War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to Complex Emergencies

Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Rwanda: these and other current conflicts involve not just civilian deaths as a result of acts of war, but also widespread hunger and even famine. UN agencies and many charitable organizations have tried to intervene in order to reduce the human suffering involved. But, as this thorough investigation reveals, they confront numerous difficulties and limitations.
The authors explore ways in which warfare creates hunger. The cases of Angola, Sudan, Tigray, Eritrea, Mozambique and Somalia illuminate the nature of complex emergencies in situations of war. Other chapters focus on the reforms required of the UN's machinery, reassess the role of relief in time of war, and ask how the international community should respond to the new circumstances of post-Cold War international interventions.
This authoritative book is centrally relevant to the difficult issues of policy, institutional reform and development of new human rights approaches which the international community must confront if more effective interventions are to be made.

Joanna Macrae is a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute. Over the past decade she has conducted a wide range of research and evaluations looking at how aid works in conflict settings, and how these responses reflect wider changes in international relations. In addition to extensive work on donor policy in this area, she has also conducted fieldwork in the Balkans, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Sudan and West Africa. She is Co- Editor, with Anthony Zwi of War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to Complex Emergencies, and with Helen Young of Disasters: the journal of disaster studies, policy and management.