An estimated 43,000 people died in Somalia last year from extreme drought. This is evident from a report published Monday of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef that was carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Half of them would be children under the age of five. Somalia, located in the Horn of Africa, is experiencing its longest drought ever.
According to a forecast by the researchers, some 135 people could die every day as a result of the crisis. This could increase the number of deaths due to drought in the first six months of this year to 34,000. The authorities observe the highest death rates in southern Somalia, particularly in the areas around the Bay, Bakool and Banadir regions, the current epicenter of the drought. The United Nations estimates that it needs about USD 2.6 billion (converted to EUR 2.43 billion) to meet the basic needs of 7.6 million Somalis. The fact that many traditional donors for humanitarian aid have recently focused on Ukraine, as the UN coordinator in Somalia claimed last month, does not help the situation in the country.
Both Somalia and neighboring countries Ethiopia and Kenya are experiencing six consecutive crop failures during the rainy season. Somalia now has more than six million people who are starving and millions of livestock have died. In addition, rising food prices are exacerbating the hunger crisis. Earlier this year, the UN described the situation in the country as “extremely critical”. “The current crisis is far from over,” the report’s researchers said on Monday.
Challenging social context
The new figures, the researchers say, prove that while the famine has officially been averted for the time being, the crisis in the country is far from over and is already taking on greater proportions than other emergencies of the past. A quarter of a million Somalis died in a previous famine crisis in 2011. So far, the UN does not consider the current situation to be a famine. For such a formal famine to be declared, data would need to show that more than a fifth of households are experiencing extreme food shortages, more than 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished, and more than two in 10,000 people die every day.
The current drought crisis in Somalia is set within an already challenging social context. The extreme drought comes on top of extreme weather events caused by climate change, the country’s political instability, ethnic tensions and associated insecurity in the region. Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, has been fighting the Somali regime, supported by the international community, since 2007. Although driven from the country’s major cities early last decade, the terror movement remains firmly entrenched in Somali rural areas. According to the International Organization for Migration, some 3.8 million Somalis are now displaced by the situation.