Previous Year Question

Humanitarian crisis in Yemen

• Yemen’s civil war escalated extensively in 2015.

• The conflict severely disrupted food imports, ports, transportation, healthcare services and people’s livelihoods.

• According to a United Nations assessment in February 2017, approximately 17.1 million people were food insecure, while about 7.3 million required emergency food assistance.

• Nearly 2.2 million children were malnourished, including approximately half a million suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

Famine in South Sudan

• South Sudan had been experiencing civil war since December 2013.

• Armed conflict, displacement, disruption of cultivation, livestock raiding and obstruction of humanitarian assistance intensified the food crisis.

• In February 2017, famine was formally declared in parts of Unity State in South Sudan.

• According to the United Nations, approximately 100,000 people faced immediate starvation.

The principal clue in the question

• The question is not referring merely to general poverty or a natural drought.

• It specifically mentions starvation caused by war or ethnic conflict.

• At that time, the most prominent examples of such severe conflict-driven humanitarian crises were Yemen and South Sudan.

Why are the other options incorrect?

• Angola and Zambia: They faced food-security challenges, but were not the pair experiencing the immediate, large-scale conflict-induced famine described in the question.

• Morocco and Tunisia: Neither country was undergoing such famine or mass starvation caused by war at that time.

• Venezuela and Colombia: Venezuela faced an economic and food crisis, but the pair did not correspond to the conflict-induced famine situation described.