Nearly half of Somalia’s population, around 7.1 million people, are currently suffering from hunger, according to a new UN assessment.
For the 213,000 most affected people, the situation is now catastrophic and urgent, warned the UN, stressing that the World Food Program is engaged in a race once morest time to avoid a famine in Somalia in a context of unprecedented drought. .
“We must act immediately to prevent a humanitarian disaster,” El-Khidir Daloum, the country director of the World Food Program in Somalia, said in a statement.
“The lives of the most vulnerable are already threatened by malnutrition and hunger, and we cannot wait for the onset of famine to act. It’s a race once morest time to prevent starvation,” he added.
+ “Worst drought in 40 years” +
For his part, the FAO representative in Somalia, Etienne Peterschmitt, declared that less than 20% of the money needed to avert a famine had been collected, putting hundreds of thousands of people “at very high risk”. starvation and death”.
“We call on the international community to act quickly while we still have hope of preventing (…) widespread famine in Somalia,” he insisted.
Many consecutive rainy seasons have failed in the Horn of Africa, causing the worst drought in 40 years and a major food crisis affecting Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. In Somalia, several regions are threatened with famine, particularly in the south where the presence of Al Shabaab terrorists, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, makes humanitarian access difficult.
Since mid-2021, three million head of cattle have died due to drought, a disastrous toll for a largely pastoral country where families depend on their herds for meat, milk and trade. Food prices are also soaring, boosted by poor local harvests and soaring import costs caused in part by the conflict in Ukraine.
