Over 22 million people go hungry as drought in Horn of Africa

From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya to Somalia, the worst drought in 40 years has hit the Horn of Africa, putting some 22 million people at risk of starvation.

In the disaster-stricken areas, residents who mainly rely on livestock and subsistence farming have experienced a rainy season for five consecutive years since the end of 2020.

The UN says 12 million people in Ethiopia, 5.6 million in Somalia and 4.3 million in Kenya are “severely food insecure.”

The UN World Food Program said in a January 23 report that the overall figure had nearly doubled from 13 million in early 2022.

Across the region, 1.7 million people have been displaced from their homes due to lack of water and pasture, the report said.

The Horn of Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, with extreme weather events increasing in frequency and intensity.

Data from the US-based Center for Climate Hazards show that since 2016, precipitation has been below average in eight of the 13 rainy seasons.

According to the United Nations, the last famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, where 260,000 people, half of them children under the age of six, died of hunger.

At that time, the region experienced two severe rainy seasons, compared to the current five droughts.

Already devastated crops have been wiped out by locust infestations in 2019-2021, with livestock suffering a similar fate.

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA estimates that 9.5 million cattle died in November.

Humanitarian groups warn that the situation is likely to worsen and that the next rainy season, which runs from March to May, is also expected to be below normal.

Horn’s dire situation has been amplified by the war in Ukraine, which has escalated food and fuel costs, disrupted global supply chains, and pushed aid funds away from the region.

Somalia is the worst-hit country, with drought affecting more than half of its population, about 7.85 million people.

In December, OCHA said the troubled country had not yet fallen into full-blown famine, thanks to the response of aid agencies and communities.

But despite this, people are suffering from “catastrophic” food shortages, and warned of famine expected in southern Somalia from April to June if aid is not increased.

Agro-pastoralists in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts and displaced persons in Baidoa town and the capital Mogadishu were most at risk.

OCHA warned that by June, the number of people at the highest level of the UN’s five-tier food-insecurity classification is expected to more than triple from October to 727,000.

Nearly two million children in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are in need of urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the worst form of hunger, according to UNICEF, the United Nations child assistance agency.

In September, 730 children died in nutrition centers in Somalia between January and July, but said the true number was likely higher.

Lack of water, milk and food, and often living in poor conditions, make the youngest children very weak and susceptible to diseases such as measles and cholera, limiting their long-term growth. There is a possibility that

In addition, about 2.7 million children are out of school.

Xavier Joubert, Ethiopia’s representative of the British charity Save the Children, said: “The hunger crisis is never ending and hope is slowly fading.

“There’s no question that the need has grown tremendously,” he said, adding that more funding was urgently needed.

Currently, only 55.5% of the $5.9 billion sought by the United Nations to tackle this crisis has been funded.

Early humanitarian action averted a famine in Somalia in 2017.