- The village of Issa is 200 km south of the camp set up by a group of international humanitarian organizations in southwestern Somalia, among dozens of others, designed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people fleeing hunger from across the country, which is suffering the worst drought in four decades.
- The drought has plunged more than 8 million into a cycle of deadly hunger that now afflicts urban dwellers.
- The circle of hunger did not stop at the borders of rural areas, but rather began to creep towards the cities, after it was as safe as the capital, Mogadishu, in light of the high prices that experts describe as “missile.”
A real tragedy
Like millions of people with “empty stomachs” who are looking for aid to make ends meet, Halima Musa, Issa’s mother, was forced to flee with her four children from her village after months of hardship and the depletion of her little stock of corn.
They traveled a distance of 200 kilometers, sometimes on foot and at other times by animal, through areas ravaged by drought and whose lands were covered with the bones and body parts of dead cattle, starving and thirsty, in order to reach the camp.
Upon her arrival at the camp, Halima thought that the food aid she would receive would restore the exhausted bodies of her children, but this did not work with her young Issa, whose intravenous solutions and nutritional interventions failed to restore life to his dehydrated and severely malnourished body.
In fact, Issa was one of the 340,000 severely malnourished children in Somalia.
The country is facing the worst drought in 4 decades, which has left half of the population of about 17 million people in need of urgent food and humanitarian interventions, at a cost estimated by the World Food Program at about $2.6 billion.
Less than 10 percent of them were available due to the international community’s preoccupation with severe economic and political crises in other regions of the world.
Catastrophic situation
According to Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Shakur, Special Envoy for Drought Response in Somalia, the matter appears to be very serious and complex as the widespread drought affecting 90 percent of the country coincides with the worsening grain supply crisis caused by the war that has been going on in Ukraine for more than a year.
Abdel Shakur told Sky News Arabia that most of those affected by the drought are farmers and livestock breeders, who make up the vast majority of the population, whose source of livelihood has been completely destroyed by the current drought.
He explains, “The droughts associated with the conflict in Ukraine affected grain and fuel supplies, which in turn led to higher commodity prices in Somalia, which relies on the Ukrainian market to secure 75 percent of its grain imports.”
Abd al-Shakour indicates a significant expansion of hunger, which is now covering almost all parts of the country, in light of a skyrocketing price of food commodities and an unprecedented scarcity of water sources, especially in rural areas, while urban residents face increasing pressures that make their lives no better than their compatriots. In the countryside and camps for the displaced, which are witnessing a fierce attack, which greatly affected their absorptive capacity.
comprehensive effect
- Over the past few weeks, the disastrous effects of the tragic drought and hunger in Somalia have expanded to include even the capital, Mogadishu, and the few other cities that were relatively safe from that wave.
- The drought has led to the collapse of the small and medium-sized businesses that were the primary source of income for hundreds of thousands in cities and peri-urban areas.
- Most of the economic and corporate activities were affected by the rise in fuel prices and production inputs, which led to a wide layoff wave.
Heartbreaking facts
- A joint study conducted by the United Nations and the Somali government expects that the number of starvation deaths in Somalia during the first six months of 2023 will reach about 34,000.
- 43,000 Somalis died in 2022 due to lack of food, and hundreds of thousands of livestock died due to lack of pasture and water.
- 1.4 million Somalis were forced to flee during the past months from their areas of original residence after losing their basic sources of livelihood due to the current drought, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.
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