Many thousands more are waiting to be registered. In neighbouring Ethiopia, 2, people a day are arriving at the Dolo refugee camp — also struggling to keep pace.
This compounds a food crisis faced by almost 7 million Kenyans and Ethiopians at home. In Djibouti and Eritrea, tens of thousands of people are also in need — and potentially many more. Even as we respond to this immediate crisis, we need to find ways to deal with underlying causes. But with the effects of climate change being increasingly felt throughout the world, it will surely not be the last. This means practical measures: drought-resistant seeds, irrigation, rural infrastructure, livestock programmes.
These projects can work. Over the last ten years, they have helped boost agricultural production in Ethiopia by eight percent a year. We have also seen improvements in our early warning systems. We knew this drought was coming and began issuing warnings last November. Looking ahead, we must ensure those warnings are heard in time. Above all, we need peace. As long as there is conflict in Somalia, we cannot effectively fight famine. More and more children will go hungry; more and more people will needlessly die.
And this cycle of insecurity is growing dangerously wide. In Somalia, Halima Omar told us: "Maybe this is our fate — or maybe a miracle will happen and we will be saved from this nightmare. I cannot accept this as her fate. Together, we must rescue her and her countrymen and all their children from a truly terrible nightmare.
Skip to main content. Get the free mobile apps Get the latest news from us on our apps. Welcome to the United Nations. Toggle navigation Language:. Africa Renewal. Crop failure and poverty leave people vulnerable to starvation — but famine only occurs with political failure. In Somalia years of internal violence and conflict have been highly significant in creating the conditions for famine. By the time the UN calls a famine it is already a signal of large-scale loss of life.
We can only ensure now that aid comes quickly and appropriately to prevent an even worse-case scenario. We must also resolve not why this famine happened but why again? And how to prevent the next one? This famine represents the most serious food insecurity situation in the world today in terms of both scale and severity.
This is the first officially-declared famine in Africa so far this century, at a time when famine has been eradicated everywhere else. The 21st Century is the first time in human history that we have the capacity to eradicate famine. To do so, we must address the underlying problems:. Emergency aid is vital right now, but we also need to ask why this has happened, and how we can stop it ever happening again. In June, the UN said Somalia was facing the worst funding shortage in six years.
It warned that Covid was likely to lead to worsening nutrition among vulnerable groups, including poor households in urban areas and IDPs living in crowded, unhygienic conditions. The pandemic has disrupted the Somali economy, which had been slowly recovering from years of conflict before Covid hit.
According to the World Bank, the economy contracted by 1. None of this would be news to Fadumo Ali Mohamed. She was also in Mogadishu four years ago when the country was on the brink of famine. I will rather struggle to survive here than keep running around. Fadumo Ali Mohamed in one of the camps in Mogadishu for displaced people. The world has a vested interest in Somalia. Will it act to stop its collapse?
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