The Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) will host Prof Alex de Waal, Exec Director of the World Peace Foundation.
This is a hybrid event and registration is essential.
Registration: https://HCRI-landmark25.eventbrite.co.uk
FULL TITLE
The Return of Famines? The end of liberal humanitarianism and the perils of mass starvation
ABSTRACT
At a time when the liberal order is in sharp decline and the world’s largest aid provider is being dissolved, should we expect a return of great famines?
The near-conquest of famine was an under-acknowledged but signal achievement of the liberal world order. This lecture will examine the history of global famine over the last 150 years, showing data for trends and correlates, and how their key characteristics have changed over the decades.
In the last decade, progress towards eliminating mass starvation stalled and has reversed. The lecture will place this regression in historical context, and will examine what political illiberalism and wrenching changes to the global economy portend, along with the dramatic ending of the US as the world’s major humanitarian donor and norm setter.
SPEAKER
Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He has worked on the Horn of Africa, and on famine, conflict, and related issues since the 1980s as a researcher and practitioner. He served as a senior advisor to the African Union on Sudan and South Sudan in various capacities. He was listed among Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential international intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic’s 29 ‘brave thinkers’ in 2009. He is the recipient of the Huxley Award of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 2024.
De Waal’s recent books include: The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power (Polity 205); Mass Starvation: The history and future of famine (Polity 2018), New Pandemics, Old Politics: 200 years of the war on disease and its alternatives (Polity 2021), and (with Willow Berridge, Justin Lynch and Raga Makawi), Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The promise and betrayal of a people’s revolution (Hurst 2022). His next book is Negotiating the Sudans: The African Union High Level Panels 2009-2014, (with Willow Berridge, forthcoming Cornell University Press 2025).
ABOUT HCRI
Based at the University of Manchester, we are a leading global centre for the study of humanitarianism and conflict response, global health, international disaster management and peacebuilding.
Our work is driven by a desire to inform and support policy and decision makers, to optimise collaborations between partner organisations, and to foster increased understanding and debate within the field.
Bringing together disciplines from medicine to the humanities, we research questions and issues related to what the United Nations calls the ‘triple nexus’ – humanitarian response, development and peace. Our aim is to facilitate improvements in crisis response on a global scale.
https://www.hcri.manchester.ac.uk/
