Sergey Dolzhenko / EPA
Ukrainians light candles next to a monument to victims of the Great Famine in Kiev on Nov. 24, 2012. The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin's policy of forced collectivization. More than five million Ukrainians were killed in the famine.
A Nigerien woman digs a trench to collect rainwater near the village of Tibiri in the southern Zinder region of Niger on May 28, 2012. Ten percent of children under five in Niger suffer from acute malnutrition and 44 percent of children suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to the UN World Food Program.
Photos by Issouf Sanogo / AFP - Getty Images
Nigerien farmers arrive near the village of Tibiri.
Nigerien farmers receive two-week's pay for work in the village of Tibiri.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Women crowd a well in the village of Kiral, near Goudoude Diobe in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Wells in the area are often 75-meters deep, and aren't always able to produce enough water for residents' daily needs.
Since late 2011, aid groups have been sounding the alarm, warning that devastating drought has again weakened communities where children already live perilously close to the edge of malnutrition.The situation is most severe in Niger, Chad and in Mali, but this time it has also pervaded northern Senegal, the most prosperous and stable country in the Sahel.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Mariam Orgho, 3, looks at her mother, Coumba Seck, as she cooks the one small meal of the day for her extended family.
Many sub-Saharan economies are growing fast but the growth rates have not translated into significant hunger reduction, said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.
Sub-Saharan Africa's growth, now around 4 percent, is accelerating faster than the rest of the world excluding China and India, according to UNDP statistics.
-- Reported by the Associated Press
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Two-year-old Aliou Seyni Diallo collapses in tears after not eating since the day before, inside his family's yard in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. A neighbor stepped in to help Aliou's struggling mother, giving the boy a bowl of dry couscous to stop his tears.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Men share a meager breakfast of thin porridge and instant coffee, during a break in building a mud-brick house for a neighbor, in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. With little paid work available, a group of village men, including professional masons, have banded together to build houses for free for several residents.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
A girl follows a village path through a landscape dotted with thorny scrub brush, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
A herder stands on an empty water trough as he surveys his animals, in the village of Mbelone in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Some residents spend hours each day pulling up water bucket by bucket from the village's 75-meter deep well, but the well isn't always able to produce enough water for the daily needs of the residents and their herds of cattle and other livestock.
Rebecca Blackwell / AP
Herder Oumar Ba walks away after indicating where one of his cows died, he says, of hunger, outside Dikka village, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.
Reuters reports:
Isolated North Korea has appealed for food aid following a series of natural disasters and years of mismanagement. In South Hwanghae province, which traditionally produces about a third of the country's total cereal supply, officials say a savage winter wiped out 65 percent of the barley, wheat and potato crops. Then summer floods and storms destroyed 80 percent of the maize harvest, according to the province's governing People's Committee, and may have an impact on the October rice harvest.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
A child suffering from malnutrition rests in a bed in a hospital in Haeju on Sept. 30. Editor's note: These images were taken on a government controlled tour.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
A child suffering from malnutrition rests in a bed in a hospital in Haeju on Oct. 1. The purple paste on the child's face works as an antiseptic but also makes wounds and cuts dry faster.
Only 30 percent of a U.N. food aid target for North Korea has been met so far. The United States and South Korea, the North's two biggest donors before sanctions, have said they won't resume aid until they are satisfied the military-led communist regime will not divert the aid for its own uses and progress is made on disarmament talks.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
A boy working on a collective farm in South Hwanghae province on Sept. 30, in the area that was affected by summer floods and typhoons.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
Girls look through a window at a foreign delegation visiting a school in Haeju on Oct. 1.
Damir Sagolj / Reuters
A meal prepared by a woman who lost her house in summer floods is seen in her tent in South Hwanghae province on Sept. 30.
Read the entire special report.
Photographer Damir Sagolj described his experiences in North Korea for Reuters' blog:
The hardest aspect of this assignment, like many times in my career, was to see the children suffering knowing their status might not change before it’s too late. It is always difficult to leave a room after photographing a helpless child, weak and sick, whose life might be very short even by North Korean standards – according to the UN, North Koreans live on average 11 years less than South Koreans due mainly to malnutrition.
Galo Imagesvia Getty Images
Doctor Amith Ramcharan examines a child at the Banadir Hospital on September 7, 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia. This is the Gift Of The Givers Foundation's second mercy mission to Somalia, where they will provide medical services and food aid to the famine stricken Somalia. This delegation includes doctors, nurses, dieticians and other medical personnel.
More photos in our slideshow.
Eduardo De Francisco / Reuters
Workers carry sacks of Corn Soya Blend inside the World Food Program warehouse for distribution to refugees at Hagadera refugee camp in Dadaab near the Kenya-Somalia border, September 1, 2011.
John Moore / Getty Images
Somalis receive medical treatment at an outpatient hospital run by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), on Wednsday, August 17 in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 10,000 people are treated monthly at AMISOM's three hospitals in Mogadishu. Ugandan doctors there say that increasingly many of the ailments, especially among children, are related to malnutrition. The UN estimates that more than 100,000 people have fled to Mogadishu in the last months due to famine and drought conditions in the countryside.
See more Horn of Africa images in our slideshow: Famine strikes East Africa
Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP
Somali children from southern Somalia play on tree branches near a destroyed building in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Wednesday, Aug. 17. The World Food Program said Saturday that it is expanding its food distribution efforts in famine-struck Somalia, where the U.N. estimates that only 20 percent of people needing aid are getting it.
See more Horn of Africa images in our slideshow: Famine strikes East Africa
NBC News producer Baruch Ben-Chorin just returned from Turkana, a remote region in northwestern Kenya badly hit by the drought that is afflicting parts of East Africa. While the international community has focused largely on suffering in Somalia, relief workers say close to 40 percent of Turkana's population is suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
While concentrating on his main task of producing, Ben-Chorin took pictures for himself and his friends and family.
Editor's note: These images were altered by a software application that uses filters to mimic the effects of shooting with an antique plastic film camera, even though they were taken with a modern digital phone camera.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
A hut in the village of Kalapata, Turkana region, Kenya. Most of the people in Turkana live in small villages like Kalapata, depending on their herds for their livelihood. But the drought has killed most of their animals, and left them with nothing. Their traditional way of life may not survive.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
A boy, foreground, receives food for the first time in two weeks at a Red Cross feeding point at a school. His father died in the famine in Loitanit, North Turkana. The drought over the last five years has devastated this region. In some parts the the region close to 40 percent of the people are malnourished.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
A child collects maize grains from the ground.
Ben-Chorin wrote the following upon his return from the region:
I've used my iPhone to take pictures while on assignment or on the road for a while, and discovered the Hipstamatic application while playing around with it. I find the low-tech, old-fashioned look appealing, and there is always a sense of mystery in the resulting picture. This technique adds an interesting dimension that allows me to focus beyond the immediate, which a regular camera doesn’t.
These photographs were taken during a three-day trip to the remote Turkana region, which has been badly affected by the long drought in the Horn of Africa. Because it is so remote, and to some extent ignored by the Kenyan government, there is little reporting about widespread hunger and malnutrition in Turkana. But it is bad, very bad. We visited a number of communities and witnessed these proud and beautiful people who have maintained their traditional way of life for thousands of years struggle to survive.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
Turkana women waiting for food distribution in the village of Kalapata. Five people have died of hunger in this village alone over the last few months.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
Turkana women. The people of Turkana are beautiful, proud and gracious, living a traditional life that dates back thousand of years.
Baruch Ben-Chorin / NBC News
Not far from the worst famine stricken areas, the USAID-sponsored Morulem project offers a sign of hope. The simple irrigation project has created vast green fields of maize and sorghum that feeds 3,000 households in the Lokori area. People here have a surplus of food that they can store or sell.
Watch an NBC News report from Turkana:
Rohit Kachroo reports from Turkana, in north-western Kenya, where famine is spreading deeper into the country causing many Kenyans to turn their attention away from the crisis in Somalia and work towards relieving the hunger within its own borders.
Related content:
Here's another image from Mogadishu that moved today. See a selection of Horn of Africa images here and check out Ann Curry's report on the violence preventing much-needed aid from getting to the millions of people enduring famine, drought and disease.
John Moore / Getty Images
Somalis displaced from their home villages by famine and drought pass an African Union armored vehicle at a feeding center on Tuesday, Aug. 16, in Mogadishu, Somalia. The center, which serves up cooked meals prepared from World Food Program aid, helps feed thousands of Somalis who have fled famine and drought in the countryside and have settled in makeshift camps throughout the Mogadishu.
Millions are fighting for their lives as famine, drought and violence rage in Somalia's largest city. TODAY's Ann Curry reports.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
A Somali boy receives a ration of cornmeal in Mogadishu on August 15, in the courtyard of a Somali Non-governmental Organization who is partnered with the World Food Program and who serves about 1,000 people daily with a hot meal. Over 100,000 people have fled into Somalia's famine-hit and war-torn capital in the past two months in search of food, water and medicine. Some 12 million people in parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda and Somalia are in danger of starvation in the wake of the region's worst drought in decades. War-wracked Somalia is the country hardest hit by the Horn of Africa's drought, with five areas declared to be experiencing famine.
John Moore / Getty Images
A mother holds her daughter's hand at the Banadir hospital on August 16, 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The hospital has been overwhelmed by new patients, as sickness spreads through camps for people displaced by drought and famine. The US government estimates that some 30,000 children have died in southern Somalia in the last 90 days from the crisis.
Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP
Relatives of Hassan Abdulkadir Adan,3rd left rear, from southern Somalia help to lower the body of his 7-year-old son into a grave in a refugee camp in Mogadishu, Somalia on Tuesday, Aug. 16. The World Food Program said Saturday that it is expanding food distribution efforts in famine-ravaged Somalia, where the U.N. has estimated that only 20 percent of people needing aid are able to receive it because an al-Qaida-linked group controls large portions of the country.
John Moore / Getty Images
A mother mourns the death of her son at the Banadir hospital on August 16 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The hospital has been overwhelmed by new patients, as sickness spreads through camps for people displaced by drought and famine. The US government estimates that some 30,000 children have died in southern Somalia in the last 90 days from the crisis.
Ismail Taxta / Reuters
An internally displaced Somali woman attends to her malnourished son at the Banadir hospital in Somalia's capital Mogadishu August 16. Somalia called for the creation of a new force to protect food aid convoys and camps in the famine-hit country, and declared a state of emergency in parts of Mogadishu.
From AP:
The World Food Program said Saturday that it is expanding food distribution efforts in famine-ravaged Somalia, where the U.N. has estimated that only 20 percent of people needing aid are able to receive it because an al-Qaida-linked group controls large portions of the country.
For the latest stories on the famine check here.
John Moore / Getty Images; Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
Left: Safia Adem mourns the death of her son Hamza Ali Faysal, 3, in a camp of displaced Somalis within the rubble of the Cathedral of Mogadishu on Aug. 13, in Mogadishu, Somalia. The malnourished child died of sickness two weeks after fleeing with his family from famine and drought in far southern Somalia. The U.S. government estimates that some 30,000 children have died in southern Somalia in the last 90 days from the crisis. Right: 'The Madonna at Prayer' by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
Upon seeing John Moore's picture of the mother in Somalia, I was reminded of paintings of the Madonna that I had seen years ago by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato when touring the National Gallery in London. While this particular piece of his does not hang in London, I find the visual similarities to be striking.
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