Abdirahman Abdishakurthe special envoy on the drought of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, tried to draw attention to the United Nations headquarters in New York on “the magnitude of the crisis” that strikes his country. “Don’t forget Somalia, especially the drought which risks turning into famine”he said, noting that the situation was similar to that of 2011, when the famine had killed nearly 260,000.
Like all countries in the Horn of Africa, Somalia is hit by a historic drought due to a series of four seasons of insufficient rains and a fifth to come which promises to be just as bad. Millions of people are in a particularly vulnerable situation and some could starve.
Famine is still possible in 2022 and international organizations have been warning since the beginning of the year against this danger which threatens the Horn of Africa. Somalia is one of the most exposed countries and it is for this reason that the Somali President dispatched a special envoy to New York, where he arrived on September 13, 2022, to accelerate the aid promised to the country. It takes more than 1.4 billion dollars to finance the humanitarian plan and the funds are still lacking despite the promises.
I know there is some competition on the international scene in terms of priorities, with Ukraine, the continuing impact of Covid-19, the energy crisis, but that does not mean that we should forget the Horn of Africa and Somalia
Abdirahman Abdishakur, the Somali president’s special envoy on the droughtat AFP
This is not the first time that this Horn of Africa country has called for help. The drought that has been raging since the end of 2020 raises the specter of a new famine in Somalia. Even if, it is not yet declared, “people are dying today“, insisted the Somali special envoy at UN headquarters. More than 700 children lost their lives between January and July 2022 in nutrition centers, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) which estimates that the real number of victims is much higher.To date, there are more than half a million children aged 6 months to 5 years suffering from severe malnutrition.
“Famine is knocking at the door”, said Martin Griffiths, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at a conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu in early September, stressing that this was a final warning.
Larger than France (637,657 km²), Somalia, whose population lives mainly from livestock and agriculture, is considered one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. In addition to drought, it faces socio-political instability due to an Islamist insurgency.