Ethiopian famine of 1983–1985

Between 1983 and 1985 famine struck northern Ethiopia, above all the provinces of Tigray and Wollo and the territory of Eritrea, in the midst of a long civil war. No famine in a hundred years had hit the country so hard, and some 7.75 million people were affected. Estimates of the dead range from about 300,000 to 1.2 million. Television pictures of the starving prompted one of the largest humanitarian responses of the twentieth century, while later research stressed that government policy, not drought alone, made the disaster so deadly.

Famine had a long history in Ethiopia, and news of a 1973 famine in Wollo had undermined the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, who was overthrown the following year. The military junta that replaced him, the Derg, later led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, abolished feudal land tenure in 1975 but soon faced insurgencies across the country, including the Tigray People's Liberation Front and the Eritrean independence movements. The Derg, backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, forced peasants to sell grain to a state corporation at very low fixed prices, restricted their movement and banned private grain trading in much of the country. Living standards in the north had been falling since 1977. In 1984 Mengistu announced that 46 per cent of national output would go to the military.

Four provinces, including Tigray and Wollo, had record low rainfall in the mid-1980s, but harvests elsewhere were good, and the worst shortages were concentrated in Tigray, Wollo and Eritrea, the very areas where rebel armies were fighting government forces. The first signs appeared in early 1983, when destitute farmers began arriving at feeding centres. By mid-1984 a major famine was under way across the north, and fighting blocked relief convoys. By early 1986 an estimated 5.8 million people depended on food aid, and locusts made matters worse that year.

The government's relief agency portrayed the crisis as the result of drought and overpopulation alone and played down the war. According to Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, the regime's counter-insurgency strategy, which included restricting food to rebel-held areas, made the famine come earlier and strike harder; Human Rights Watch attributes more than half of the deaths to such abuses. Most relief flowed through government channels even though the government could reach only a minority of the hungry in the north. About 600,000 people were moved, many by force, during 1985 and 1986, from the north to the south and west. Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 50,000 died as a result. A programme of compulsory villagisation followed and reduced food production.

On 23 October 1984 a BBC report by Michael Buerk, describing "a biblical famine in the 20th century", shocked British viewers. The Royal Air Force began airdrops of food in November, joined by many other countries. The musician Bob Geldof organised Band Aid, whose single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" came out on 3 December 1984, and in July 1985 the Live Aid concert raised about £145 million.

The figures remain disputed. The United States Agency for International Development estimated more than 300,000 deaths. The scholar Alex de Waal, who called the often-cited United Nations figure of one million unscientific, put the toll at 400,000 to 500,000, while other estimates reach 1.2 million, together with some 400,000 refugees, 2.5 million internally displaced people and almost 200,000 orphans.

Because aid routed through the government became part of its war effort, the famine changed how agencies think about delivering relief in conflict zones. A 2010 BBC report that aid money had been diverted to buy weapons was later ruled by the BBC itself to have been unsupported with regard to Band Aid funds, and the corporation apologised.

Our 1985 map shows Ethiopia at the height of the famine, when Eritrea was still part of the country.