MOGADISHU: About 6.5 million people in Somalia face acute hunger due to drought, the government and the United Nations said on Tuesday, sounding the alarm days after the UN’s food agency warned that food aid could grind to a halt by April without new funding.
Somalia declared a national drought emergency in November after years of failed rains, and other countries in the region have also been hit.
More than a third of those facing acute malnutrition are children, Somalia’s government and the United Nations Somalia said in a joint statement. The crisis has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, with many crowding into camps in Mogadishu and other cities.
“The drought ... has deepened alarmingly, with soaring water prices, limited food supplies, dying livestock, and very little humanitarian funding,” George Conway, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said in a statement.
Hawo Abdi said she lost two children to illness after the drought laid waste to her homeland in Somalia’s Bay region.
