers in a remote village in Madagascar. They were met by mothers and malnourished children all dressed in their finest, welcoming them with a joyous dance. Melanie says that night, feeling overwhelmed, she “finally fell apart” talking to her husband via Skype. (Read more about her experience on page 41.) 

As challenging as it is to report on famine, it’s infinitely more painful for those forced to cope with it. Ryan writes a telling piece about a young couple – childhood sweethearts – who had to cancel their wedding because the drought had claimed too much of the family herd. The groom couldn’t pay the dowry of 10 camels and 10 cattle to marry her.

When writing about suffering in the developing world, Ryan says she is guided by the motive that undergirds all Monitor coverage of such events: telling stories that elicit understanding and empathy, not pity and hopelessness.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Staving off starvation
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/From-the-Editors/2017/0730/Staving-off-starvation
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe