1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A widespread famine

Famines in Ethiopia

Traditionally the Economy of Ethiopia was based on subsistence agriculture, with an aristocracy that consumed the surplus. Due to a number of causes, the peasants lacked incentives to either improve production or to store their excess harvest; as a result, they lived from harvest to harvest.Despite...

affected the inhabitants of today's Eritrea

Eritrea

Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

and Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

from 1983 to 1985. In northern Ethiopia, famine led to more than 400,000 deaths; over half this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case. Other areas of Ethiopia experienced famine for similar reasons, resulting in tens of thousands of additional deaths. The tragedy as a whole took place within the context of more than two decades of insurgency and civil war.

The great famine of 1983–5 is often ascribed to drought; while climatic causes and consequences certainly played a part in the tragedy, it has been shown that widespread drought occurred only some months after the famine was under way. The famines that struck Ethiopia between 1961 and 1985, and in particular the one of 1983–5, were in large part created by government policies, specifically the set of counter-insurgency strategies employed and so-called 'social transformation' in non-insurgent areas.

Background

Prior to the 1983–5 famine, two decades of wars of national liberation and other anti-government conflict had raged throughout Ethiopia and Eritrea. The most prominent feature of the fighting was the use of indiscriminate violence against civilians by the Ethiopian army and air force. Excluding those killed by famine and resettlement

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia has been an issue since the late nineteenth century, due to the overcrowded population of the Ethiopian highlands...

, more than 150,000 people were killed.

The economy of Ethiopia

Economy of Ethiopia

The economy of Ethiopia is based on agriculture, which accounts for half of gross domestic product , 43% of exports, and 85% of total employment....

is based on agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

: almost half of GDP, 60% of exports, and 80% of total employment come from agriculture.

In 1973, a famine in Wollo

Wollo

Wollo was a historical region and province in the northeastern part of Ethiopia, with its capital city at Dessie. The province was named after the Wollo Oromo, who settled in this part of Ethiopia in the 17th century...

killed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000, mostly of the marginalized Afar

Afar people

The Afar , also known as the Danakil, are an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa. They primarily live in the Afar Region of Ethiopia and in northern Djibouti, although some also inhabit the southern point of Eritrea.-Early history:...

herders and Oromo

Oromo people

The Oromo are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, .and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census...

tenant farmers, who suffered from the widespread confiscation of land by the wealthy classes and government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Despite attempts to suppress news of this famine, leaked reports contributed to the undermining of the government's legitimacy and served as a rallying point for dissidents. In 1974, a group of Marxist soldiers known as the Derg

Derg

The Derg or Dergue was a Communist military junta that came to power in Ethiopia following the ousting of Haile Selassie I. Derg, which means "committee" or "council" in Ge'ez, is the short name of the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army, a committee of...

overthrew Haile Selassie. The Derg addressed the Wollo famine by creating the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission

Relief and Rehabilitation Commission

The Relief and Rehabilitation Commission is an Ethiopian government agency that was set up in Addis Ababa in the aftermath of the 1973 drought. It played a central role in bringing the 1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia to the public's attention, and helped to distribute international aid to the areas...

(RRC) to examine the causes of the famine and prevent its recurrence, and then abolishing feudal tenure

Land reform in Ethiopia

The problem of Land reform in Ethiopia has hampered that country's economic development throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Attempts to modernize land ownership by giving title either to the peasants who till the soil, or to large-scale farming programs, have been tried under imperial...

on March 1975. The RRC initially enjoyed more independence from the Derg than any other ministry, largely due to its close ties to foreign donors and the quality of some its senior staff. As a result, insurgencies began to spread into the countries administrative regions.

By late 1976 insurgencies existed in all of the country's fourteen administrative regions. The Red Terror

Red Terror (Ethiopia)

The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir , was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia that most visibly took place once Communist Mengistu Haile Mariam achieved control of the Derg, the military junta, 3 February 1977...

(1977–1978) marked the beginning of a steady deterioration in the economic state of the nation, coupled with extractive policies targeting rural areas. The reforms of 1975 were revoked and the Agricultural Marketing Corporation (AMC) was tasked with extracting food from rural peasantry at low rates to placate the urban populations. The very low fixed price of grain served as a disincentive to production, and some peasants had to buy grain on the open market in order to meet their AMC quota. Citizens in Wollo, which continued to be stricken with drought, were required to provide a "famine relief tax" to the AMC until 1984. The Derg also imposed a system of travel permits to restrict peasants from engaging in non-agricultural activities, such as petty trading and migrant labor, a major form of income supplementation. However, the collapse of the system of State Farms, a large employer of seasonal laborers, resulted in an estimated 500,000 farmers in northern Ethiopia losing a component of their income. Grain wholesaling

Wholesale

Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...

was declared illegal in much of the country, resulting in the number of grain dealers falling from between 20,000 to 30,000 to 4,942 in the decade after the revolution.

The nature of the RRC changed as the government became increasingly authoritarian. Immediately after its creation its experienced core of technocrats produced highly regarded analyses of Ethiopian famine and ably carried out famine relief efforts. However, by the 1980s the Derg had compromised its mission. The RRC began with the innocuous scheme of creating village workforces from the unemployed in state farms and government agricultural schemes but, as the counter-insurgency intensified, the RRC was given responsibility for a program of forced resettlement and villagization

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia has been an issue since the late nineteenth century, due to the overcrowded population of the Ethiopian highlands...

. As the go-between for international aid organizations and foreign donor governments, the RRC redirected food to government militias, in particular in Eritrea

Eritrea

and Tigray

Tigray Province

Tigray was a province of Ethiopia. The Tigray Region superseded the province with the adoption of the new constitution in 1995. The province of Tigre merged with its neighboring provinces, including Semien, Tembien, Agame and the prominent Enderta province and towards the end of 19th century it...

. It also encouraged international agencies to set up relief programs in regions with surplus grain production, which allowed the AMC to collect the excess food. Finally, the RRC carried out a disinformation campaign during the 1980s famine, in which it portrayed the famine as being solely the result of drought and overpopulation and tried to deny the existence of the armed conflict that was occurring precisely in the famine-affected regions. The RRC also claimed that the aid being given by it and its international agency partners were reaching all of the famine victims.

Famine

Five Ethiopian provinces—Gojjam

Gojjam

Gojjam was a kingdom in the north-western part of Ethiopia, with its capital city at Debre Marqos. This region is distinctive for lying entirely within the bend of the Abbay River from its outflow from Lake Tana to the Sudan...

, Eritrea

Eritrea

, Hararghe

Hararghe

Hararghe was a province in the eastern part of Ethiopia, with its capital in Harar. Including Ethiopia's part of the Ogaden, Haraghe was bounded on the south by Sidamo, southwest by Arsi, west by Shewa, northwest by Wollo, northeast by French Somaliland, and on the east by Somalia.Hararghe came...

, Tigray

Tigray Province

, and Wollo

Wollo

—all received record low rainfalls in the mid-1980s. In the south, a separate and simultaneous cause was the Oromo Liberation Front

Oromo Liberation Front

The Oromo Liberation Front , or OLF, is an organization established in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to promote self-determination for the Oromo people against what they call "Abyssinian colonial rule". It has been outlawed and labeled as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government...

(OLF) insurgency. In 1984, President Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Mengistu Haile Mariam is a politician who was formerly the most prominent officer of the Derg, the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991...

announced that 46% of the Ethiopian Gross National Product would be allocated to military spending, creating the largest standing army in sub-Saharan Africa; the allocation for health in the government budget fell from 6% in 1973–4 to 3% by 1990–1.

Although a UN estimate of one million deaths is often quoted for the 1983–5 famine, this figure has been challenged by famine scholar Alex de Waal

Alex de Waal

Alexander William Lowndes de Waal is a British writer and researcher on African issues. He was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City...

. In a major study, de Waal criticized the United Nations for being "remarkably cavalier" about the numbers of people who died, with the UN's one-million figure having "absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever," a fact which represents "a trivialization and dehumanization of human misery."

Nevertheless, the magnitude of the disaster has been well documented: in addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions were made destitute.

Media activity in the West, along with the size of the crisis, led to the Do They Know It's Christmas?
Do They Know It's Christmas?
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a song written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to raise money for relief of the 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia. The original version was produced by Midge Ure and released by Band Aid on 29 November 1984....

charity single and the July 1985 concert Live Aid

Live Aid

Live Aid was a dual-venue concert that was held on 13 July 1985. The event was organized by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise funds for relief of the ongoing Ethiopian famine. Billed as the "global jukebox", the event was held simultaneously in Wembley Stadium in London, England, United Kingdom ...

, which elevated the international profile of the famine and helped secure international aid.
In the early to mid 1980s there were famines in two distinct regions of the country, resulting in several studies of one famine that try to extrapolate to the other or less cautious writers referring to a single widespread famine. The famine in the southeast of the country was brought about by the Derg's counterinsurgency efforts against the OLF. However, most media referring to "the Ethiopian famine" of the 1980s refers to the severe famine in 1983-5 centered on Tigray and northern Wollo, which further affected Eritrea, Begemder

Begemder

Begemder was a province in the northwestern part of Ethiopia. There are several proposed etymologies for this name...

and northern Shewa

Shewa

Shewa is a historical region of Ethiopia, formerly an autonomous kingdom within the Ethiopian Empire...

. Living standards had been declining in these government-held regions since 1977, a "direct consequence" of Derg agricultural policies. A further major contributing factor to the famine were the Ethiopian government's enforced resettlement programs, utilized as part of its counter-insurgency campaign.

Average grain prices in Northern Ethiopia
(birr
Ethiopian birr
The birr is the unit of currency in Ethiopia. Before 1976, dollar was the official English translation of birr. Today, it is officially birr in English as well....

per quintal
Quintal
Quintal may refer to:* Quintal , a unit of mass* Quartal and quintal harmony in music* Quintal, Haute-Savoie, a commune of the Haute-Savoie département in France* Stéphane Quintal, NHL ice hockey player...

, 100 kg)
	E. Tigray	N. Wollo	N. Begemder
Nov/Dec 1981	100	50	40
Nov/Dec 1982	165	65	55
Nov/Dec 1983	225	90	45
Nov/Dec 1984	300	160	70
Jun/Jul 1985	380	235	165

Despite RRC claims to have predicted the famine, there was little data as late as early 1984 indicating an unusually severe food shortage. Following two major droughts in the late 1970s, 1980 and 1981 were rated by the RRC as "normal" and "above normal". The 1982 harvest was the largest ever, with the exception of central and eastern Tigray. RRC estimates for people "at risk" of famine rose to 3.9 million in 1983 from 2.8 million in 1982, which was less than the 1981 estimate of 4.5 million. In February and March 1983, the first signs of famine were recognized as poverty-stricken farmers began to appear at feeding centers, prompting international aid agencies to appeal for aid and the RRC to revise its famine assessment. The harvest after the main (meher) harvest in 1983 was the third largest on record, with the only serious shortfall again being recorded in Tigray. In response, grain prices in the two northern regions of Begemder and Gojjam fell. However, famine recurred in Tigray. The RRC claimed in May 1984 that the failure of the short rains (belg) constituted a catastrophic drought, while neglecting to state that the belg crops form a fourth of crop yields where the belg falls, but none at all in the majority of Tigray. A quantitative measure of the famine are grain prices, which show high prices in eastern and central Tigray, spreading outward after the 1984 crop failure.

A major drain on Ethiopia's economy was the ongoing civil war

Ethiopian Civil War

The Ethiopian Civil War began on September 12, 1974 when the Marxist Derg staged a coup d'état against Emperor Haile Selassie, and lasted until the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front , a coalition of rebel groups, overthrew the government in 1991. The war overlapped other Cold War...

, which pitched rebel movements backed by the United States against the Soviet backed Derg government. This crippled the country's economy further and contributed to the governments lack of ability to handle the crisis to come.

By mid-1984 it was evident that another drought and resulting famine of major proportions had begun to affect large parts of northern Ethiopia. Just as evident was the government's inability to provide relief. The almost total failure of crops in the north was compounded by fighting in and around Eritrea, which hindered the passage of relief supplies. Although international relief organizations made a major effort to provide food to the affected areas, the persistence of drought and poor security conditions in the north resulted in continuing need as well as hazards for famine relief workers. In late 1985, another year of drought was forecast, and by early 1986 the famine had spread to parts of the southern highlands, with an estimated 5.8 million people dependent on relief food. In 1986, locust

Desert locust

Plagues of the desert locust have threatened agricultural production in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia for centuries. The livelihood of at least one-tenth of the world’s human population can be affected by this voracious insect...

plagues exacerbated the problem.

Global dimming

Global dimming

Global dimming is the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface that was observed for several decades after the start of systematic measurements in the 1950s. The effect varies by location, but worldwide it has been estimated to be of the order of a 4%...

, the blocking of sunlight by man-made particulates, has been identified as one culprit for a decades-long drought across sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

, including Ethiopia.

Response to the famine

Despite the fact that the government had access to only a minority of the famine-stricken population in the north, the great majority of relief was channelled through the government side, prolonging the war.

The Ethiopian government's inability or unwillingness to deal with the 1984-85 famine provoked universal condemnation by the international community. Even many supporters of the Ethiopian regime opposed its policy of withholding food shipments to rebel areas. The combined effects of famine and internal war had by then put the nation's economy into a state of collapse.

The primary government response to the drought and famine was the decision to uproot large numbers of peasants who lived in the affected areas in the north and to resettle them in the southern part of the country. In 1985 and 1986, about 600,000 people were moved, many forcibly, from their home villages and farms by the military and transported to various regions in the south. Many peasants fled rather than allow themselves to be resettled; many of those who were resettled sought later to return to their native regions. Several human rights organizations claimed that tens of thousands of peasants died as a result of forced resettlement.

Another government plan involved villagization

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia

Resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia has been an issue since the late nineteenth century, due to the overcrowded population of the Ethiopian highlands...

, which was a response not only to the famine but also to the poor security situation. Beginning in 1985, peasants were forced to move their homesteads into planned villages, which were clustered around water, schools, medical services, and utility supply points to facilitate distribution of those services. Many peasants fled rather than acquiesce in relocation, which in general proved highly unpopular. Additionally, the government in most cases failed to provide the promised services. Far from benefiting agricultural productivity, the program caused a decline in food production. Although temporarily suspended in 1986, villagization was subsequently resumed.

International view

Close to 8 million people became famine victims during the drought of 1984, and over 1 million died. In the same year (October 23), a BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

news crew was the first to document the famine, with Michael Buerk

Michael Buerk

Michael Duncan Buerk is a BBC journalist and newsreader, most famous for his reporting of the Ethiopian famine on 23 October 1984, which inspired the Band Aid charity record.-Early life:...

describing "a biblical famine in the 20th Century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The report shocked Britain, motivating its citizens to bring world attention to the crisis in Ethiopia.

In January 1985 the RAF carried out the first airdrops from Hercules C-130s delivering food to the starving people. Other countries including Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, USA and the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

were also involved in the international response.

Live Aid

, a 1985 fund-raising effort headed by Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof

Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...

(who had also organized the charity group Band Aid

Band Aid (band)

Band Aid was a charity supergroup featuring British and Irish musicians and recording artists. It was founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia by releasing the song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the Christmas market that year. The single...

the previous year), induced millions of people in the West to donate money and to urge their governments to participate in the relief effort in Ethiopia. Some of the proceeds also went to the famine hit areas of Eritrea. The event was one of the most widely-viewed television broadcasts in history, with over 400 million viewers worldwide.

Effect on aid policy

The manner in which international aid was routed through the RRC gave rise to criticism that forever changed the way in which governments and NGOs respond to international emergencies taking place within conflict situtations. International aid supplied to the government and to relief agencies working alongside the government became part of the counter-insurgency strategy of the government. It therefore met real and immediate need, but also prolonged the life of Mengistu's government. Disturbing questions about the relationship between humanitarian agencies host governments.

Aid money and rebel groups

On 3 March 2010, Martin Plaut of the BBC

BBC

published evidence that millions of dollars worth of aids to the Ethiopian famine were spent in buying weapons by the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front

Tigrayan People's Liberation Front

The Tigrayan People's Liberation Front , known more commonly and sometimes pejoratively in Ethiopia as Woyane or Weyane is a political party in Ethiopia...

, a rebel group trying to overthrow the Ethiopian government at the time. Rebel soldiers said they posed as merchants as "a trick for the NGOs". The report also cited a CIA document saying aid was "almost certainly being diverted for military purposes". One rebel leader estimated $95 million (£63 million). Plaut also said that other NGOs were under the influence or control of the Derg

Derg

military junta

Military dictatorship

A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....

. Some journalists suggested that the Derg was able to use Live Aid and Oxfam

Oxfam

Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...

money to fund its enforced resettlement and "villagification" programmes, under which at least 3 million people are said to have been displaced and between 50,000 and 100,000 killed. These reports were later refuted by the Band Aid Trust and after a seven-month investigation, the BBC

BBC

found its reporting had been misleading regarding Band Aid's money and had also contained numerous errors of fact and misstatements of evidence:

Following a complaint from the Band Aid Trust the BBC has investigated these statements and concluded that there was no evidence for them, and they should not have been broadcast. The BBC wishes to apologise unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust for the misleading and unfair impression which was created.

External links

The first Canadian TV report by Brian Stewart
Brian Stewart (journalist)
Brian Stewart, one of Canada's most experienced journalists, is host of the foreign affairs show CBC News: Our World as well as senior correspondent of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's flagship news hour The National....

, produced by Tony Burman
Tony Burman
Tony Burman is the Velma Rogers Graham Research Chair at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.Previously, he served as Al Jazeera's chief strategic advisor for the Americas, 2010-2011, based in Washington DC. He also served as managing director of the Al Jazeera English network, based in Doha,...

, which inspired famine aid projects around the world (1 November 1984)
2002 news story from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Flashback 1984: Portrait of a famine
Thoughts and photos from Brian Stewart
Brian Stewart (journalist)
Brian Stewart, one of Canada's most experienced journalists, is host of the foreign affairs show CBC News: Our World as well as senior correspondent of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's flagship news hour The National....

, the first Western journalist to cover the story
CBC News Indepth: Ethiopia

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Background

Famine

Response to the famine

International view

Live Aid

Effect on aid policy

Aid money and rebel groups

See also

External links