Somalia is experiencing its worst drought crisis in a decade, with millions going hungry and being forced from their homes in search of food and water, says Save the Children.
The impact on families is being felt more severely this season due to the result of multiple, prolonged droughts in quick succession, a worsening security situation, desert locust infestations, soaring food prices, reduced remittances - and less money committed by donors to respond.
A Save the Children assessment conducted in November 2021, and covering 15 of Somalia’s 18 regions, found the majority of families were now going without meals on a regular basis. Nearly 60 percent of assessed households reported at least one person in their family had lost their source of income—largely due to the wholescale death of livestock—and over one third of households included at least one person going without food over a 24 hour period.
Somalia has experienced three major drought crises in the past decade; in 2011/12, 2016/17, and now in 2021/22.
This year, latest food security projections show that 4.6 million Somalis will face crisis- to emergency-level food insecurity (IPC 3 or worse) from February to May 2022. Critically, only 2.3 percent of the current UN appeal to respond to the crisis has been met by donors.
“Donors have a narrow window to prevent a major humanitarian disaster in Somalia. We failed in 2011, made gains in 2016/17, and now seem to be back to where we started. We’re worried we’re going to go backwards, to a 2011 situation, where hundreds of thousands perished.
“We’re worried that the political environment globally is overshadowing the humanitarian suffering of the Somali people. There is so much hunger and so much need. The ultimate culprit is climate change. Somalia has always had droughts, and Somalis have always known how to deal with them—they struggle, they lose livestock, they count their losses, and then they bounce back. But now, the gaps between droughts are shrinking. It’s a killer cycle and it’s robbing Somali children of their future.”
At least US$1.5 billion is needed to protect vulnerable children and their families across Somalia, and give them the food, healthcare, education and water they need to get through this crisis. ■
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