Somalia’s “dire hunger emergency” is spiraling upward with one-third of the population expected to face crisis or worse levels of food needs, but the U.N. has been forced to drastically cut food assistance because of a lack of funding, the head of the World Food Program said Thursday. Cindy McCain told the U.N. Security Council the latest food security data show that over 6.6 million Somalis desperately need assistance including 40,000 “fighting for survival in famine-like conditions.”
But she said WFP was forced to cut monthly food assistance, which had reached a record 4.7 million people in December, to just 3 million people at the end of April – “and without an immediate cash injection, we’ll have to cut our distribution lists again in July to just 1.8 million per month.”
McCain, who visited Somalia last month, said she saw “how conflict and climate change are conspiring to destroy the lives and livelihoods of millions of Somalis.” She said the country’s longest drought on record, which killed millions of livestock and decimated crops, recently gave way to disastrous flash floods in the south.
Urging donors to be as generous as they were and hauling Somalia “back from the abyss of famine in 2022,” McCain warned that the survival of millions of Somalis is at stake.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Somalia in April “to ring the alarm” and appealed for “massive international support” for Somalia. But the results of a high-level donors’ conference for three Horn of Africa countries – Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya – on May 24 were very disappointing. It raised less than $1 billion of the more than $5 billion organizers were hoping for to help over 30 million people.
Only in the past few years has Somalia begun to find its footing after three decades of chaos from warlords to the al-Shabab extremist group.
