A key USAID-funded early warning system for predicting famine that is widely used in the humanitarian sector has gone offline as of Thursday, joining other tools and programs that are unable to operate as the Trump administration freezes U.S. foreign aid for 90 days.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, is funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, or BHA. It is a critical and leading source of up-to-date data to predict and track food insecurity in nearly 30 countries in Africa, Central America, and Asia.
The website contains a message stating that its tools — including its learning platform, data warehouse, and data explorer — are “currently unavailable,” and emails to staff are inactive. Devex’s attempts to reach the service were met with a one-line automated response that says: “FEWS NET is not accepting emails at the moment.”
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
