NAIROBI: Somalia is on the brink of its second famine in six years, with drought already killing people in the north and crisis looming on a catastrophic scale, the United Nations said on Thursday.
“In six months, we’ll be facing a catastrophe and a famine on a scale we cannot imagine, if we don’t act right now,” the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, said in a press conference in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.
“We have the first anecdotal evidence of deaths, in Somaliland in particular, as a result of the drought,” he said, referring to the semi-autonomous northern part of the country.
The majority of the population in Somalia now needs emergency aid, as the number of people short of food has risen to 6.2 million from 5 million in September, the U.N. said.
Somalia’s 2011 famine killed 260,000 people, half of whom died before the official declaration of famine, caused by drought, war and lack of access to humanitarian aid.
Somalia has been mired in conflict since 1991 and its weak, Western-backed government is struggling to assert control over poor, rural areas under the militant group al-Shabaab.
“We are seeing growing similarities to the conditions that led to the famine in 2011 though, as numbers are showing, a much larger percentage of the country is at risk this time around,” de Clercq said.
“We will need to redouble our efforts to go into a full emergency mode in the next few weeks.”
Parts of Somalia have experienced three failed spots of rain and the U.N. predicts the April to June rains will also be poor.
“The situation is deteriorating faster than projected,” de Clercq said, “As food prices are rising, along with livestock deaths and malnutrition rates.”
Wages for casual labour are falling, a critical source of income for poor families who have lost livestock and crops.
“We are starting to see this awful perfect storm,” said Dick Trenchard, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative in Somalia.
“This is a pre-famine alert.”
Somalia s President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo has appealed the international community and aid organisations to increase the level of emergency aid programs.