Overview

This book analyses the root and proximate causes of the Bahr el Ghazal famine in 1998 as a chain of political, environmental, economic and social factors, as well as a failure of public action and early warning systems. It is estimated about 70,000 persons died as a result of lack of food and mass starvation. This famine emerged from a long history of political repression by successive governments in Sudan that aimed at destroying the lives and livelihoods in Bahr el Ghazal region. This process resulted not only in the erosion of sources of livelihoods of the rural population but also made them increasingly susceptible to exogenous shocks such as climate change, El-Nino and counterinsurgency warfare. The book shows that the poor management of the famine in 1998 was largely related to lack of a common understanding of famine and the poor quality of information generated by early warning systems that resulted in divided opinion among the charity agencies about the severity of food crisis. It was left to the western media to reveal the presence of the famine and trigger, though late, a massive international relief response.This book is a good resource for readers and practitioners in food security, development, and humanitarian assistance and intervention.

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9780645210521

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Luka Biong Deng Kuol, PhD, is the Dean of Academic Affairs at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at National Defense University in Washington, USA. In addition, he is the faculty lead of three academic programs: National Security Strategy Development and Implementation in Africa, Managing Security Resources in Africa, and Emerging Security Sector Leaders in Africa. His work focuses on national security strategy, security sector budgets, social contracts, food security, vulnerability and resilience, and the security-development-governance nexus.Dr. Kuol is also a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a Fellow at the Rift Valley Institute, and an Associate Professor of Economics (on leave) at the University of Juba in South Sudan. He also sits on the editorial board of the Disasters Journal, published by the Overseas Development Institute. Prior to joining the Africa Center, Dr. Kuol served as director of the Center for Peace and Development Studies at the University of Juba in South Sudan. He was also on the teaching staff of the Faculty of Economics and Rural Development at the University of Gezira in Sudan. He was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom. He served as Minister of Presidential Affairs for the Government of Southern Sudan and as National Minister of Cabinet Affairs for the Republic of Sudan. He has also worked as a senior economist for the World Bank in Southern Sudan. He was the founder of the New Sudan Center for Statistics and Evaluation that became the South Sudan Bureau of Statistics.

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