As countries fight children perish

The first fallout of war is scarcity. It begins with food, water, medicines and grows into multiple commodities. Some nations are beginning to crack under the pressure of the Russia and Ukraine conflict.

One agrees with a UN statement about the situation in Somalia. It said, “The world must widen its gaze from the war in Ukraine to prevent Somalia sliding into famine.”

The United Nations’ children’s agency (Unicef) said only a third of the $250 million needed to stave off catastrophe had so far been raised. Four consecutive rainy seasons have failed in the Horn of Africa - the worst drought spell in more than 40 years - and a fifth in October-December also looks likely to do so. Drought has combined with a global rise in food and fuel prices, pushed up by the war in Ukraine, to hit millions across the continent, putting food staples out of reach for poor families and killing crops and livestock.

“If the world does not widen its gaze from the war in Ukraine and act immediately, an explosion of child death is about to happen in the Horn of Africa,” Rania Dagash, deputy regional director of Unicef, told a briefing. Somalia has 386,000 children in urgent need of treatment for life-threatening malnutrition, numbers that are already higher than the 340,000 children who needed treatment in 2011, a year when famine killed hundreds of thousands of people, she said. Donor funding has been generous but falls short of the $250 million needed, Dagash said. “We have just a third of what we need this year. Our call to the international community, led by the G7 who will be meeting in Germany in a few weeks, needs to commit new, additional funding to save lives,” she said. Etienne Peterschmitt, Representative in Somalia for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), another UN agency, said millions were malnourished and 213,000 people were in the most critical category, facing extreme lack of food. Drought had dried up pastures and pushed up the prices of food and water, he said. Around 3 million livestock have died since last year due to drought and disease. The southern Bay region was of particular concern. Somalia is “on the brink of devastating and widespread hunger, starvation and death”, he said, adding it was a “perfect storm for famine if action is not taken now.”

Thousands of people from rural Somalia are walking hundreds of kilometres to reach Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, to escape hunger. The Save the Children survey in November showed that families are regularly going without meals in 15 of the 18 regions in Somalia. The government in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, declared a humanitarian emergency in November and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned that 13 million people in Somalia, parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, face severe hunger in the first quarter of 2022. It said that $327 million is needed to look after the immediate needs of 4.5 million people in the next six months. The region has been ravaged by a succession of droughts. Save the Children in a statement attributed the problem to “prolonged droughts in quick succession”, increase in food prices, fall in remittances from Somalians working abroad, and political uncertainty.

The Somalian government is trying to cope with the crisis. Food is offered in camps for the displaced people, and hospitals in Mogadishu are dealing with malnutrition cases. Abdullahi Osman, head of Hormuud Salaam Foundation and a member of Prime Minister Mohamed Roble’s drought task force, says that there are not enough humanitarian agencies on the ground to deal with the situation.

The tale of the hungry people who walked hundreds of kilometres to escape drought and hunger is heart-rending. The world can’t stand and watch. It has to act.