Food insecurity in South Africa was critical prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but the problem deepened quickly during the pandemic when government controls caused job losses, a food supply collapse, and escalating hunger. The food and fuel price hikes and political instability that followed led to the July 2021 'unrest', which left more than 350 people dead. Behind this lay a crisis within the governing African National Congress. In this paper, we draw on in-depth interviews and ethnography with individuals working in food-based livelihoods to investigate how people continued to secure food, and how rural food systems were affected. Against a backdrop of hunger, social unrest, and xenophobic hostility, we consider how people perceive the state in a rural area of KwaZulu-Natal. We argue that weak governing institutions and South Africa's exposure to globally-triggered spikes in food and fuel prices are leading to food insecurity. Hunger, in turn, is contributing to a crisis of legitimation for the state.

Over the past decade, famine and food insecurity have increased, yet there have been few articles with a critical analysis of their social and political dynamics. This special issue of Disasters aims to revive such analysis and to provide new insights. The special issue contains eight articles, with topics ranging from the role of global politics and neoliberal strategies, to sanctions, war, settler-colonialism, elite capture and inequalities, actions of resistance and resilience, and the challenges of famine prevention in today's global political context. The papers provide both global and local analysis, with the latter covering Kashmir, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.

In recent years, the world has faced a rapid rise in humanitarian needs and an increasing risk of famine. Given the potential threats posed by conflict, climate change, economic shocks, and other issues, it is important to be prepared for the possibility of new crises in the future. Drawing on key informant interviews and a literature review, this paper assesses the state of the art in famine prevention, examining a range of technical and political approaches and analysing emerging lessons. Based on the findings, it identifies five levels of famine prevention: (i) averting famine; (ii) anticipating famine; (iii) reducing famine risks; (iv) altering famine risks; and (v) preventing famine risks. The paper argues that the current focus only partially addresses a relatively narrow set of levels. It concludes that a more comprehensive approach that engages all five levels simultaneously could contribute to a global famine prevention framework for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Understanding the politics of famine is crucial to understanding why famines still occur. A key part of this is how famine is remembered, understood, and discussed. This paper focuses on songs popular among communities that have recently experienced deadly famine. Contemporary famines almost always manifest in armed conflict contexts, where there is limited political freedom. Here, songs and music can be an important way to debate sensitive political issues. This paper focuses on the way that songs and music shape 'regimes of truth' around famine, and who is shamed and held accountable for associated suffering. It is based on long-term ethnographic research, the recordings of famine-related songs, and collaborative analysis in Jonglei and Warrap States (South Sudan) in 2021-24. The paper shows how songs can mock soldiers for their seizing of assets during times of hunger and how they can create familial shame for famine suffering, shifting responsibility away from the real causes to family members.

Skyrocketing commodity prices and conflict-induced mass hunger in recent years have resuscitated discussions about why famines frequently reoccur in specific spaces of vulnerability. Intervention efforts still too often isolate food (in)security from its interwovenness in the political economy of water and energy and from the role of ideas in forging these interconnections across long time periods. Using (South) Sudanese history to rethink the causes of recurrent food insecurity, we underscore the need to analyse how political elites imagine the role of the water-energy-food nexus and associated environmental narratives in consolidating power. South Sudan's 2011 secession (from Sudan) marked the culmination of a struggle against a state that insurgents regarded as having starved its citizens. However, since independence, its leaders have replicated the nostrum they once combatted: Sudanese resources must 'feed the world'. A fixation with inserting water, energy, and food resources into global markets infuses their strategy, even if such an approach will not engender food abundance.

This paper critically analyses events that surrounded the reconstruction of the Colombian archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina islands after Hurricane Iota struck in 2020. Discussing the historical-structural and conjunctural dimensions within which the archipelago's history, various hurricanes, and reconstructions must be set, this paper draws on two theoretical conversations from Latin American and Caribbean critical thought and the critical humanitarian field that understand humanitarian governance as an 'arena of dispute'. Through mainly archival research of different sources, this paper assesses reconstruction and what it laid bare: structural vulnerability largely produced by the long lasting coloniality of power. In addition, it describes the active mediations and negotiations and the plethora of actions and repertoires in response to these centralised plans. Ultimately, we offer a vision whereby what is negotiated concerns not only the priorities and directions of the reconstruction, but also the design of a different future for the islands.

This article explores the role of historical, political, and economic processes in understanding war and famine in Sudan after 2023. The focus is on Al-Gezira, the site of Sudan's largest agricultural scheme. Using ethnography, interviews, and document reviews, the study analyses the Gezira irrigation project in three phases. First, the 1980s and 1990s, when patronage politics dominated its management. Second, the neoliberal strategies of the Gezira Scheme Act of 2005, which enabled Islamist profiteering while increasing vulnerability among farmers and labourers and tensions between them. Third, post 2018, when political movements used evidence of the scheme's deterioration to call for revolution, but once achieved, previous tensions grew and have been manipulated during the war. Sudan provides an example of how decades of war and neoliberal economic strategies have led to a deeply-rooted, violent, and extractive political economy. This has been to the benefit of business and elites, leaving many to a life of precarity, exploitation, and hunger.

How do protracted crises shape indigenous food systems, and what are their ramifications for food and nutritional security? Building on decolonial and interdisciplinary research approaches, this paper assesses the consequences of militarised violence for Kashmir's food system. We document the impact of settler-colonialism and conflict-induced agrarian changes on delocalisation of diets. The protracted nature of the crises has two key implications for changes in dietary patterns. First, land control over common land dispossesses the local population and hinders food production. Second, disenfranchisement from (agricultural) land has led to increased reliance on markets that are flooded by imported foods as local production declines. The paper argues that the state plays an important role in food system changes by destroying local patterns of food production and consumption. Slow violence and agrarian de-development serve as tools to de-develop the local food system. Indigenous food cultures form part of everyday resistance and resilience that are operationalised as mitigation and adaptation strategies to address food insecurity.

Millions of people from Ukraine have been forced to flee their homes to seek safety, protection, and assistance owing to armed conflict. This study aims to draw a parallel between the meaning and importance of the initial impact of Russian military aggression in February 2022 and the recent plight of Ukrainian refugees on Romania's territory. It is based on the results of a dedicated thematic survey of Ukrainian refugees as part of fieldwork carried out by the authors between March and April 2022 and a survey launched by the United Nations Refugee Agency in Romania between October 2022 and August 2023. The study emphasises the importance of raising awareness and building solidarity and support to counterbalance the effects of the crisis with respect to: (i) refugees in their hometowns and losses incurred; (ii) refugees' needs, help provided, and expectations; (iii) the need to integrate refugees into different fields of daily life; and (iv) a return to Ukraine.

The resurgence of famines is a topic of concern. This paper explains the recent trajectory using the framework of contending 'global war economies'. It characterises the unipolar neoliberal world order era (1986-2015) as the 'Pax Americana' war economy, focusing on the United States dollar's roles. These were the decades of the liberal imperium, the corporate food regime, and counterinsurgent coalitions, which generated structural vulnerability to food crises and reduced the actual incidence and lethality of famine. The paper characterises the subsequent period (2016 onwards) as the challenge of the BRICS club, focusing on its efforts to rewrite the global political economy's rules, proactively hedging among diversifying currency regimes. This entails a scramble to secure strategic commodities and infrastructure in subaltern countries, which is intensifying conflict and food insecurity, and revising international norms in favour of reasserting sovereign rights. The global political-economic contestation and, especially, the associated normative regression are permissive of political and military triggers of famine.

While mental health and psychosocial support receive substantial international attention in humanitarian aid, the well-being of local aid agency staff themselves is often overlooked. This research, using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design composed of two rounds of interviews (N = 23) and a survey (N = 146), highlights the constraints that local staff encounter to access psychosocial support. The study presents a snapshot of what mental health and psychosocial support is available for aid workers active in emergencies. Among local staff, 50 per cent deem the support not to be appropriate. The main causes are a lack of information regarding the available care, a lack of time to access care, and a lack of trust to access services provided through the employer. This paper suggests that agencies can improve local staff welfare by alleviating stressors related to short-term contracts, granting access to after-assignment care, and catering to a wider array of coping strategies.

What are the consequential socio-spatial vulnerabilities of fragmentation in flood risk governance (FRG) functions in Tana River County, Kenya? To answer the question, this paper utilises social differentiation theory to establish types and consequences of such fragmentation. It applies theoretical patterns and processes of social differentiation to expose that FRG diversification could result in fragmentation of FRG functions. The study employs an interview strategy that focuses on governmental and non-governmental FRG actors. The results reveal that fragmented FRG functions in Tana River County was not an intentional policy decision, but rather a product of a transitional vacuum between policy promulgation and implementation. Furthermore, socio-spatial vulnerabilities differentiated by patterns and processes related to age, gender, disability, and ethnicity, for instance, are consequential outcomes of fragmented FRG functions in the Tana River floodplains. The study recommends implementation of the National Disaster Management Policy in Tana River County and institutionalisation of a specific FRG policy and legal framework.

Little evidence exists on the design and implementation of anticipatory action (AA) in complex crises. This article examines a 2022 United Nations 'early action' pilot in South Sudan in advance of extreme flooding. As a case study of efforts to act in a complex crisis, it contributes to learning on assisting conflict-affected and displaced populations in advance of extreme weather events. The research points towards the possibility and value of implementing forecast-informed early action in complex contexts with limited forecast skills and multiple hazards when trigger-based AA is not possible. It also argues for the need to link AA implemented in complex crises to development and peacebuilding actors and processes. More broadly, examining the perceptions and processes of AA in the form of early action, rather than a formal AA framework, is highly relevant for the AA community as attention is increasingly placed on providing AA in countries affected by fragility and conflict.

This paper challenges current approaches to undertaking community-centred disaster recovery. Community-centred approaches are widely recognised as 'the gold standard' for effective recovery from disasters. Yet, they are rarely applied well enough in practice. Challenges include the 'authority' culture of command-and-control agencies, the emphasis on discrete recovery time frames, and the reluctance to relinquish centralised control. The paper focuses on people's experiences of community-centred recovery in New South Wales, Australia, which has experienced severe fires and floods since 2019. We undertook key informant interviews and an online survey to inquire into how community-centred recovery is enacted. Our work uncovered widespread dissatisfaction with current practices. The paper discusses key themes emerging from the research and ends with a call to change how community-centred recovery is framed and conducted by responding organisations, to include the underlying causes of vulnerability in recovery, to measure success differently, and to alter the narrative of who 'owns' disasters.

Thirteen years into conflict, Syria remains one of the world's major humanitarian crises. Food insecurity has reached unprecedented levels in the country, with millions of civilians facing starvation and hunger. The key drivers of this are conflict-related, nature-induced, and, importantly, man-made policies. Semi-comprehensive sanctions against the country and donor conditionality vis-à-vis humanitarian operators' work are prime examples of the latter. These policies are inextricably linked with food insecurity in Syria and have direct and indirect impacts on it. Understanding the ongoing crisis as a complex emergency, this paper examines the interplay between sanctions, donor conditionality, and food insecurity, an understudied subject in the Syrian context. It explores how sanctions and donor conditionality influence three key dimensions of food security, namely, availability, affordability and economic access, and utilisation, and subsequently worsen the conditions confronting the Syrian population. The paper contributes to discussions on food security in conflict settings and how sanctions negatively affect civilians in targeted countries.

Disaster scholarship purportedly promotes disaster risk reduction and resists disaster risk creation, thereby deeply engaging with transboundary existential risks, justice, and political power. It is thus a commitment to humanity, and for it to become truly equitable and just, solidarity must lie at its heart. In this paper we connect solidarity with knowledge production and assess the implications of disaster scholarship and the relationships on which it is built. We offer a critique of the kind of research produced by neoliberal academic institutions and provocations for resistance through solidarity. We call on disaster scholars to use these prompts to reflect on their practice, research ethics, and their commitment to other human beings, inside and outside of the academy. Solidarity can help scholars to avoid the saviourism, self-congratulation, and paternalism that are common in academia. Solidarity in disaster scholarship is a worthy endeavour precisely because it yields a concrete alternative vision of resisting disaster risk creation through knowledge production.

This research explores the dynamics of interaction between the sovereign state and international humanitarian organisations in alleviating human suffering in the Syrian civil war. Considering civil wars as a rupture in sovereignty, its focus is on the practices of the sovereign state within its social context and the resulting implications for aid organisations. I argue that the Syrian regime has employed state violence, in tandem with administrative and bureaucratic impediments, to reassert its sovereign authority in humanitarian decision-making processes. This exercise of sovereign power is intertwined with the actions of aid organisations, thereby reshaping power dynamics among the state, aid organisations, and vulnerable populations. Through a qualitative method, I show that the deployment of state violence concomitantly pushes aid organisations, specifically the United Nations, towards enforcing the state sovereignty defined by the regime. As an effect of assertive sovereignty, interpretations of humanitarian principles and practices are continuously negotiated and constructed differently by aid organisations, even though they share a common overarching goal.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic initiated debates on how crisis management affects democracy. In them, the balance between deploying control strategies that limit citizens' freedom and their democratic legitimation features prominently. Informed by theoretical debates about responsive crisis governance, this paper explores how Chinese citizens reacted by quantitatively and qualitatively analysing social media expressions and Chinese stakeholders' narratives. The quantitative analysis indicated that public sentiments towards pandemic control were complex and mostly related to the severe pandemic in Wuhan. Negative sentiments were mainly directed at local states; national states largely received respect. The qualitative analysis exhibited more nuances. Although Chinese crisis governance raised efficiency and trust, aggressive accountability efforts and improper information exchange caused justice deficits and public anxiety. Draconian social control misaligned public interests and a lack of specific partnership mechanisms frustrated social participation. Reconciling institutional efficiency with civic liberties on diverse governance levels is thus expected to increase the responsiveness of pandemic control to public demands.

Public discourse is rich in meaning, reflecting consensus, dissent, and change. Yet, very little public discourse on the humanitarian sector has been authored by aid workers themselves. We conducted a thematic analysis of the 'Secret Aid Worker' (SAW) series, published in The Guardian newspaper between 2015 and 2018, the only corpus of data on humanitarian life experiences publicly accessible through mainstream media. Our research questions were twofold: how did authors frame their work and appraise humanitarian structures?; and how did they reflect and amplify humanitarian issues of the time? The main themes included: personal challenges of humanitarian life; characterisation of stakeholders; and systemic issues within the humanitarian sector. The SAW narratives reveal a powerful discourse of discontent. They planted seeds of change regarding shifting power, coloniality and racism, sexual abuse, and duty of care. We argue that such public discourse has symbolic power, calling for greater accountability, equity, and justice in remaking the future of the humanitarian sector.

This study explores the South Korean Deaf community's response to sign language interpreting during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) health crisis, focusing on individual factors affecting the signers' comprehension. The data were collected from a mobile-based questionnaire survey conducted among 401 Deaf adults; binary probit modelling was adopted to analyse the data. The major findings are: (i) 59.9 per cent of the respondents understood less than 70 per cent of the interpreting; (ii) males and urban residents tend to understand better; (iii) younger people (less than 50 years) and signers with a Bachelor's degree or higher are likely to have lower comprehension; and (iv) Deaf adults who visited a doctor after the COVID-19 outbreak tended to have lower comprehension. The findings demonstrate that individual characteristics, including age, impact significantly on the extent to which Deaf individuals understand the sign language interpreting of COVID-19 information, indicating that steps are needed to achieve a Deaf-inclusive society during a health disaster.