Only a “massive” and immediate increase in funds and humanitarian aid can save Somalia from starvation, a UN spokesman warned, as aid workers said children were starving “before our eyes” amid rapidly escalating malnutrition.
In a statement to G7 leaders meeting in Germany on Sunday, Michael Dunford, regional director of the World Food Program (WFP) for East Africa, said governments should donate urgently and generously if there was any hope for avoiding disaster in the Horn of Africa.
“We need money and we need it now,” Dunford said. “Will we be able to prevent it? [a famine in Somalia]? Unless there is … mass enlargement from now on, it won’t be possible, to be honest. The only way at the moment is if there is a huge investment in humanitarian aid and all the stakeholders, all the partners, come together to try to prevent that. ”
The Horn of Africa has suffered four consecutive failed rainy seasons and is experiencing its worst drought in four decades, a climate shock exacerbated by the ongoing conflict and rising prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Across East Africa, 89 million people are now considered “food insecure” by the WFP, a number that has risen by almost 90% in the last year.
“It simply came to our notice then [that rate of growth] delay. If nothing else, it seems to be accelerating, “Dunford said.
Last year, the United Kingdom and other G7 leaders pledged $ 7 billion (£ 5.7 billion) to help countries prevent famine, but calls for East Africa failed to raise enough funds to prevent hunger.
These same leaders are now being called upon to commit to an immediate package of funding as Somalia, the worst-hit country, crashes. At least 213,000 people in the worst-hit areas are expected to starve by September, according to the latest report from the Integrated Phase Classification of Food Security (IPC).
During a recent visit to the country, Claire Sanford, deputy director of humanitarian aid at Save the Children, said she had met with mothers who have already buried many children in the past year and whose surviving children are now suffering from severe malnutrition. An acutely malnourished three-month-old baby that Sanford met “never made it through the night, and we’ve heard a number of stories that have been.”
“I can honestly say that in my 23 years of responding to the humanitarian crisis, this is the worst thing I’ve seen, especially in terms of the level of impact on children,” she said. “The famine that my colleagues and I witnessed in Somalia is escalating even faster than we feared.
A Somali woman fleeing drought-stricken areas gives water to her baby at a displacement camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, June 4, 2022. Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP
In 2011, Somalia experienced a famine that killed more than 250,000 people, mostly children, but Sanford said many of the people it met said conditions were even worse now.
“We have failed miserably as an international community to allow the situation to reach its current state. In 2011, we swore as a community that we would never, ever allow this to happen again. Still, we did not keep that promise, “she added.
Dunford said the lack of funding has hampered efforts to learn from the famine in 2011. “We see children dying before our eyes, we see populations that have lost their livelihoods. Not that we haven’t learned the lessons of 2011; there were very, very good lessons from this crisis. We simply failed to implement it to the extent necessary due to lack of funding. “
In April, the UN received only 3% of its $ 6 billion call for Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.
Danny Sriskandaraja, CEO of Oxfam GB, said the current crisis was due in part to the British government’s “failure of compassion” and the decision to cut its foreign aid budget by £ 4.6 billion last year.
According to the latest IPC estimate for Somalia, about 1.5 million children under the age of five will face acute malnutrition by the end of the year, including 386,400 who are likely to be severely malnourished. These numbers are only expected to rise.
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