The Entitlement Approach

The article dismisses most of the objections previously forwarded in this journal by Khandakar Qudrat-I Elahi against Amartya Sen's framework for famine analysis: the entitlement approach. Instead, the article argues that even 30 years after the conception of the entitlement approach, it remains a potent framework for famine analysis, as illustrated by the recent 2005 famine in Niger. However, as contemporary famines are increasingly linked to factors that have hitherto received limited attention in entitlement analysis - conflicts, legal collapses and political struggles - the article calls for supplementary famine analysis on the meso and macro levels.