By Fathi Mohamed AhmedSpecial to the Star
Monday June 26, 2023
MOGADISHU, Somalia—Makka Madeey Ibrahim used to have a comfortable life with her husband and seven children on a farm in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region.
Now she poisons her baby with detergent in order to feed her family.
Somalia has been wracked by the worst drought in four decades, devastating floods and more than 30 years of conflict. This year has set a record for displacements, with more than a million people fleeing their homes in just 130 days. It brings the total number of internally displaced people to nearly four million, which is close to a quarter of the country’s population.
In the face of such punishing conditions, some of the desperate have engaged in inhumane, unthinkable acts.
Like Ibrahim and her family, most of the displaced live in makeshift camps on the outskirts of Somalia’s biggest cities.
After years of recurrent droughts killed off Ibrahim’s herd of goats and dried up the once fertile fields where she grew fruit and vegetables, the family abandoned their ruined farm and moved to a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu.
Despite arriving in Mogadishu with nothing but a sick husband and her young children, there was no humanitarian assistance available for Ibrahim and her family. She hustled for work washing other people’s clothes but the few dollars she earned were not enough.
This was when she decided to force-feed her 11-month-old daughter with a mixture of washing powder and salty water. This led to explosive diarrhea leaving the child dehydrated and weak.
Ibrahim then took her sick baby to as many mother and child health centres as she could. Each one gave her high-energy biscuits and porridge to help revive her daughter.
She did not give this food to her child. She sold it in the local market, then used the money to buy food and other essentials for the whole family.
“I know this is not a good thing to do, but I have no other way of feeding my family,” said Ibrahim. “My husband is too ill to look for work and my children are always hungry.”
Poisoning her daughter and taking her to as many clinics as possible so she can obtain the maximum amount of free food has become Ibrahim’s only way of making an income. Sometimes the clinics give her money, too.
“I feed my baby detergent and salty water as often as I can because that is my livelihood,” she said. “The health workers at the clinics say she needs long-term care because the frequent bouts of diarrhea have made her malnourished. But I have no other choice.”
There have been reports of dozens of such cases within camps for the internally displaced, with an increasing number emerging as word of the practice spread.
Arfon Aden Ali and her family were also forced by drought to abandon their home in Lower Shabelle and move to a camp outside Mogadishu. Like Ibrahim, Ali force-fed her daughter with detergent.
Three months ago, her daughter died shortly after swallowing the mixture.
“My life is a nightmare now. I am full of remorse,” said Ali, who has suffered deep bouts of guilt and depression since the death of her child.
“I made this poisonous drink with my own hands and gave it to my daughter. All I wanted was to feed my family. I will never forget what I did to my daughter. I will never forgive myself.”
Ali said that when she arrived at the camp, other mothers told her how they made children sick with detergent. There were no jobs in the camp and no humanitarian assistance. Ali said that in her mind poisoning a child to feed the family was the only option.
Health workers must educate themselves about the growing problem of deliberate poisoning of children, said Ifrah Ahmed, acting chair of the Women’s Leadership Network at the Ministry of Women and Human Rights.
“Those who work in community health centres should monitor closely the condition of the children to make sure they distinguish the cases where they have been poisoned from those when they are naturally unwell,” she said.
Dr. Jibril Malin, a Mogadishu-based pediatrician, said feeding babies and children detergent mixed with salty water can lead to serious long-term health problems as well as diarrhea and vomiting.
“The cleaning powder contains dangerous chemicals,” he said. “They can erode the intestines and stomach lining, leading to the collapse of the digestive system.
“Salty water will bloat the child,” he added. “When mixed with detergent, it leads to vomiting and acute diarrhea. A child can succumb to these complications.”
There is a lack of community awareness.
“Mothers who do this to their children do not know about the life-threatening dangers,” said Nasteha Salad Omar, a health worker.
“More needs to be done to inform the community,” she said. “If the root causes are not addressed, children‘s lives will continue to be endangered because women will do anything to feed their families.”
As Somalia has been in a state of conflict for more than three decades, government is weak, many of its institutions destroyed. Local and international aid organizations struggle to reach those in need due to insecurity.
This leaves families such as Ibrahim’s and Ali’s resorting to desperate measures.
Displaced people have been selling off their young daughters for marriage and sending their young children out to work or leaving them to look after their siblings while they search for food.
Others rent their children to beggars who take them out in the streets all day and share their takings with the child’s parents.
Some children are recruited by armed groups.
A September 2022 study by the United Nations refugee agency found that nearly 20 per cent of children who worked were engaged in sexual transactions, while others worked in factories or as porters, domestic servants or street vendors.
According to the United Nations, about two-and-a-half million school-aged children in Somalia have been affected by the current drought, with about 30 per cent of them at risk of not returning to class.
With global powers focusing on other crises, especially the war in Ukraine, countries like Somalia get left behind. During Somalia’s devastating drought of 2022, 50 aid agencies made a desperate appeal after only two per cent of an emergency appeal to donor nations was funded.
Unless urgent steps are taken to increase international assistance, reduce the impact of climate change and bring greater stability to Somalia, the fear is that parents like Ibrahim and Ali will decide they have no choice but to put their babies’ lives at risk in order to keep their families alive.
Fathi Mohamed Ahmed, is chief editor of Bilan, Somalia’s first all-women media house, which is supported by UNDP and hosted by Dalsan Media Group in Mogadishu.