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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $31.95

Format:
Paperback
288 pp.
208 mm x 140 mm

ISBN-13:
9780195181630

Publication date:
March 2005

Imprint: OUP US


Famine that Kills

Darfur, Sudan, Revised Edition

Alex de Waal

Series : Oxford Studies in African Affairs

In 2004, Darfur, Sudan was described as the "world's greatest humanitarian crisis." Twenty years previously, Darfur was also the site of a disastrous famine. Famine that Kills is a seminal account of that famine, and a social history of the region. In a new preface prepared for this revised edition, Alex de Waal analyzes the roots of the current conflict in land disputes, social disruption and impoverishment. Despite vast changes in the nature of famines and in the capacity of response, de Waal's original challenge to humanitarian theory and practice including a focus on the survival strategies of rural people has never been more relevant. Documenting the resilience of the people who suffered, it explains why many fewer died than had been predicted by outsiders. It is also a pathbreaking study of the causes of famine deaths, showing how outbreaks of infectious disease killed more people than starvation. Now a classic in the field, Famine that Kills provides critical background and lessons of past intervention for a region that finds itself in another moment of humanitarian tragedy.

Reviews

  • "...an interesting new preface in which he comments on events in the region since the early 1980s...a useful case study of the dynamics of famine."--Foreign Affairs

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Alex de Waal is a Director of Justice Africa in London and a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University. He is the author of several books on famine, human rights, and conflict in Africa, and has been at the forefront of mobilizing African and international responses to these problems.

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Special Features

  • A looming humanitarian crisis has put the Darfur region of Sudan in the news again as government-affiliated militias attack local villagers
  • New preface covers the recent developments in Sudan and connects the current violence to the earlier famine in 1984-85