In the summer of 1985, images of emaciated children in Ethiopia shocked the world and prompted one of the biggest charity concerts ever: Live Aid. Megastars like Paul McCartney, Lionel Richie, Madonna and Queen took to the stage in London and Philadelphia. Tina Turner and Mick Jagger wowed an audience that numbered over a billion people watching in person and on broadcast. Altogether, the event raised well over $100 million for famine relief in Africa.
Celebrities weren't the only ones responding to the famine — the U.S. government did as well.
That same year, it created a system aimed at avoiding future famines. The U.S. launched FEWS NET, the world's first famine early warning system network. Combining data from a wide range of sources — from trade dynamics to weather data, from crop reports to migration information — it began producing detailed and timely reports on where and when hunger might strike.
For decades, governments and aid organizations around the world have relied on this system to predict and prevent food crises. That came to a sudden halt in January. The early warning system went offline as a result of President Trump's stop-work orders. It had been part of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump dismantled.
Now, FEWS NET is in the process of coming back online. This news has been greeted both with enthusiasm and caution by the humanitarian aid world, as food security specialists warn that questions remain about the quality of the revived system and its power to prevent starvation.
The "lighthouse"
FEWS NET — which is funded by the U.S. government and run by contractors — is the work of data nerds based in more than 20 countries, from Haiti to Somalia. They pore over information to put together detailed predictions of hunger hot spots, forecasting what will happen eight months out and then updating those predictions regularly. This allows aid groups and governments to adjust policies and position food so it arrives at the right time and the right place to avoid a food crisis.
"We are working to collect information, analyze information, validate this information in the field," explains Luis Ramirez, who is part of FEWS NET's team in Latin America and the Caribbean. Based in Guatemala, he is the regional technical lead.
He thinks of FEWS NET as a lighthouse. "That lighthouse that helps to guide through that sea where the ships should go to help the people," Ramirez says.
The goal is to avoid human suffering, but its work also prevents mass migration and helps ensure stability. Plus, FEWS NET made sense economically, says Alex de Waal, a professor at Tufts University who studies famines and is head of the school's World Peace Foundation.
"It is far, far cheaper to prevent a disaster than it is to relieve suffering when a disaster unfolds," he says.
The value of FEWS NET was obvious in 2016, he says, when it helped alert the world to a massive drought in Ethiopia. Six months before the devastation hit, Ethiopians and Americans started moving food aid into place.
The impact of this early warning was, by all accounts, extraordinary. "It was the largest number of people ever affected by a food crisis in Ethiopia, probably in the whole of Africa. And not only did no one die, but we didn't have the migration, the destitution. It was really a model," says de Waal.
This type of change made him think that famine might be a thing of the past. "For most of my career, I thought, 'OK, I'm studying something that's being consigned to history,'" de Waal says.
"Turn it off"
But famines haven't gone away. And FEWS NET kept working to avert disaster until Ramirez's proverbial lighthouse went dark in late January when Trump halted most foreign aid.
"It was pretty much like, 'OK, just stand up, turn it off and walk away,'" Ramirez recalls.
The stop-work orders and aid disruptions crippled FEWS NET's operation.
"It was the first and only time that we've been offline," says Tanya Boudreau, who works for FEWS NET in Washington, D.C. She leads the team that's in charge of integrating all the information that has been gathered around the world and then analyzing and sharing the findings.
Then, midway through April, elements of FEWS NET started to return. At the end of June, the website was back up. And come October — Boudreau says — there will be reporting from all the countries that the agency previously worked in and a global outlook with an eight-month prediction.
The State Department did not respond to requests from NPR for comment about its decision to end and then restart FEWS NET. It also did not answer questions about the budget and scope of the system going forward.
Still, the decision to resume FEWS NET is taken as a good sign by those in the field. "It signaled to me that there were people inside the U.S. government that understood the importance of this information that we were providing, not only for ourselves but for every country around the world," says Caitlin Welsh, the director of the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The impact of the shutdown
Boudreau says they're still assessing the impact of the multimonth shutdown. But, she says, one thing is clear: "There's been a gap in the information that decision-makers have to plan."
De Waal worries that Ethiopia might, once again, showcase the impact of FEWS NET, this time highlighting the effect of the temporary shutdown. The government there kicked out a parallel United Nations system for detecting famines, called IPC, or the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. This happened in 2021, after the U.N. warned of human-caused famine in Ethiopia and the government there accused the U.N. officials of meddling in the country's internal affairs.
Today, Ethiopia is "on the brink of a major food crisis," says de Waal. "But in the absence of the IPC and in the absence of FEWS NET, we don't have good-enough data and intelligence. It's actually very scary."
He argues that FEWS NET is critical even in countries where IPC is functional. That's because IPC is part of the U.N. system and, thus, relies on the host government. "And that means that if that country, let's say Sudan or Ethiopia, wants to conceal a famine, it's easy for them to manipulate the information available to the U.N. agencies," he says. For this reason, he says, many countries rely on FEWS NET's independence. That made this year's shutdown even more significant.
"When it was taken offline, there were reverberations around the world because so many people were relying on that information," Welsh says.
The lighthouse light comes back on
When Ramirez got word that he could reapply for his old job, he was thrilled. So was his wife. During his interviews in June, she listened through his office door. "When they told me, 'OK, Luis, we want to continue,' she was like, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'" Ramirez remembers.
Boudreau has been calling people like Ramirez to check in on them and help make sure they have everything they need to get FEWS NET back up and running.
She says part of the reason FEWS NET has been able to "get back to work really, really quickly" is many of the staff members — some with three decades of experience on the project — have returned. "Surprisingly, we lost very few people," Boudreau says. That's critical because, she says, a new hire needs about six months of training.
What has amazed Boudreau even more is that even as the project was suspended, many staff members kept working informally — keeping tabs on the famine situation in their country.
"One of the most heartwarming things is just how committed our staff are to this project," she says. "And so while there's been a gap in reporting, there hasn't actually been a gap in monitoring, in many cases."
She acknowledges there are still big unknowns, including whether FEWS NET will be following through on pre-Trump plans to add to the 20-plus countries where the system currently works.
De Waal, of Tufts University, also says he has a lot of questions.
"Is the information still going to be gathered with the same rigor and speed?" he says. "And if you have the information, are you going to act on it?
His worry is that a robust response could be lacking since both the U.S. and a number of European countries have cut so much of their humanitarian aid.
This changed attitude is also reflected in the legacy of that other 1985 landmark famine event: Live Aid. For the 40th anniversary of the concert, rock star Bob Geldof, who created that landmark event, has been making the interview rounds. In a conversation on CNN with Geldof, journalist Bill Weir noted how "cool" it was in 1985 to express support for starving children halfway around the world — and "how far we seem from that today." And Geldof has reflected in a New York Times interview, "We're in a radically different world now."
Copyright 2025 NPR