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Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Jeremy Konyndyk
@JeremyKonyndyk
President of @refugeesintl. Former lead for COVID (46) & disaster relief (44) @USAID. Also, bread. Support our work at the link below!
39 subscribers
Aug 30 • 15 tweets • 8 min read
All week the Israeli govt has mounted a major PR push against @theIPCinfo's Gaza famine declaration.

The @IsraelMFA pushback reveals a basic ignorance (perhaps willful?) of how famines work and how the IPC declares them.

Today the IPC responded. Let's take a look. 🧵 The GoI has a thin slide deck of bold-font attacks with no links to supporting data.

The IPC reply has 6 pages of explanatory text plus a new table of additional malnutrition analysis (on top of their original 56-page report).
ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user…
ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user… Image
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Aug 26 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
Thread incoming on famines & and mortality data.

tl;dr: the Gaza declaration rests on inferred mortality b/c it's impossible to collect good mortality data.

*just like all 3 other famine declarations since 2011*

Meaning no "lowering the bar" for Gaza.

Let’s get into it… A famine declaration assesses food deprivation, malnutrition, and mortality.

In Gaza the food deprivation metric has been clearly met for quite a while.

The malnutrition assessment is solid too (per my earlier threads).

But there is limited data on deaths. So, what to do? Image
Aug 22 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
I'm getting a lot of questions about this (false) claim, so let's do a wonky deep dive on how willfully wrong @Israel is on this.

Right off the top: this is the EXACT SAME THRESHOLD that was used in the Sudan famine declaration last year.

Not any lowering of the bar for Gaza. The MUAC threshold is used in cases like Sudan or Gaza where access is limited and full weight-for-height studies are not feasible.

Here is the relevant portion of the Dec 2024 famine analysis for Sudan, using the same MUAC >15% threshold. ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user…Image
Aug 22 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Starvation in Gaza has been building for months.

The Famine Review Committee conclusion on famine is compelling (more on that below).

Principal responsibility lies with Israeli aid obstruction - but failure of US & Europe to use *any* real leverage on this is also stunning.
🧵 The evidence for a declaration is persuasive.

There has been evidence of severe food deprivation going back to last year, mainly due to Israeli restrictions.

It got exponentially worse from March '25 onward, after Israel instituted an aid blockade that it has yet to fully lift. Image
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Aug 22 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
For months, folks on this website have pushed a set of "gotcha" tropes to debunk the existence of famine in Gaza.

In fact they are mostly debunking their own credibility on famine dynamics.

As we await tomorrow's IPC report, here is a pre-buttal 🧵of some of those tropes. Most of this denialism comes from armchair experts who have never worked on hunger emergencies.

FWIW, I directed USG famine prevention efforts for:

- South Sudan 2013-14
- Yemen 2015-16
- Ethiopia 2016
- Nigeria 2016

Plus a lot of smaller ones.

On to the gotchas...
Aug 10 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Always illuminating to check whether accounts using other crises to downplay Gaza have *ever* otherwise shown concern about those crises.

Almost invariably: nope. Just a clumsy, cynical attempt to dunk on Gaza activism.

Let's dive into the levels of bad faith at play here:
🧵 First, the receipts:

@IsraelMFA has NEVER before shown concern about the humanitarian crises in Sudan: x.com/search?q=sudan…

or Afghanistan: x.com/search?q=afgha…

or DR Congo: x.com/search?q=congo…

or Yemen: x.com/search?q=yemen…

It just wants to use them as props.
Jul 29 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
The world's famine alert system is warning us – in the starkest possible terms – that any remaining window to avert mass starvation deaths in Gaza is about to close.

A quick dive into what the report tells us: This confirms what media reports (and frankly anyone with eyes) could see over the past week: a famine unfurling in Gaza.

While this is not (yet) a formal famine declaration, it signals that one is likely coming.

Importantly, formal declarations ALWAYS come after the fact.
Jul 26 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Netanyahu has used aid diversion claims as pretext for massive obstruction of aid to Gaza.

Now we learn the IDF had briefed his team that these claims were false (as aid groups have long argued).

This constitutes further evidence he is using starvation as a weapon of war.
🧵 Humanitarian groups have long denied that their aid is being diverted at any significant scale.

My organization dug into this last year and found no evidence for the Israeli govt claims. refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…Image
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Jul 24 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
As a longtime humanitarian who has battled famines and hunger crises, I fear that starvation in Gaza has now passed the tipping point and we are going to see mass-scale starvation mortality.

A thread on famine momentum, famine response, and what it means for Gaza today. The latest reporting shows telltale signs of rapidly accelerating mortality - the kind of classic famine scenario we know from places like Sudan or Somalia.

Barring a massive reversal of Israeli policy, there is a little standing in the way of total collapse.
Jun 4 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
For days, GHF and its defenders tried to "debunk" the massacre claims by arguing "but this didn't happen *at* the GHF sites."

As we know, the people killed were in the crowds walking long distances through IDF perimeters TO REACH THOSE VERY SITES.

Which GHF now...admits. The whole episode says a lot about the sincerity of whoever is pulling the strings at GHF.

First instinct is to put out a gaslighting press release denying the massacre reports, while pretending that whatever happens outside their perimeter has nothing to do with them.
May 27 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Seasoned humanitarians do not operate this way because it's a terribly risky and ineffective way to deliver aid.

Quick 🧵 on what seems to have gone wrong, and why nothing about today's events was surprising.

(subtitle: humanitarians know stuff, actually) One thing that relief workers learn early is that managing desperate crowds is TOUGH.

So you generally try to deliver aid in a way that avoids drawing more people than you can manage and serve at a given site.

More sites = smaller crowds = manageable distribution. Not this: Image
May 9 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
"We will take your baby and deport you without her.”

Blockbuster new report from us @RefugeesIntl and our partner @humanrights1st documenting shocking stories of asylum seekers unlawfully disappeared, abused, and expelled by Trump's @CBP and @ICEgov.

Read on. 🧵 Image Our teams interviewed numerous asylum seekers who have been unlawfully expelled from the US to Costa Rica, Panama, and their home countries (where they face real risk of persecution or torture, likely constituting refoulement).
May 4 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Teachable moment here.

I don't love using the term "humanitarian principles" b/c it sounds like an ethical creed.

That's not what the principles are. They are fundamentally a *tool* to enable safe humanitarian access.

A tool refined by years of hard lessons.

Quick🧵 Saying something "contravenes humanitarian principles" rarely persuades non-humanitarians.

When I was in government, that approach never worked.

Instead I would argue for why supporting independent, neutral humanitarian action *stood the best chance of operational success.*
Apr 24 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
More an amputation than a major re-organization.

The core structure of @StateDept remains intact and mostly unchanged.

But they amputate the US government's foreign aid capacity and eviscerate other soft-power tools.

A 🧵 Here's a cross-walk of the prior State org chart to the new one released by Rubio (links to both below).

🟥 items appear to be fully eliminated.

🟨 items are retained but reshuffled

🟩items are new to the org chart

New: state.gov/wp-content/upl…
Old: 2021-2025.state.gov/department-of-… Image
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Mar 31 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Aid leaders have been warning for 2 months that the gutting of @USAID would leave US unable to respond to major global disasters.

We are now seeing that play out in real time with the Myanmar quake - reality is calling bullshit on the Trump admin's narrative.

🧵 In today's press briefing @statedeptspox bizarrely "rejected the premise" that a meaningful US response requires USAID staff "to be physically there."

As the guy who used to deploy those teams - this is total nonsense.

You can't conduct search-and-rescue virtually. Come on.
Mar 28 • 16 tweets • 8 min read
OK, @elonmusk, challenge accepted.

Here's my own wall of receipts.

🧵 I posted this over a month ago on some specific line items on DOGE's wall of receipts, explaining how these violated the Rubio guidance on protecting lifesaving activities.
Mar 6 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
On claim after claim about @USAID / foreign aid, Elon is just making shit up as he goes along. No truth to any of it.

This claim is demonstrably false. Deaths have already been documented from the aid freeze. And the so called "sanity check" is a clown show of incompetence. This is not a "brief pause." Aid orgs doing critical lifesaving work are being denied reimbursement for work already completed, and can't access USG payments to continue operations.

Many had their programs waived from the freeze, then terminated, then un-terminated.

A farce.
Feb 26 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
So - I've actually led Ebola outbreak response at @USAID.

This is bunk from Elon. They have laid off most of the experts, they're bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from WHO, and muzzled CDC.

What's left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically. I led USAID's response to the 2014-15 outbreak in West Africa.

Also went to Congo with WHO to assess response at peak of the 2019 outbreak (under Trump 1).

Those were both robust USG ops.

That capacity has now been wrecked.
cgdev.org/publication/st…Image
Feb 25 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Train wreck coming.

A federal judge has ordered the USG to lift the aid freeze, pay what it owes, and show evidence that it has not been defying the court.

Which the USG can't do, because Pete Marocco has been defying the court and has purged the staff who move those payments. It is clear as day that Marocco has made no effort to comply with multiple orders from the court to lift the arbitrary & capricious aid freeze.

He is likewise defying @SecRubio's order to waive lifesaving assistance.

Virtually no money has been unlocked by either order.
Feb 13 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So...Max Primorac was the lead anti-USAID witness in the House hearing this morning and is one of the architects of the assault on the agency.

He made a few odd claims about his credentials at USAID in today's hearing. He claimed that he "oversaw containment of two Ebola outbreaks and led the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance."

Neither of these claims are accurate.
Feb 13 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
As I told CNN earlier, most of the disinformation about @USAID falls into one of three categories:

▶️ Outright fabrications

▶️ Real programs, but not USAID-funded

▶️ Programs that make sense if you take 2 minutes to understand them ▶️Fabrications:

"Gaza condoms" is the classic here.

Absurd on its face, but still Elon and Trump spent a week repeating it as the pretext for destroying USAID.

Until Elon just glibly admitted it was bullshit and we shouldn't trust what he says.