11 Facts About Famine

Hunger emergencies are gauged by a system called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), originally created through the United Nations. Of the 5 phases on the scale, famine (phase 5) refers to the most extreme case in which there extreme social upheavel and mass starvation and death.
Most organizations declare a famine when 20% of the population in an area has access to less than 2,100 kilocalories of food per day, there is acute malnutrition in over 30% of children, or 2 deaths per 10,000 people occur every day.
In the Horn of Africa the 1984–1985 drought led to a famine which killed 750,000 people.
350 million people in India go to bed hungry every night even though the government has a surplus of over 50 million tons of grain.
Deforestation, the process of clearing forests to make room for crops, pastures, or urban areas, contributes to changes in the ecosystem, potentially disrupting food access.
Drought is not the sole reason countries suffer from famine. Other factors like armed conflict, mismanagement of food supplies, trade policies, and environmental food supplies contribute to worldwide famine.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), all people have a right to food access. The American Journal of International Law consider the Soviet Union (1932), Ethoipia (1983-1985), and North Korea (1994-present) to have violated human rights by creating or manipulating famine in their countries.
The United Nations estimates that every year up to half of the people in sub-Saharan Africa goes hungry.
HIV/AIDS has killed more than 8 million African farmworkers, increasing the risk of famine and leaving 4.2 million children orphaned.
Three-fourths of Africa's farmland no longer has the basic nutrients needed to grow crops.
Once aid workers donate food to starving countries, corrupt governments sometimes divert the food to the black market and sell it for up to 10 times its official price.