After a fourth consecutive rainy season had failed Somalia, United Nations agencies warned in a joint statement on Tuesday that nearly a quarter of a million people are facing starvation in the Horn of Africa country.
Due to drought since mid-2021, about three million livestock have died in Somalia.
According to the statement from the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the children’s agency UNICEF, and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in a nearly three-fold increase from levels expected in April, about 213,000 Somalis are at risk of starvation.
As meteorologists warn of another below-average rainy season later this year while the climate becomes more erratic, drought worsens in Somalia and global food prices hover near record highs since March since the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted staple grains and edible oils’ markets.
The WFP’s country director in Somalia, El Khidir Daloum, stressed that they cannot wait for a declaration of famine to act because the lives of the most vulnerable are already at risk from malnutrition and hunger.
Famine conditions killed an estimated quarter of a million people in Somalia in 2011.
Nearly half the population, or about 7.1 million Somalis as the UN agencies said, will be barely able to get the minimum calories they need and will face acute levels of food insecurity, meaning they might have to sell assets to survive.
As food insecurity spreads around the world, Somalia is competing with other global emergency hotspots for funding while only 18 percent of the UN’s 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan is funded to date, the agencies stressed.
The joint report that the WFP and FAO issued on Monday tagged Somalia among the six nations as the highest alert hot spots facing catastrophic conditions along with Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
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