Wednesday April 13, 2022
GENEVA — U.N. agencies are calling on international donors
to act now and provide the funds needed to prevent another potentially
devastating famine in Somalia. Millions of Somalis are in need of life-saving
assistance.
Three years of extreme drought has brought Somalia to its
knees. Some six million people or 40 percent of the population are facing acute
hunger because the rains have failed, their crops have withered, and their
livestock has died.
The United Nations says three quarters of a million people
have been forced to leave their homes in search of food for themselves and
grazing land for their cattle. Last week, a U.N. food security report stated
that Somalia is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.
Etienne Peterschmitt is the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization representative in Somalia. Speaking from the capital, Mogadishu,
Peterschmitt says some 81,000 people already are suffering from catastrophic
conditions in some areas of the country. He says they are facing starvation,
malnutrition, loss of livestock, crops, other assets, and eventually disease
and death.
“Almost quarter of a
million people died the last time famine was declared in Somalia,"
Peterschmitt said. "And with the current likelihood of poor rain,
skyrocketing food prices, and a huge funding shortfall as was already mentioned
also, it means a perfect storm is brewing for another catastrophic event in
which millions of people are at risk of sliding into famine.”
Children accounted for nearly half of the quarter-million
people who died in Somalia’s last famine in 2011. So far, the U.N.’s $1.4
billion 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan for Somalia is less than five percent
funded.
The World Food Program’s deputy country director in Somalia,
Lara Fossi, says her agency must make some hard choices on how to distribute
aid because of a lack of money.
“We have already prioritized our very limited nutrition
funding to treat malnutrition rather than to prevent it," said Fossi.
"And this, of course, will mean that more people are likely then to fall
into needing treatment for acute malnutrition in the longer term…and we are
taking from the hungry to feed the starving.”
Fossi warns the threat of famine may force people into
negative coping strategies, like selling off livestock and other assets. That,
she says, will undermine their long-term ability to support themselves and
force them to remain dependent on humanitarian relief.