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A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. The worst famine to hit the country in a century, it affected 7.75 million people (out of Ethiopia's 38–40 million) and left approximately 300,000 to 1.2 million dead. 2.5 million people were internally displaced whereas 400,000 refugees left Ethiopia. Almost 200,000 children were orphaned. According to
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ri ...
, more than half its mortality could be attributed to "
human rights abuses Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of h ...
causing the famine to come earlier, strike harder and extend further than would otherwise have been the case". According to the
United States Agency for International Development The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...
, "in the fall of 1984, the hardest hit regions were Tigray, Wollo, and Eritrea – areas with extremely limited road and transportation networks. Moreover, these regions were the scenes of longstanding anti-government rebellions which created precarious security situations". Other areas of Ethiopia experienced famine for similar reasons, resulting in tens of thousands of additional deaths. The famine as a whole took place a decade into the Ethiopian Civil War. The famine of 1983–1985 is officially ascribed to drought. In recent years, the favored explanation for the famine of 1983–1985 is " war and drought". According to the organizations
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ri ...
and
Oxfam UK Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. History Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...
, the famines that struck Ethiopia between 1961 and 1985, and in particular the one of 1983–1985, were in part created by the government's military policies, specifically a set of so-called
counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionar ...
strategies (against
Tigray People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitar ...
guerrilla-soldiers), and for "social transformation" in non-insurgent areas (against people of Tigray Province,
Wollo Province Wollo (Amharic: ወሎ) was a historical province of northern Ethiopia that overlayed part of the present day Amhara, Afar, and Tigray regions. During the Middle Ages this region was known as Bete Amhara and had Amhara kings. Bete Amhara ha ...
and such).


Background

Throughout the feudal era, famines were common in Ethiopia, especially in the north. Local famines were also frequent but also unrecorded. The most infamous was the "Great Ethiopian Famine" which killed approximately one third of Ethiopia's population. In 1958, famine killed 100,000 people. In 1966, famine killed 50,000. In 1973, drought and feudal extractions caused a famine that killed 40,000 to 200,000 people in Wollo, mostly of the marginalized Afar herders and Oromo 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, who complained that the wealthy classes and the Ethiopian government had ignored both the famine and the people who had died. Then in 1974, a group of military officers known as the Derg overthrew Haile Selassie. The Derg addressed the Wollo famine by creating the
Relief and Rehabilitation Commission The Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) 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 ...
(RRC) to examine the causes of the famine and prevent its recurrence, and then abolishing feudal tenure in 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 of its senior staff. As a result, insurgencies began to spread into the country's administrative regions. By late 1976 insurgencies existed in all of the country's fourteen administrative regions. The Red Terror (1976–1978) 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 Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
(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 Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...
was declared illegal in much of the country, resulting in the number of grain dealers falling from between 20,000 and 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. As the go-between for international aid organizations and foreign donor governments, the RRC redirected food to government militias, in particular in Eritrea and Tigray. 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. The
Mengistu Haile Mariam Mengistu Haile Mariam ( am, መንግሥቱ ኀይለ ማሪያም, pronunciation: ; born 21 May 1937) is an Ethiopian politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Work ...
-led military dictatorship ( Derg) used this 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia as government military policy by restricting food supplies for strategy against the counter-insurgency of the
Tigray People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitar ...
's guerrilla-soldiers, and for "social transformation" in non-insurgent areas (against people of Tigray province, Welo province and such). Due to organized government policies that deliberately multiplied the effects of the famine, around 1.2 million people died in Ethiopia from the famine where the majority of the death tolls were from the present day Tigray Region and Amhara Region and other parts of northern Ethiopia. Before the 1983–1985 famine, two decades of wars of
national liberation Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence. The term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers (or at least those perceived as foreign) to establish separat ...
and other anti-government conflict had raged throughout northern Ethiopia and present-day 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, more than 150,000 people were killed. The
economy of Ethiopia The economy of Ethiopia is a mixed and transition economy with a large public sector. The government of Ethiopia is in the process of privatizing many of the state-owned businesses and moving toward a market economy. The banking, telecommunic ...
is based on
agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
: almost half of GDP, 60% of exports, and 80% of total employment come from agriculture.Ethiopia: Economy
CIA World Factbook, 2009


Famine

Four Ethiopian
provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...
Gojjam Gojjam ( ''gōjjām'', originally ጐዛም ''gʷazzam'', later ጐዣም ''gʷažžām'', ጎዣም ''gōžžām'') is a historical province in northwestern Ethiopia, with its capital city at Debre Marqos. Gojjam's earliest western boundary e ...
,
Hararghe Hararghe ( am, ሐረርጌ ''Harärge''; Harari: ሀረርጌይ ''Harärgeyi'', Oromo: Harargee, so, Xararge) was a province of eastern Ethiopia with its capital in Harar. History Hararghe translates to "land of the Hararis". The region co ...
, Tigray and Wollo — all received record low rainfalls in the mid-1980s. In the south, a separate and simultaneous cause was the government's response to
Oromo Liberation Front The Oromo Liberation Front ( om, Adda Bilisummaa Oromoo, abbreviated: ABO; English abbreviation: OLF) is an Oromo nationalist political party formed in 1973 to promote self-determination for the Oromo people inhabiting today's Oromia Region and ...
(OLF) insurgency. In 1984,
Mengistu Haile Mariam Mengistu Haile Mariam ( am, መንግሥቱ ኀይለ ማሪያም, pronunciation: ; born 21 May 1937) is an Ethiopian politician and former army officer who was the head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991 and General Secretary of the Work ...
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 1973–1974 to 3% by 1990–1991. Although a UN estimate of one million deaths is often quoted for the 1983–1985 famine, this figure has been challenged by famine scholar
Alex de Waal Alexander William Lowndes de Waal (born 22 February 1963), a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he w ...
. 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.". De Waal estimates that 400,000 to 500,000 died in the famine. 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?" charity single and the July 1985 concert Live Aid, 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 1983-85 centered on Tigray and northern Wollo, which further affected Eritrea,
Begemder Begemder ( amh, በጌምድር; also known as Gondar or Gonder, alternative name borrowed from its 20th century capital Gondar) was a province in northwest Ethiopia. Etymology A plausible source for the name ''Bega'' is that the word means " ...
and northern
Shewa Shewa ( am, ሸዋ; , om, Shawaa), formerly romanized as Shua, Shoa, Showa, Shuwa (''Scioà'' in Italian), is a historical region of Ethiopia which was formerly an autonomous kingdom within the Ethiopian Empire. The modern Ethiopian capital A ...
. Living standards had been declining in these government-held regions since 1977, a "direct consequence" of the Derg's 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. 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 A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policie ...
, which pitched rebel movements against the Soviet and Cuban-backed Derg government. This crippled the country's economy further and contributed to the government's 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 plagues exacerbated the problem.


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 the relief was channeled through the government side, prolonging the war. The Ethiopian government's unwillingness to deal with the 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 decline. 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 west and 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. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 50,000 people died. Another government plan involved
villagization Villagization (sometimes also spelled ''villagisation'') is the (usually compulsory) resettlement of people into designated villages by government or military authorities. Villagization may be used as a tactic by a government or military power to ...
, 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 the 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 (23 October), a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
news crew was the first to document the famine, with Michael Buerk describing "a biblical famine in the 20th century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The report shocked Britain, motivating its citizens to inundate relief agencies, such as
Save the Children The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization established in the United Kingdom in 1919 to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic ...
, with donations, and also to bring the world's attention to the crisis in Ethiopia."Live Aid: The show that rocked the world"
BBC. Retrieved 25 September 2019
In November 1984, the British Royal Air Force carried out the first airdrops from
Hercules C-130 The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin). Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally design ...
s delivering food to the starving people. Other countries including Sweden, East and West Germany, Poland, Canada, United States and the Soviet Union were also involved in the international response.


Charity

Buerk's news piece on the BBC was seen by Irish singer
Bob Geldof Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof (; born 5 October 1951) is an Irish singer-songwriter, and political activist. He rose to prominence in the late 1970s as lead singer of the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, who achieved popularity as part of t ...
, who quickly organised the charity supergroup Band Aid, primarily made up of the biggest British and Irish artists of the era. Their single, " Do They Know It's Christmas?", was released on 3 December 1984 and became Britain's best-selling single within a few weeks, eventually selling 3.69 million copies domestically. It raised £8 million for famine relief within twelve months of its release. Other
charity single A charity record or charity single is a song released by musicians with most or all proceeds raised going to a dedicated foundation or charity. George Harrison's " Bangla Desh" single in 1971 is commonly acknowledged as the first ever purpose-ma ...
s soon followed; released in March 1985, "
We Are the World "We Are the World" is a charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album '' We Are the World''. Wit ...
" by
USA for Africa United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for Africa) was the name under which 47 predominantly U.S. artists, led by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, recorded the hit single "We Are the World" in 1985. The song was a U.S. and UK number one for ...
was the most successful of these, selling 20 million copies worldwide. Live Aid, a 1985 fund-raising effort headed by Geldof, 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 raised £145 million. In France, French supergroup Chanteurs sans frontières released "SOS Éthiopie", which sold 1 million copies and raised 10 million francs (about 1.2 million dollars). Other charity initiatives raised money for Ethiopia. On 27 January 1985, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participated in a special fast, where members went without food for two meals and donated the money they would have used to buy food. The fast raised $6 million for the famine victims in Ethiopia.


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 situations. 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 a real and immediate need but also prolonged the life of Mengistu's government. The response to the emergency raised disturbing questions about the relationship between humanitarian agencies and host governments. However, according to Peter Gill, in his 2010 book ''Foreigners and Famine: Ethiopia Since Live Aid'', 7.9 million people faced starvation in 1984, resulting in over 600,000 deaths; while in 2003 13.2 million "faced the prospect of a famine and only 300 died."


Aid money and rebel groups

On 3 March 2010, Martin Plaut of the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
published evidence that millions of dollars worth of aid to the Ethiopian famine were spent in buying weapons by the
Tigrayan People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitar ...
, a communist group trying to overthrow the Ethiopian communist 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
NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active i ...
s were under the influence or control of the Derg military
junta Junta may refer to: Government and military * Junta (governing body) (from Spanish), the name of various historical and current governments and governing institutions, including civil ones ** Military junta, one form of junta, government led by a ...
. Some journalists suggested that the Derg was able to use Live Aid and Oxfam money to fund its enforced resettlement and "
villagization Villagization (sometimes also spelled ''villagisation'') is the (usually compulsory) resettlement of people into designated villages by government or military authorities. Villagization may be used as a tactic by a government or military power to ...
" programs, 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 #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
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's Editorial Complaints Unit found in its ruling that there was no evidence to support such statements and that "they should not have been broadcast". It also added that "The BBC wishes to apologise unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust for the misleading and unfair impression which was created".


Death toll

Outsider estimates like
Alex de Waal Alexander William Lowndes de Waal (born 22 February 1963), a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he w ...
's, believe the famine of 1983–1985 killed a minimum of 400,000 people (not counting those killed by resettlement), just in northern Ethiopia (Tigray Province); "Something over half of this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses causing the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case.". The
United States Agency for International Development The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...
which provided foreign assistance during the famine, estimated that "more than 300,000" died. Other insider estimates put the total death toll in Ethiopia at "1.2 million dead, 400,000 refugees outside the country, 2.5 million people internally displaced, and almost 200,000 orphans".


See also

* 2006 Horn of Africa food crisis *
2010 Sahel famine A large-scale, drought-induced famine occurred in Africa's Sahel region and many parts of the neighbouring Sénégal River Area from February to August 2010. It is one of many famines to have hit the region in recent times. The Sahel is th ...
*
2011 East Africa drought Occurring between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. > Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the li ...
* Birhan Woldu * List of famines * Malawian food crisis * Mass killings under communist regimes * Sahel drought * "
Tears Are Not Enough "Tears Are Not Enough" is a 1985 charity single recorded by a supergroup of Canadian artists, under the name Northern Lights, to raise funds for relief of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia. It was one of a number of such supergroup singles recor ...
"


References


General references

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

* The first Canadia
TV report
by Brian Stewart, produced by
Tony Burman Tony Burman (born 13 June 1948) is a Canadian broadcaster, journalist and university official. Starting in the 1960s, Burman has worked as a journalist, in print, radio, television, and online. For most of this time (35 years), he was at the Can ...
, 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


an

from Brian Stewart, the first Western journalist to cover the story
CBC News Indepth: Ethiopia
{{DEFAULTSORT:1983-1985 Famine In Ethiopia 1983,Ethiopia
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
Famine,Ethiopia
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
Famine,Ethiopia
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
Famine,Ethiopia 1983,Ethiopia Ethiopia,1983 Ethiopia,1983
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
20th-century famines
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
Famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...