Editing Famine (section)

===State-sponsored famines===
{{see also|Starvation (crime)}}
In certain cases, such as the [[Great Leap Forward]] in China (which produced the [[Great Chinese Famine|largest famine in absolute numbers]]), [[North Korean famine|North Korea in the mid-1990s]], or [[Zimbabwe]] in the early-2000s, famine can occur because of government policy.

[[File:HolodomorKharkiv.jpg|thumb|The government's [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivization]] of agriculture was one of the main causes of the [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933]].]]
According to [[Simon Payaslian]], a tentative scholarly consensus classifies the Soviet famine (at least in Ukraine where 2.5 to 4 million perished<ref>{{cite journal|page=28|title=Towards a Decentred History: The Study of the Holodomor and Ukrainian Historiography|first=Olga|last=Andriewsky|doi=10.21226/T2301N|volume=2|issue=1|journal=East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies|url=https://ewjus.com/index.php/ewjus/article/download/Andriewsky/24|year=2015|doi-access=free|access-date=8 January 2022|archive-date=12 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211112100941/https://ewjus.com/index.php/ewjus/article/download/Andriewsky/24|url-status=live}}</ref>) as a [[genocide]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Payaslian|first=Simon|title=International Relations|date=11 January 2021|chapter-url=https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0105.xml|chapter=20th Century Genocides|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/OBO/9780199743292-0105|isbn=978-0-19-974329-2|access-date=26 November 2021|via=Oxford Bibliographies Online|archive-date=24 March 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200324130403/https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0105.xml|url-status=live}}</ref> although some scholars say that it remains a significant issue in modern politics and dispute whether Soviet policies would fall under the [[legal definition of genocide]].<ref>{{cite news|last=Marples|first=David R.|date=30 November 2005|url=http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7176|url-status=dead|title=The great famine debate goes on...|work=Edmont Journal|publisher=University of Alberta|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080615015541/http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7176|archive-date=15 June 2008|access-date=28 November 2021|via=ExpressNews}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Kulchytsky|first=Stanislav|date=17 February 2007|url=https://day.kyiv.ua/uk/article/podrobici/golodomor-1932-1933-rr-yak-genocid-progalini-u-dokazoviy-bazi-1|title=Holodomor 1932–1933 rr. yak henotsyd: prohalyny u dokazovii bazi|script-title=uk:Голодомор 1932 — 1933 рр. як геноцид: прогалини у доказовій базі|trans-title=Holodomor 1932–1933 as genocide: gaps in the evidence|work=Den|language=uk|access-date=19 January 2021|archive-date=2 December 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201202145734/https://day.kyiv.ua/uk/article/podrobici/golodomor-1932-1933-rr-yak-genocid-progalini-u-dokazoviy-bazi-1|url-status=live}}</ref> Several scholars have disputed that the famine was a genocidal act by the Soviet government, including [[J. Arch Getty]],<ref name="Getty 2000">{{cite magazine|last=Getty|first=J. Arch|date=1 March 2000|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/03/the-future-did-not-work/378081/|title=The Future Did Not Work|magazine=The Atlantic|access-date=2 March 2021|quote=Similarly, the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives (including Courtois's co-editor Werth) is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan.}}</ref> [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]],<ref name="Wheatcroft 2018">{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen G.|date=August 2018|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326562364|title=The Turn Away from Economic Explanations for Soviet Famines|journal=Contemporary European History|publisher=Cambridge University Press|volume=27|issue=3|pages=465–469|doi=10.1017/S0960777318000358|doi-access=free|access-date=26 November 2021|via=ResearchGate|hdl=10536/DRO/DU:30116832|hdl-access=free}}</ref> [[R. W. Davies]],<ref>{{cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Robert W.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4s1lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PR14|title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 5: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933|last2=Wheatcroft|first2=Stephen|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|year=2009|isbn=978-0-230-27397-9|page=xiv}}</ref> and Mark Tauger.<ref>{{cite web|last=Tauger|first=Mark|date=1 July 2018|url=https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438|title=Review of Anne Applebaum's 'Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine'|website=History News Network|publisher=George Washington University|access-date=22 October 2019|archive-date=19 January 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200119043404/https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438|url-status=live}}</ref> Getty says that the "overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives&nbsp;... is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan."<ref name="Getty 2000"/> Wheatcroft says that the Soviet government's policies during the famine were criminal acts of fraud and manslaughter, though not outright murder or genocide.<ref name="Wheatcroft 2020">{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen G.|date=August 2020|title=The Complexity of the Kazakh Famine: Food Problems and Faulty Perceptions|journal=Journal of Genocide Research|volume=23|issue=4|pages=593–597|doi=10.1080/14623528.2020.1807143|s2cid=225333205}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|"We may well ask whether having revolutionarily high expectations is a crime? Of course it is, if it leads to an increase in the level of deaths, as a result of insufficient care being taken to safeguard the lives of those put at risk when the high ambitions failed to be fulfilled, and especially when it was followed by a cover-up. The same goes for not adjusting policy to unfolding evidence of crisis. But these are crimes of manslaughter and fraud rather than of murder. How heinous are they in comparison, say, with shooting over 600,000 citizens wrongly identified as enemies in 1937–8, or in shooting 25,000 Poles identified as a security risk in 1940, when there was no doubt as to the outcome of the orders? The conventional view is that manslaughter is less heinous than cold blooded murder."<ref name="Wheatcroft 2020"/>}} In regard to the Soviet state's reaction to this crisis, Wheatcroft comments: "The good harvest of 1930 led to the decisions to export substantial amounts of grain in 1931 and 1932. The Soviet leaders also assumed that the wholesale socialisation of livestock farming would lead to the rapid growth of meat and dairy production. These policies failed, and the Soviet leaders attributed the failure not to their own lack of realism but to the machinations of enemies. Peasant resistance was blamed on the kulaks, and the increased use of force on a large scale almost completely replaced attempts at persuasion."<ref name="Davies & Wheatcroft 2009">{{cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Robert W.|last2=Wheatcroft|first2=Stephen G.|year=2009|title=The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|page=xv|doi=10.1057/9780230273979|isbn=9780230238558}}</ref> Wheatcroft says that Soviet authorities refused to scale down grain procurements despite the low harvest,<ref name="Wheatcroft 2018"/> and that "[Wheatcroft and his colleague's] work has confirmed – if confirmation were needed – that the grain campaign in 1932/33 was unprecedentedly harsh and repressive."<ref name="Davies & Wheatcroft 2004">{{cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Robert W.|last2=Wheatcroft|first2=Stephen G.|year=2004|title=The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|pages=436–441|isbn=9780333311073}}</ref>

[[Joseph Stalin]] biographer [[Stephen Kotkin]] supports a similar view, stating that while "there is no question of Stalin's responsibility for the famine" and many deaths could have been prevented if not for the "insufficient" and counterproductive Soviet measures, there is no evidence for Stalin's intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately.<ref name="Kotkin 2017">{{cite interview|last=Kotkin|first=Stephen|date=8 November 2017|url=https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/11/08/studying-stalin/|title=Terrible Talent: Studying Stalin|magazine=The American Interest|interviewer=Richard Aldous|access-date=26 November 2021}}</ref> While Mark Tauger considers the famine to be the result of natural factors stating that "the harsh 1932–1933 procurements only displaced the famine from urban areas" but the low harvest "made a famine inevitable". Ultimately concluding that it is difficult to accept the famine "as the result of the 1932 grain procurements and as a conscious act of [[genocide]]" he still concurs with Wheatcroft that "the regime was still responsible for the deprivation and suffering of the Soviet population in the early 1930s", and "if anything, these data show that the effects of [collectivization and forced industrialization] were worse than has been assumed."<ref>Tauger, Mark (1991). "The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933". Slavic Review. 50 (1): 70–89. doi:10.2307/2500600. JSTOR 2500600.</ref>

In 1958 in China, [[Mao Zedong]]'s Communist Government launched the [[Great Leap Forward]] campaign, aimed at rapidly industrializing the country.<ref name=NewYorkTimes>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/16/reviews/970216.16ebersta.html|title=The Great Leap Backward|newspaper=The New York Times|date=16 February 1997|access-date=22 October 2011|archive-date=13 November 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121113233034/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/16/reviews/970216.16ebersta.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The government forcibly took control of agriculture. Barely enough grain was left for the peasants, and starvation occurred in many rural areas. Exportation of grain continued despite the famine and the government attempted to conceal it. While the famine is attributed to unintended consequences, it is believed that the government refused to acknowledge the problem, thereby further contributing to the deaths. In many instances, peasants were persecuted. Between 20 and 45 million people perished in this famine, making it one of the deadliest famines to date.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html |title=Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years' |last=Akbar |first=Arifa |date=17 September 2010 |access-date=20 September 2010 |location=London |work=The Independent |archive-date=11 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200511102449/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Historian and journalists, such as [[Seumas Milne]] and [[Jon Wiener]], have criticized the emphasis on [[communism]] when assigning blame for famines. In a 2002 article for ''[[The Guardian]]'', Milne mentions "the moral blindness displayed towards the record of [[colonialism]]", and he writes: "If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidable [[Bengal famine of 1943]].<ref>Milne, Seumas (12 September 2002), "The battle for history", The Guardian, London, retrieved 12 May 2010</ref> Weiner makes a similar assertion while comparing the [[Holodomor]] and the Bengal famine of 1943, stating that [[Winston Churchill]]'s role in the Bengal famine "seems similar to Stalin's role in the Ukrainian famine".<ref>Wiener, Jon (15 October 2012), How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-27141-8 p. 38</ref> Historian [[Mike Davis (scholar)|Mike Davis]], author of ''[[Late Victorian Holocausts]]'', draws comparisons between the [[Great Chinese Famine]] and the [[Timeline of major famines in India during British rule|Indian famines of the late 19th century]], arguing that in both instances the governments which oversaw the response to the famines deliberately chose not to alleviate conditions and as such bear responsibility for the scale of deaths in said famines.<ref>Day, Meagan (23 October 2018), "Mike Davis on the Crimes of Socialism and Capitalism", Jacobin, retrieved 25 October 2018</ref> According to [[Jason Hickel]] and Dylan Sullivan, the number excess deaths during the apex of British colonialism in India rise to around 100 million.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sullivan |first1=Dylan |last2=Hickel|first2=Jason |date=2023 |title=Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century|url= |journal=[[World Development (journal)|World Development]]|volume=161 |issue= |page=106026 |doi=10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106026|s2cid=252315733 |access-date=|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Sullivan|first1=Dylan|last2=Hickel|first2=Jason|date=2 December 2022|title=How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years|url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians|work=[[Al Jazeera Arabic|Al Jazeera]]|location=|access-date=13 December 2022|archive-date=15 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230115112349/https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians|url-status=live}}</ref>

Malawi ended its famine by subsidizing farmers despite the strictures imposed by the [[World Bank]].<ref name=newyorktimes /> During the 1973 [[Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia#Wollo famine|Wollo Famine]] in [[Ethiopia]], food was shipped out of Wollo to the capital city of [[Addis Ababa]], where it could command higher prices. In the late-1970s and early-1980s, residents of the [[dictatorship]]s of Ethiopia and [[Sudan]] suffered massive famines, but the [[democracy]] of [[Botswana]] avoided them, despite also suffering a severe drop in national food production. In [[Somalia]], famine occurred because of a [[failed state]].

The [[famine in Yemen]] is a direct result of the [[Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen]] and the [[Blockade of Yemen|blockade]] imposed by Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the United States.<ref>{{cite news |author=Julian Borger |title=Saudi-led naval blockade leaves 20m Yemenis facing humanitarian disaster |date=4 June 2016 |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/saudi-led-naval-blockade-worsens-yemen-humanitarian-disaster |author-link=Julian Borger |access-date=19 November 2017 |archive-date=5 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150605084858/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/saudi-led-naval-blockade-worsens-yemen-humanitarian-disaster |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>"[https://theintercept.com/2017/11/14/congress-yemen-war-unauthorized/ Congress Votes to Say It Hasn't Authorized War in Yemen, Yet War in Yemen Goes On]". ''[[The Intercept]]''. 14 November 2017. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180107231800/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/14/congress-yemen-war-unauthorized/ |date=7 January 2018 }}</ref> According to the UN, 130 children under five years of age were dying from starvation and starvation related diseases every day by the end of 2017, with 50,000 dead for the year. As of October 2018, half the population is at risk of famine.<ref>{{cite news|date=23 October 2018|title=Half the population of Yemen at risk of famine: UN emergency relief chief|url=https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/10/1023962|work=UN News|access-date=26 October 2018|archive-date=26 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181026093500/https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/10/1023962|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Famines by political regime.png|thumb|Famines since 1850 by political regime]]

Israel's [[2023 Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip|blockade of Gaza]] and the [[Gaza war|war]] between Israel and Hamas led to a [[Gaza Strip famine|famine in the Gaza Strip]] in 2024.<ref>{{cite news |title=More than 500,000 people in Gaza face 'catastrophic hunger': UNRWA |url=https://abcnews.go.com/International/500000-people-gaza-face-catastrophic-hunger-unrwa/story?id=106593939 |work=ABC News |date=23 January 2024}}</ref> On 16 January 2024, UN experts accused Israel of "destroying Gaza's food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people".<ref>{{cite web |title=Over one hundred days into the war, Israel destroying Gaza's food system and weaponizing food, say UN human rights experts |url=https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/over-one-hundred-days-war-israel-destroying-gazas-food-system-and |website=OHCHR |publisher=United Nations |date=16 January 2024}}</ref>

According to Amartya Sen (1999), "there has never been a famine in a functioning multiparty democracy". Hasell and Roser have demonstrated that while there have been a few minor exceptions, famines rarely occur in democratic systems but are strongly correlated with [[Autocracy|autocratic]] and [[Colonialism|colonial]] systems.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://ourworldindata.org/famines/|title=Famines|work=Our World in Data|access-date=8 December 2017|language=en-US|archive-date=8 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171208231529/https://ourworldindata.org/famines/|url-status=live}}</ref>