The famine of 1983–85
Drought, civil war and government policy combine in a catastrophic famine in northern Ethiopia, which the world sees on television and answers with Live Aid.
- Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia — Alex de Waal (Africa Watch), Human Rights Watch (1991)
- The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa — Gebru Tareke, Yale University Press (2009)
- A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 — Bahru Zewde, James Currey (2001)
Rains failed across northern Ethiopia in the early 1980s, but drought alone does not explain the scale of the disaster. Wollo, Tigray and Eritrea were war zones. The Derg blocked food and trade from reaching areas held by the TPLF and EPLF, bombed markets, and spent heavily on the army and on lavish celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the revolution in September 1984, while hiding the crisis.
- Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia — Alex de Waal (Africa Watch), Human Rights Watch (1991)
- The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa — Gebru Tareke, Yale University Press (2009)
In October 1984 a BBC report by Michael Buerk from the camp at Korem shocked the world. Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and the Live Aid concerts of July 1985 raised enormous sums. The government then forcibly resettled hundreds of thousands of northerners to the south and west, where many died. Estimates of the famine’s death toll vary widely, from several hundred thousand to around a million.
- Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia — Alex de Waal (Africa Watch), Human Rights Watch (1991)
- A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991 — Bahru Zewde, James Currey (2001)
The famine had long consequences. Aid agencies faced hard questions about whether relief had helped the regime pursue resettlement and war, and the experience shaped later debates about humanitarian neutrality. The rebel movements gained support among the hungry, which helped the TPLF and EPLF to win in 1991. And for many Ethiopians abroad, the famine is the reason strangers still greet them with jokes about hunger, which they find deeply hurtful.
- Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia — Alex de Waal (Africa Watch), Human Rights Watch (1991)
- The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa — Gebru Tareke, Yale University Press (2009)
Drought and backward farming caused the famine; resettling northern peasants to the fertile south and west, and gathering villages together, were humane solutions.
- The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa — Gebru Tareke, Yale University Press (2009)
War and the regime's counter-insurgency, which blockaded rebel areas, restricted trade and forced mass resettlement, made the famine come earlier, hit harder and last longer; Africa Watch argued that more than half its deaths could be attributed to human rights abuses.
- Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia — Alex de Waal (Africa Watch), Human Rights Watch (1991)
Why it matters today
The famine killed hundreds of thousands and fixed an image of Ethiopia as a land of starving children that many Ethiopians still find painful and unfair. Historians stress that it was as much political as natural, a lesson Ethiopians recall whenever hunger is used in war, as it was again in Tigray in 2020–22.