From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya via Somalia, 22 million people are threatened by hunger, victims of a historic drought that began at the end of 2020 and is expected to last in the coming months.
This figure has almost doubled since the beginning of 2022, when 13 million people faced hunger in the Horn of Africa.
In this region where the population lives mainly from livestock and agriculture, nearly 5.6 million people are today in a situation of “acute food insecurity” in Somalia, 12 million in Ethiopia and 4. 3 million in Kenya, according to the UN.
More than 1.7 million people have left their homes in search of water and food, according to a latest report from the World Food Program published on January 23.
. An endless drought
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions hardest hit by climate change.
Since 2016, eight of the thirteen rainy seasons have been below normal, according to data from the Climate Hazards Center, a reference organization that includes academics and the Early Warning Systems Network. against starvation (Fews).
The current drought is caused by a series of five failed rainy seasons since the end of 2020, unheard of for at least 40 years. However, no famine has yet been officially declared.
The last famine in the region, which killed 260,000 people, half of them children under the age of six in Somalia in 2011, resulted from two consecutive poor rainy seasons.
Across the Horn of Africa, crops, already ravaged by an invasion of locusts, have been wiped out and herds, lacking water and pasture, decimated. More than 9.5 million head of cattle died, estimated the UN Humanitarian Coordination Office (Ocha) in November.
This crisis has been aggravated by the repercussions of the war in Ukraine, which has increased the price of cereals and fuels and captured numerous humanitarian aid funds.
The situation will get even worse in the months to come, alert the humanitarian organizations, with a sixth rainy season, from March to May, also announced below average.
. Somalia, the epicenter
Somalia is the most severely affected country, with more than half of its population (7.85 million people) affected by this drought.
Officially, the thresholds necessary to declare a famine have not been reached, in particular thanks to a last-minute financial mobilization at the end of 2022.
But without an amplification of the humanitarian response, “a famine is expected to occur between April and June 2023 in southern Somalia among agro-pastoral populations in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts, and among displaced populations in Baidoa city and Mogadishu. “, warned Ocha in December.
The number of people in a situation of food “disaster”, the last stage before famine according to international terminology, should increase from 214,000 to 727,000 by mid-2023, according to Ocha.
. Children at risk
According to Unicef, nearly two million children across the Horn of Africa “need urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of hunger”.
Unicef estimated in September that 730 children had died between January and July 2022 in nutrition centers in Somalia, a figure it considered probably lower than the reality.
In lack of water, milk and food, often living in unsanitary conditions, the youngest find themselves considerably weakened, their organism made more vulnerable to diseases (measles, cholera…) and their growth impaired in the long term. .
Accompanying their displaced families or sent daily in search of food, 2.7 million children have also dropped out of school and four million others are at risk of dropping out.
. Calls for funding
“There is no end in sight for the hunger crisis”, believes the director of the NGO Save The Children for Ethiopia, Xavier Joubert: “The needs have become enormous. Additional funds (.. .) are desperately needed”.
Today, only 55.8% of the 5.9 billion dollars requested by the UN to alleviate this crisis in 2023 has been funded.
In 2017, early humanitarian mobilization averted a famine in Somalia.