I care about both Gaza and Sudan. It’s distasteful to compare extreme human suffering. But we can use the international metrics for famine to explain why each humanitarian crisis is uniquely terrible – and why people caught in both need urgent action.

Sudan is the largest food crisis in the world by the sheer numbers affected. The country’s warring generals can immediately end the worst hunger by agreeing to a ceasefire and facilitating humanitarian aid. But it’s a complicated, deep-rooted crisis that will take years to resolve.

Gaza is the worst food emergency by intensity of deprivation. There’s no case in recent decades that matches Gaza’s severity of starvation or speed of descent into such a state. Israel can stop starvation overnight by stopping its assault and facilitating essential aid.

The basis for comparison is the United Nations standardized system for measuring food insecurity and famines, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. This was set up 15 years ago to help aid agencies and their donors assess humanitarian needs and direct relief assistance accordingly. When conditions get sufficiently bad, the IPC calls on the famine review committee – a kind of humanitarian supreme court – to make the final call.

As they unfold, food emergencies can be assessed by magnitude – the total numbers in need and total death toll. After the fact, famines can be measured by the total number who perished of hunger and the diseases that ravage malnourished children. Conventionally, 100,000 dead is called a “great famine”.

But we don’t want to count the graves of children before we call something a famine.

The UN assesses food crises, as they develop, by severity, meaning the proportion of people in any particular place who are acutely hungry. The IPC uses a five-level scale: normal, stressed, crisis, emergency and finally catastrophe (for families) or famine (for communities). It has a high threshold for determining “famine”, and tens of thousands of children may die from hunger at levels that aren’t severe enough to qualify as famine.

The IPC’s first famine review was on Somalia, in 2011. Since then, the famine review committee has met 20 times – about Ethiopia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as Gaza and Sudan. It has found “famine” three times, “famine with reasonable evidence” twice, projected imminent famine three times, and warned of “risk of famine” under worst case scenarios seven........

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