Why the United Nations is Suddenly Warning About Drought and Famine in Somalia Mark Leon Goldberg June 5, 2019Somalia is facing a new food crisis. By the middle of the summer over 5 million people will be in some level of food insecurity. Some 2.2 million of those people will face what is known as a "crisis level" of food insecurity -- this is the kind of food insecur...
PODCAST: 977 Days as a Hostage of Somali Pirates Mark Leon Goldberg July 30, 2018Michael Scott Moore spent 977 days as a hostage of Somali pirates. He is a journalist and in 2012 he set out for the Somali coast on a reporting trip when he was kidnapped. What followed was a two and a half year ordeal that he masterfully recounts in his ...
In Somalia, there is a dangerous nexus between climate change and violent conflict Mark Leon Goldberg August 8, 2017Somalia is ground zero for an emerging trend in global affairs-- the nexus between climate change and conflict.Journalist Laura Heaton with The GroundTruth Project spent years reporting on how climate change and conflict feed off each other in profound...
Map of the Day: Displaced by Drought in Somalia Mark Leon Goldberg May 12, 2017Somalia is in the midst of its most catastrophic drought since 1950. Some 3.2 million people face emergency levels of food insecurity. And that is causing massive population displacement.Today's map comes from the European Union's Emergency Response Coord...
The “Four Famines,” Explained Kimberly Curtis March 17, 2017Hunger will be the humanitarian disaster of 2017. The UN already declared a full fledged famine in parts of South Sudan last month, and three other situations around the world are precariously close to crossing a threshold of food insecurity that leads to fa...
Trump seeks deep cuts to UN relief programs, just as 20 million people face famine Mark Leon Goldberg March 14, 2017In a perfect storm, the Trump administration is reportedly seeking deep cuts to UN relief programs, just as 20 million people face famine.Colum Lynch reports in Foreign Policy that the White House has instructed the State Department and the US Mission to t...
Famine, Explained (VIDEO) Mark Leon Goldberg March 13, 2017What three conditions trigger the United Nations to declare a "famine?" What causes a famine? And how do you stop a famine? These questions are acute right now as the world faces an unprecedented number of people living in famine or near famine conditions. ...
6 million people are at risk of starving in East Africa, and climate change deserves part of the blame John Light March 9, 2017Secretary General António Guterres has spent the last few days in East Africa, visiting nations there that are slammed by drought and facing rising food prices. The drought, he said, looks to be the worst the area has seen in decades — worse even than a 20...
Famine Strikes South Sudan. UN Warns Three Other Countries Could be Next. One of the Biggest Catastrophes of a Generation Mark Leon Goldberg February 23, 2017Famine kills children first.Famine does not simply mean "lack of food." Rather it is a threshold against which indicators like childhood mortality are measured to determine whether the lack of food is causing people to starve to death in large numbers. Whi...
