US Famine Tracker Went Dark for Three Countries, Then Quietly Came Back Under Pressure
Maryam Tariq
For nearly two months this summer, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the gold standard for global hunger forecasting, stopped reporting on three of the countries facing the world’s most severe food crises. Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen disappeared from the platform’s tracking maps and reports without any public announcement, a blackout that only came to light after a former USAID official noticed it by accident.
What FEWS NET Actually Does and Why the Gap Mattered
Established by USAID in 1985, FEWS NET pulls in crop data, market prices and satellite imagery to forecast acute hunger crises up to nine months in advance, giving governments and aid organizations enough lead time to preposition food and supplies before a famine actually kills people. Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former senior USAID official, discovered the outage while flying to Somalia in early August, noticing the country’s color coded famine map on the platform’s landing page had gone gray, with no updates since June. Somalia’s profile hadn’t been touched, despite an estimated 6.5 million people, roughly a third of the country, facing acute food insecurity. A regular publication called the Peak Food Assistance Needs Outlook Brief, released August 14, similarly omitted Somalia, Afghanistan and Yemen entirely.
The Scale of What Was Being Hidden
Together, the three removed countries account for more than 38 million people projected to face crisis level hunger or worse. In Afghanistan, the UN estimates 14 million people face acute hunger amid economic isolation and drought. In Yemen, nearly five million people, close to half the population, face acute food insecurity after years of conflict and blockaded ports. The removal wasn’t an isolated technical glitch, it followed the Trump administration’s earlier decision to slash emergency food aid funding to all three countries, despite their ongoing crises.
Why Critics Called This Politicization
Humanitarian organizations and reporting from El País and Devex accused the administration of effectively hiding the humanitarian consequences of its own aid cuts. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a former USAID administrator, warned that losing this forecasting data meant losing the ability to position aid before deaths occur, saying plainly that the world cannot prevent its hungriest people from starving while flying blind.
Not the First Disruption to This System
This wasn’t the first time FEWS NET has gone dark under the current administration either. In February 2025, the system briefly disappeared entirely, with its website displaying a message that the site and its data were currently unavailable, before eventually returning. Separately, in late 2024, the network faced accusations of bowing to political pressure from the Biden administration to withdraw a famine risk alert specifically covering Gaza, a region the platform has left largely unassessed since late 2025.
The Reversal, and the Catch Attached to It
Following sustained pressure from journalists, humanitarian watchdogs, and investigative reporting from Devex and El País, the State Department confirmed that public reporting for Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen would resume starting in September 2026. However, the department added that it would continue evaluating all of its programs to ensure they advance foreign policy priorities, language aid organizations have read less as a reassurance and more as a warning that future data disruptions remain entirely possible.
What This Means Going Forward
The episode leaves humanitarian groups in an uneasy position, the specific data gap has been closed for now, but the underlying decision making process that allowed it to happen quietly, and without explanation, in the first place remains fully intact. For a system whose entire value depends on consistent, apolitical reporting months ahead of a crisis, that uncertainty alone may already be enough to complicate how aid groups plan their next response.
Sources:
· Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen disappear from the latest US famine reports, Trump is politicizing the analysis — El País: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2026-09-01/afghanistan-somalia-and-yemen-disappear-from-the-latest-us-famine-reports-trump-is-politicizing-the-analysis.html
· Famine tracker stops monitoring Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen — Devex: https://www.devex.com/news/famine-tracker-stops-monitoring-afghanistan-somalia-and-yemen-113081
· US famine monitor resumes reporting for 3 hunger-stricken nations — Devex: https://www.devex.com/news/us-famine-monitor-resumes-reporting-for-3-hunger-stricken-nations-113219
· Whatever happened to the US famine alert system that Trump shut down, then reopened — NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/09/01/nx-s1-5944472/famine-usaid-fews-net
