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The United States’ system for monitoring famine globally has been taken offline amid President Donald Trump’s order for a 90-day freeze on nearly all US foreign assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet) was established after the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, as part of a worldwide effort to prevent a repeat of its devastating impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was designed by US government agencies, including its international development body USAID and the space agency Nasa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is regarded as a gold standard in combining weather data and political analysis to predict drought and food insecurity globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alongside a model run by the UN, the system allows aid officials to target emergency food supply ahead of time, and is credited with mitigating the effects of a devastating drought in the Horn of Africa in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has been used to try to target aid during the current famine in Sudan as the war continues there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A briefing service provided by the network was stopped as part of Trump’s suspension of nearly all foreign assistance, according to a source familiar with Fewsnet’s operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked about the shutdown, USAID said it was “expeditiously processing exception requests” but could not “address every individual exception-related question”. It was not clear whether an exception request for Fewsnet was pending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The network is “insanely important”, according to Dave Harden, who oversaw its operation at USAID during the 2016 food security emergency in East Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Because we had Fewsnet, and we had guard teams, we were able to pre-position food and supplies [in Ethiopia] and plant it in a way that was remarkably different than what happened in 1984,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last Friday, the State Department issued a “stop-work” order on all US foreign assistance, worth nearly $70bn a year, with the exception of emergency food aid and military aid to Israel and Egypt, pending a 90-day review to ensure programmes’ alignment with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n