Drought, Conflict and Aid Cuts Drive Hunger in Southern Somalia

Maryam, 46, watched her goats starve and her crops fail before burying two of her children. She then left her village with her remaining six children and traveled along the Jubba River to a makeshift settlement for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Kismayo, the capital of Somalia’s Jubbaland state.

Three consecutive seasons of failed rains have doubled the country's malnutrition rate. More than 300,000 Somalis have been forced from their homes since January. Several international organizations have stopped operations in the Kismayo camps for internally displaced people, largely due to aid cuts ordered by President Donald Trump last year.

“We are hungry. We need care and help,” said Maryam. She said she will not return to her village, which is under the control of the al-Qaeda-linked armed group al-Shabab. Fighters there have started seizing the limited food supplies available. The camp itself offers little relief.

In March alone, five children died of malnutrition, its manager said. Somalia has faced near-constant civil war, armed rebellions, floods and droughts since the early 1990s. The country ranks among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change.

More than 200 health centres and 400 schools have closed since last year. The cuts in foreign aid have had a significant effect on operations, according to the Somalia director for the NGO Save the Children. Farmers whose herds and crops were decimated described one of the worst droughts recorded in a country where a third of the population already lacked regular meals.

Even if the forthcoming rainy season brings normal rainfall, recovery for affected populations will take months. “We cannot afford to actually address all the needs of these people,” said Ali Adan Ali, a Jubbaland official managing the displaced. At the only remaining mobile health clinic supported by Save the Children serving multiple camps near Kismayo, a woman named Khadija tried to feed a high-calorie solution to her severely malnourished one-year-old daughter.

The 45-year-old had come to the camp after last year’s drought killed her livestock but reported having nothing to eat there as well.

A hospital in Kismayo is the only facility in the region capable of treating the most severe cases of malnutrition. It is turning patients away due to lack of space and staff, with every bed occupied by starving babies, some on ventilators with intravenous drips.

Cases have tripled since last year and continue to increase. The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has increased fuel prices, affecting food and water supplies. Residents in the camps seek work in construction or cleaning jobs in Kismayo or sell firewood, but options remain limited.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reduced its Somalia programme from $2.6bn in 2023 to $852m this year, especially after Washington slashed its donations. So far, only 13 percent of this year’s funding target has been raised.

“It’s a toxic cocktail of factors ... Things are really, really desperate,” the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told the AFP news agency in an interview last week. The official added that aid workers are often having to choose which lives to save and which lives not to save.