Somalia is on the verge of famine, warned Martin Griffiths, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on Monday, who issued a “final warning” of the catastrophe, which could occur “between October and December.” .
Pope asks for aid to Somalia due to unprecedented drought
“Hunger is knocking at the door. Today is a final warning. The Somalia Food and Nutrition Analysis Report shows concrete data that a famine will occur in two areas of the Bay region between October and December of this year,” said Martin Griffiths, at a press conference in the Somali capital. , Mogadishu.
The catastrophe will affect two districts in the south of the country, Baidoa and Buurhakaba, he warned.
Arriving in Somalia last Thursday, Griffiths said he was “deeply shocked by the level of pain and suffering that so many Somalis are facing.”
Across the country, a total of 7.8 million people, almost half the population, have been affected by the historic drought, which has put 213,000 people at serious risk of famine, according to UN figures.
Hunger and thirst have driven a million people to flee their areas in search of help since 2021.
The country is experiencing its third drought in a decade, but the current one “exceeded the terrible droughts of 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 in terms of duration and severity,” OCHA warned in July.
Some 200 children have died in Somalia since January from malnutrition.
It is the result of a sequence of four consecutive weak rainy seasons, since the end of 2020, without a similar record for at least 40 years.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN meteorological agency, warned at the end of August that the next rainy season, expected between October and November, could also fail.
The drought has decimated livestock, essential for the survival of a population heavily dependent on grazing, as well as crops, which had already been devastated by a locust plague that swept through the Horn of Africa between late 2019 and 2021.
Somalia was hit by a famine in 2011-2012 that killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of whom were children under the age of 5. Between July 2011 and February 2012, a state of famine was declared in various areas of the south and center of the country.
Source: Observadora
