The United Nations (UN) agencies on Monday said nearly a quarter of a million people are facing starvation in Somalia as drought worsens and global food prices have soared to near-record highs, reported Reuters.
In a joint statement, the UN agencies said a fourth consecutive rainy season had failed in Somalia, and meteorologists are warning of another below-average rainy season in the Horn of Africa country later this year.
Adding to the woes, world food prices are close to record highs hit in March due to the Russia-Ukraine war. The price of staple grains and edible oils has spiked due to the war.
According to the joint statement released by the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN children’s agency UNICEF and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), around 213,000 Somalis are at risk of starvation, a near three-fold increase from levels expected in April.
The organizations claim that around 7.1 million Somalis or nearly half the population face acute levels of food insecurity, which means they won’t be able to get the required minimum calories and might have to sell assets to survive.
Notably, famine conditions killed an estimated quarter of a million people in Somalia in 2011 with half of those who died being small children under the age of six.
El-Khidir Daloum, the WFP’s country director in Somalia, said the world must act immediately to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
He said the lives of the most vulnerable are already at risk from malnutrition and hunger, and the world cannot wait for a declaration of famine to act.
The UN 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan is only 18 percent funded to date.
“We’re calling on the international community to act fast while we still have some hope of preventing … widespread famine in Somalia,” the FAO’s representative in Somalia Etienne Peterschmitt said.
