Ethiopia's 1984 famine

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1984, Ethiopia suffered one of its worst ever famines.

A BBC news report from the area shocked the world - and led to a huge global fundraising campaign.

In 2014, Lucy Burns spoke to Dawit Giorgis, who was in charge of Ethiopia's internal relief effort during the crisis.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Starving children at Korem refugee camp. Credit: William F. Campbell/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:39.4	Hello you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:47.0	In 1984, Ethiopia suffered one of its worst ever famines. A BBC news report from the area shocked the world
0:56.7	and led to a huge global fundraising campaign. In 2014 Lucy Burns spoke to the man who was in charge of Ethiopia's internal relief effort at the time.
1:08.0	He remembered when thousands of starving people streamed into a temporary refugee camp in Kaurum in the north of the country.
1:17.0	The first time I went to Kaurum was extremely disturbing to say the least.
1:24.0	Dauwett Georgis was the head of the Relief and Reconciliation Commission,
1:28.0	Ethiopia's Internal Disaster Relief Agency.
1:31.0	The route was littered with bodies, corpses. Every day there was
1:35.6	funeral. Every day there were hundreds of people dying. I have never seen
1:39.7	anything like this. These are my own people. I could have been one of them. My mother could have been one of them. My brother could have been one of them. So I felt the pain, their pain.
1:49.0	Famine was not new in Ethiopia, but the crisis in 1984 was particularly bad, affecting almost a third of the population.
1:58.0	Partly the problem lay in a succession of failed harvests, but the political situation was making things worse.
2:06.0	Ethiopia itself is in turmoil, ruled by a military dictator,
2:10.3	Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu, whose determination to drum scientific socialism into his
	...

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