For decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development has served as the backbone of early warning systems to predict extreme hunger globally, funding critical data collection that underpins famine prevention efforts. But those systems are now collapsing as USAID is dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping foreign aid freeze.
Specifically, USAID’s downfall is crippling the work of the world’s two most critical famine monitoring systems: the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, a USAID-funded tool that could forecast food insecurity six to nine months out; and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a United Nations-coordinated initiative that provides a common global framework for assessing the severity and scale of food insecurity and acute malnutrition.
Analysts warn that the loss and degradation of these tools will not only blind the world to impending food crises but will also weaken international responses to humanitarian disasters. And the timing couldn’t be worse.
About the author
Ayenat Mersie
Ayenat Mersie is a Global Development Reporter for Devex. Previously, she worked as a freelance journalist for publications such as National Geographic and Foreign Policy and as an East Africa correspondent for Reuters.
