Nicholas Haan, architect of global system to detect famines, dies at 60

Nicholas Haan, the innovator and humanitarian who created the world’s most influential tool for detecting famines and galvanizing humanitarian responses to them, died on Dec. 2. He was 60 years old. Twenty-one years ago, Haan created the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a tool that reshaped how the world recognizes and responds to hunger crises. Today, aid agencies, governments, and donors rely on the United Nations-coordinated system to measure and compare food crises across countries and over time, helping guide billions of dollars in humanitarian funding and decisions that affect millions of people living through conflict, drought, and economic shocks. “Nicholas established foundational systems that continue to guide humanitarian response and save countless lives worldwide,” Data Friendly Space, a nonprofit focused on improving data use in humanitarian response, wrote on LinkedIn. “His legacy of innovation, compassion, and unwavering commitment to serving humanity will continue to inspire our work in data and food security, as well as the entire humanitarian community.” Originally from California, Haan began his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Kenya in the late 1980s, where he taught science to secondary school students. He learned to speak Swahili, and the experience appears to have been transformative: He spent much of the rest of his life in the region, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout the 1990s, Haan worked across development and public health projects in the region, including leading a trachoma eradication program in central Tanzania and later working with NASA as a climate scientist. The combination was emblematic of his career: He was a practitioner who consistently worked to connect fieldwork with data, and humanitarian response with technological systems. By 2003, Haan was working with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in East Africa as years of failed rains pushed Somalia to the brink of a devastating hunger crisis. Roughly 200,000 people were experiencing extreme food shortages, but there was no shared, standardized way to communicate the severity of severe conditions — or to compare one crisis with another. “What was more severe in terms of food security analysis? We didn't have a really good way of communicating that to decision makers so that they could understand the analysis and be a part of the analysis,” Haan said in a 2022 interview. “And I realized that was a problem. So I went home one night, and I started to scratch together a simple five-scale system whereby all different pieces of evidence could be incorporated into this scale.” That sketch quickly outgrew Somalia. What began as a practical fix for a single crisis was soon taken up by senior humanitarian decision-makers looking for a common language to compare food emergencies across borders and over time. The result was IPC, a system that brought scattered evidence into focus and, in doing so, became the reference point for when famine is declared and how the world responds. The framework classifies conditions along a five-phase scale, moving from minimal food insecurity through crisis and emergency to famine, based on evidence ranging from nutrition and mortality data to livelihoods and food access. “He remained part of the IPC at every step of its evolution,” the IPC said in a statement on Monday announcing his death, adding that Haan “championed the integration of cutting-edge technological tools to enhance the IPC’s human-led processes.” Haan also served on the Famine Review Committee, a small independent panel of experts responsible for assessing evidence and determining whether famine thresholds have been met in the world’s most severe food crises. A humanitarian technologist Technology remained a central theme in Haan’s work and thinking. He spoke frequently about the potential for new tools to make humanitarian decision-making faster, more transparent, and more accountable, while emphasizing that technology should support — not replace — human judgment. “My mindset is the poorest people in the world should be the ones who benefit from exponential technologies the most,” he said on the Talk Boutique podcast in May. “It's a seismic shift in terms of power and empowerment, in terms of the potential for much more efficient humanitarian decision-making and development decision-making in general,” he told Devex in April. Haan was a fellow at Singularity University, the Silicon Valley-based institute focused on innovation and exponential technologies, where he helped build partnerships with the World Food Programme and UNICEF. His work there reflected a broader effort to connect technologists with humanitarian challenges and to push the sector to rethink how aid is delivered and who it serves. “Dr. Nicholas Haan taught us that ‘impact’ is not just about data or technology. It is about courage. The courage to kayak with crocodiles, the courage to learn a new language, and the courage to believe the world can be better than it is today,” Singularity University said in a statement. ‘A life well lived’ Haan is survived by his wife, Mariam, and sisters Annie and Mary Catherine. Following news of his death, messages of condolence and appreciation circulated widely across the humanitarian and development community. Colleagues pointed to his ability to connect disciplines, his rigor, and his work’s influence on real-world decision-making. “Nick turned data into decisions that saved lives, and inspired many of us to do better for the people we serve,” Simon Renk, a senior monitoring officer at WFP, wrote on LinkedIn. “Nick and the IPC heralded a new era of a structured, rigorous systematic approach to humanitarian response … the IPC informed and shaped our every response to emerging crises in Somalia. A life well lived. A job well done,” said Andrew Harberd, the former emergency coordinator for FAO in Somalia. “No matter what challenge he faced, Nick embraced the task ahead with great intelligence, and a positive spirit that was so inspiring, it encouraged many around the world to step up the fight against hunger, malnutrition and famine,” said Mark Smulders, international food security information specialist at the Asian Development Bank. In recent months, Haan reflected on the strain facing the humanitarian system amid funding cuts, political shifts, and rising needs. He acknowledged the human costs of disruption, while arguing that moments of upheaval could also create space for better approaches. In a conversation with Devex earlier this year, as Gaza and Sudan faced simultaneous famines, he urged humanitarians: “Don’t back away, and do what you can. Don’t accept the sliding standards of humanitarian action. You should always be striving for higher standards, not loosening them.” At the same time, he acknowledged the turbulence ahead. “I'm braced for the impact of what's going to happen, but I'm also optimistic about the disruptions that are going to come so that we can do things in a much more effective way,” he told Talk Boutique. “I really encourage all of our listeners, don't let our governments decide our barometers of compassion and empathy,” he continued. “We get to be the controllers of that.”