After three straight years of almost no rain, the east African country of Somalia is in the grips of its worst drought in more than 40 years, according to an analysis by the World Food Programme. Experts say conditions for the country’s 16 million people are so dire that starvation threatens to affect millions.
“Famine could be declared in some parts of the country in the next few months,” Abdi-Rashid Haji Nur, Concern Worldwide’s Somalia country director, told Yahoo News.
Three failed rainy seasons and a fourth now unfolding have resulted in barren crops, malnourished livestock and natural resources so limited that at least 700,000 Somalis have uprooted their lives and left their homes in hopes of finding safety and food. Many have been forced to embark on long journeys through hazardous terrain and conflict-torn communities to seek urban centers to access assistance.
“The situation is not only alarming, it is getting worse,” Patrick Youssef, regional director for Africa at the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Yahoo News. “People are leaving their homes massively in search of food and water… and women and children are dying along the way.”
A woman in an emergency shelter in Luglow, Somalia. (Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC)
Located in the region known as the Horn of Africa, which includes the East African states of Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Somalia is experiencing its worst drought in more than a decade. Between 2010 and 2012, a quarter of a million Somalis — half of them children — died during the latest famine caused by drought, according to a report by the UN and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
Today, more than a third of the population, or 6 million people, suffer from severe hunger in a country where seven in 10 people live on less than $2 a day, World Food Program data shows.
It is estimated that 350,000 of the country’s 1.4 million severely malnourished children would die by this summer if the country does not receive the aid it needs, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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“It’s too late when children die from severe malnutrition and disease,” said Haji Nur. “Tragically, it’s always the children who suffer first.”
Various humanitarian groups, including Concern Worldwide and the ICRC, are on the ground in Somalia, but insufficient funding and limited access to war-torn parts of the country mean they are limited in what they can do. Aid organizations say they have raised only 3% of the funds needed to help the country.
A makeshift camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Kismayo in southern Somalia. (Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC)
Extreme water and food shortages even before Russia’s war in Ukraine, known as the ‘breadbasket of Europe’, have only exacerbated an already fragile situation. Somalia imports about 90% of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and the war there has all but halted those supplies for the past two months, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
“Whatever happens in relation to this conflict will affect prices here,” Will Seal, advocacy manager in Somalia for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Yahoo News. “So what we’ve seen is rising wheat prices, rising cooking oil prices and rising fuel prices. And while we could talk about these economic trends, sadly, being able to support their children or not can literally mean the difference for a family.”
Climate change has also played a dramatic role in changing weather patterns in the region. Flash floods, rising temperatures, sandstorms and hurricanes are somewhat the norm in Somalia, and there have been at least seven droughts in the past 15 years.
While the country has become accustomed to extreme weather, the harsh extremes have become more frequent in recent years, leaving the country little time to recover from one event before the next disaster strikes.
“You’re seeing an increasing frequency and intensity of major events and … it’s just a tragedy on a massive scale,” Seal said.
While Shukri Ali has been able to support her children, many others have not – UNICEF estimates that 1.4 million children in Somalia will be suffering from acute malnutrition by the end of this year. (Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC)
With one of the highest average temperatures in the world, Somalia is on track to warm up by three degrees by the end of the century, according to climate forecasts. With 60% of the population living in rural areas, mainly making a living from agriculture or herding livestock, the impacts of climate change can be a matter of life and death.
“If you lose your animals, register as a refugee, that’s what we say,” Mohamed Hassan Gure, a Somali herder, told the ICRC last fall. “There are many people who have lost their animals and have registered as refugees.”
The African continent is facing the brunt of other countries’ response, as shown by this week’s severe flooding in South Africa, which has left at least 500 dead or missing. In its most recent report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that Africa has historically been one of the world’s lowest emitters of greenhouse gases, yet suffers some of the most severe impacts of climate change.
“These floods are a tragic reminder of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events as a result of climate change,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised address on Monday.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Darren Stewart/Gallo Images)
Swift action must be taken to address the causes of climate change or the results will be costly, Youssef said.
“I think we will miss the point if we don’t commit to climate protection,” Youssef said. “Unless we ask the relevant development actors to step in, either international financial institutions but also states themselves, to seek solutions to the root causes that are putting us in these cyclical, unfortunate cycles of vulnerability that we are seeing across Africa. … I bet you that in the next three to five years we will face the same problem.”
In February, 50 Somali and international NGOs sent an open letter asking for support from donor countries and the international community in hopes of avoiding a repeat of another near-famine drought a decade ago.
“In 2011, despite warnings, the international humanitarian system acted too little and too late, and famine killed an estimated 260,000 people,” the letter reads in part. “We must ensure that history does not repeat itself.”
Batulo Mohamed, a drought-displaced mother of five, is building an emergency shelter on the outskirts of Baidoa in southern Somalia. (Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC)
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has so far donated a total of US$114 million to affected regions in the Horn of Africa. About half ($55 million) of that sum will go directly to Somalia to provide food and drinking water and to rehabilitate water systems across the country, the organization told Yahoo News.
“Spending two years with no rain or too little rain is truly devastating for millions of people across Somalia,” said Tracy O’Heir, director of the East Africa division of USAID’s Office of Humanitarian Assistance.
“This is an unprecedented emergency and donor countries around the world have a responsibility to consider what they can do and how they can assist,” she added. “We are very concerned that the funding currently available will not meet the needs.”
The organization has donated a total of $63 million to aid groups in Somalia this year, but recognizes that more help is needed than just financial support.
Amina Isse and her family used donkey carts to escape from their rural village in Somalia and arrive in Kismayo in the south. She is one of 745,000 people displaced by the drought, many living in refugee camps with little support and no services. (Abdulkadir Mohamed/NRC)
It is a universal responsibility that Youssef said should be addressed by the ICRC on a global scale.
“I think everyone fears that the world’s wealthy donor countries will become so focused on the war in Europe that they forget about desperate needs elsewhere,” he said. “Ukraine can only teach us one lesson. If we don’t learn this lesson and get better after that, I think we’re only going to lose twice, so there’s no winner.”
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Cover photo: Omar Farouk/NRC