In February 2025, we reported that "A respected U.S. famine warning system is 'currently unavailable.' " That system is known as FEWS NET and ran a database that could pinpoint areas where the risk of famine is high, enabling aid groups to prepare for relief. As NPR noted: "The website that once served up detailed, color-coded maps of hunger hot spots around the world now bears a stark message: The site and its data are "currently unavailable." Over the next week, we'll be looking back at some of our past global health and development stories to see "whatever happened to ..." FEWS NET did eventually come back online. But now there have been some new developments.
This is the first story in our annual series of follow-ups. Jeremy Konyndyk was on a flight to Somalia in early August, when he checked a U.S. database routinely used by aid workers to predict and respond to hunger crises across the globe: The Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET). To his surprise, a map of East Africa on the website's landing page showed a gray outline where Somalia's color-coded famine report should be.
"I was reading this stuff on the flight over, and I thought oh that's weird – why isn't there anything since June?" Konyndyk says. Despite Somalia's worsening food crisis affecting an estimated 6.5 million people, the country's profile did not show any updates after July. Additionally, Somalia as well as Afghanistan and Yemen were eliminated from a regular "Peak Food Assistance Needs Outlook Brief," published on August 14, 2026.
The Trump administration previously slashed aid funding to all three countries; despite all three experiencing widespread food insecurity. "Somalia is probably the country that FEWS NET has historically reported on more than any other," says Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former top official at USAID, the U.S. foreign agency that is now shuttered. "The conditions are extremely dangerous, extremely precarious, and now is the moment where you really need that sort of reporting." In a statement to NPR on Monday, the State Department said that FEWS NET's reporting for specific countries has historically "increased or decreased based on shifts in need, policy priorities, access, cost-efficiency, and other factors." The pause in reporting led several organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as former USAID employees to speak out against it.
"If they allow FEWS Net to continue reporting, they're basically documenting the damage of their own decisions," Konyndyk said. "I think they don't want the world to see, they don't want their own systems to tell them the damage of what they're doing." However, the State Department told NPR on Monday afternoon that FEWS NET will resume reporting on those three countries in September. Their statement noted: "The Department will continue to evaluate that all programming appropriately uses limited resources to address foreign policy priorities." This is not the first time that FEWS NET has faced the chopping block.
Before the Trump administration, the service was run by a private contractor and funded by USAID. It was suspended for six months in early 2025, as part of Trump's unilateral freeze on foreign assistance. Piecemeal stoppages of reporting on specific areas are not new, either: FEWS NET has not reported on the hunger crisis in Gaza, since the fall of last year.
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