Tuesday June 7, 2022
UN agencies said a fourth consecutive rainy season had
failed in the Horn of Africa country [File: Feisal Omar/Reuters]
Nearly a quarter of a million people are facing starvation
in Somalia as drought worsens and global food prices hover near record highs,
United Nations agencies have said.
The agencies said on Monday that a fourth consecutive rainy
season had failed in the Horn of Africa country, and meteorologists are warning
of another below-average rainy season later this year as the world’s climate
becomes more erratic.
This is causing the worst drought in 40 years in Somalia and
a major hunger crisis.
At the same time, world food prices are close to record
highs as the Russia-Ukraine war roils markets for staple grains and edible
oils.
Around 213,000 Somalis are at risk of starvation, a near
threefold increase from levels expected in April, according to a statement from
the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The agencies said some 7.1 million Somalis or nearly half
the population face acute levels of food insecurity, meaning they will be
barely able to get the minimum calories they need and might have to sell assets
to survive.
“We must act immediately to prevent a humanitarian
catastrophe,” said El-Khidir Daloum, the WFP’s country director in Somalia.
“The lives of the most vulnerable are already at risk from
malnutrition and hunger; we cannot wait for a declaration of famine to act.
It’s a race against time to prevent famine.”
Around three million livestock have died in Somalia due to
the drought that has lasted since mid-2021, a terrible toll in a largely
pastoral country where families rely on their herds for meat, milk and trade,
the agencies said.
At particular risk of famine is southern Somalia, where the
presence of fighters from the al-Shabab armed group makes humanitarian access a
challenge.
The UN’s 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan is only 18 percent
funded to date, and Somalia is competing with other global emergency hot spots
for funding as food insecurity spreads around the world, the agencies added.
“We’re calling on the international community to act fast
while we still have some hope of preventing … widespread famine in Somalia,”
the FAO’s representative in Somalia Etienne Peterschmitt said.
In 2011, famine conditions killed an estimated quarter of a
million people in Somalia. Half of those who died were children under the age
of six.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES