Famine Early Warning Systems during Conflict

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: Over 900 million people were suffering from hunger in 2010 and in December the United Nations basic food price index reached a new record. The resulting food insecurity is often of chronic nature but may be temporally increased due to events like draughts, floods or conflicts. To enable timely and adequate response it is important to identify and forecast the most urgent arising food security crises where extensive international aid is needed. For this purpose there exist several food security early warning systems. They track the status of food supply, food access, food utilization and food stability to monitor where a crisis is impending. While a wide range of production indicators covers the supply side, other pillars are lacking behind. Therefore new vulnerability and health indicators are developed for the integration into early warning systems. This paper tries to draw attention to a partially neglected area in the intent to improve food security early warning systems - the link of food insecurity and conflict.