A new UN report says five million people in Somalia are not getting enough food. That’s more than 40 percent of the population. It blames, in part, poor rainfall in southern and central Somalia, “the breadbasket of the country.”
The report released on Tuesday says the number of people who are food insecure has increased by 3,00,000 since February. More than 3,00,000 children under five are acutely malnourished.
More than half of those without enough food have been displaced from their homes, sometimes multiple times, the report says.
More than a million people inside Somalia are displaced after years of violence, famine and attacks by homegrown extremist group al-Shabab.
Now thousands of others, like Nur’s family, are returning to the country from the world’s largest refugee camp in Kenya, which has vowed to close the Dadaab camp in the coming months.
Some returnees said aid agencies haven’t provided them with food since their return to Mogadishu and similar camps elsewhere.
“Security and hunger problems are equal problems for us here,” Nur said. Many of the families returning from the Dadaab camp in Kenya are piling into crowded camps in sometimes dire living conditions.
Meanwhile, the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab continues to carry out attacks in the capital and elsewhere.
“Life here is a nightmare. It’s only between hunger and bombing,” said Ahmed Mohamed, whose wife died in a suicide bombing at a Mogadishu hotel one week after their return in August.
Somalia is facing one of the worst food crises in years. The UN says the growing burden of returnees, and drought in some areas of the country, are other contributing factors.
According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, more than 1.1 million people cannot meet their daily food requirements.
“Humanitarian partners are ready to scale up response to help families struggling to find food to make it through the day,” Peter de Clercq, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said in a statement.
But he noted that the Somalia Humanitarian Response Plan for this year is just 32 percent funded.
