Somalia: One in three people face severe food shortages as drought deepens, Save the Children warns

[0:00] Now, Somalia is facing a rapidly worsening hunger crisis. [0:03] About six and a half million people don't have enough to eat. [0:07] Four failed rainy seasons of exhausted reserves in several regions. [0:11] The figure includes more than two million people already facing emergency levels of hunger. [0:16] The worst affected areas include northern and central Somalia, [0:20] along with parts of the south, including the Juba region. [0:23] Catherine Soy reports from near Kismayo. [0:26] You don't need to go far from Kismayo to find this. [0:33] A graveyard of livestock killed during seasons of drought in Somalia. [0:37] A resident tells us she lost 200 cattle, only four remain. [0:45] A short drive away, the largest camp for displaced people who have nothing to eat. [0:51] They've come from areas across Juba land. [0:54] The region is hosting more than half a million Somalis who have fled drought, floods and conflicts. [1:01] Barwako Aden arrived a week ago. [1:05] Her eight-month-old daughter Fardun is malnourished and has been hospitalized. [1:12] Since I arrived, I have not received anything. [1:15] I'm in the same situation I was in back home. [1:20] Some of those in this camp have come from areas controlled by the armed group Al-Jabaab. [1:27] Khothin Muhammad arrived exhausted. [1:29] It took her seven days to get here. [1:32] She walked part of the way and crossed the river Juba by boat. [1:37] Khothin Muhammad and her family have just been registered so they are able to receive humanitarian assistance. [1:43] But that aid is not coming in fast enough. [1:46] She is currently living with a sister who came earlier. [1:51] But the situation is quite dire because they do not have much. [1:54] They don't have water or food. [1:57] There are several children that they have to take care of. [2:01] And the situation is playing out all across this camp. [2:07] Somalia's crisis is not easing. [2:10] Climate change, aid cuts, and now the Iran conflict disrupting trade routes have made things worse. [2:19] Aid workers and the government are struggling to respond. [2:24] There is no assistance on the horizon. [2:28] Nothing we are expecting as of today. [2:30] I don't know tomorrow. [2:32] Allah knows what will happen tomorrow. [2:34] But there is no sight of any assistance for any quarter or for any humanitarian actor. [2:41] Bad news for the displaced who must find a way to survive. [2:45] Catherine Soy, Luglo, Juba Land States, Southern Somalia. [2:51] And Catherine Soy is live with us now from Kismaya. [2:54] So Catherine, we saw a stark glimpse of the scale of the crisis there. [3:01] Talk us through the extent of the need. [3:03] Yes, and we have returned to this camp. [3:11] It's the largest camp. [3:12] It has about 5,000 people and more keep coming. [3:17] We've been speaking to women who say that they do not have food. [3:20] We've spoken to them this morning and they say they did not even have anything, [3:27] breakfast or anything. [3:29] They have some medical services that are being provided. [3:34] They have some water that is being provided by aid workers. [3:39] But aid workers are struggling. [3:41] So many of these people are farmers and they live along River Juba. [3:48] They say that they have not been able to plant for many years. [3:52] We are talking about several rainy seasons that have been that have failed. [3:59] And right now we are on the long rains are on set. [4:07] And we have seen floods in some areas. [4:12] We have seen drought. [4:15] Some parts do not have rain at all. [4:18] And to discuss all this, I'm joined with Francesca, who is the humanitarian director of Save the Children. [4:27] Thank you so much for your time. [4:31] It's the onset of the rainy season now. [4:34] Does that come as a relief? [4:37] Are we going to see help? [4:39] Thank you, Catherine. [4:39] Yeah, as you mentioned, the rainy season should have started, but rains did not arrive across the country. [4:46] In areas where we are right now, there's been no rains. [4:49] The positive forecasts bring hope that there will be rain in the upcoming weeks. [4:54] But even with these rains, it's unlikely that we're going to see significant improvement in food security and malnutrition [5:00] because this comes after multiple rainy seasons that have failed across the country. [5:06] The people who are coming here, it's not just because of the drought, but also the floods. [5:12] Tell us about the impact of that. [5:14] Yeah, rains in Somalia have been quite erratic over the last years. [5:18] So we see that within a rainy season, we might have areas where prolonged drought continues [5:24] and other areas that receive rains. [5:25] rains, but because the ground has been dry for so long, the rain just flashes and creates infrastructure damages [5:35] across the area where it comes, rather than bring relief the way we would hope to see. [5:41] Aid workers are very much affected because of the aid cuts. [5:46] We have climate change. [5:48] We have conflict here. [5:50] And then to add on that, the crisis in the Middle East, in Iran, how has that affected your response? [6:01] Yeah, it's been very impactful across Somalia. [6:03] And as you mentioned, it comes on top of many crises that the country has gone through. [6:09] At the moment, we're seeing fuel prices triple in the capital. [6:13] And we're also seeing price of key food commodities like sorghum and maize increased by 25% and over 30% across the country. [6:21] And that's extremely, in fact, impactful because Somalia relies heavily on unimported food. [6:26] About 70% of the food that is consumed in Somalia comes from imports. [6:31] This means that families and children that we've met over the past days might not be able to afford it. [6:37] And if the rains don't come, their fields will also not produce the crops that they need. [6:42] Tell me more about the aid cuts. [6:44] We have been speaking. [6:46] I've been here for many years. [6:49] And since last year, aid workers like yourselves are saying that some of the services have been discontinued. [6:58] Tell us about that. [6:59] Yeah, the situation in terms of the funding cuts is extremely severe in Somalia. [7:03] Right now, the response plan for the country, it's only just a little over 12% funded, which is the lowest we've seen in many, many years. [7:13] This comes with impact on service provision. [7:17] For example, we were seeing yesterday our teams here in this camp providing assistance, but they cannot come here every day. [7:24] So they will come once a week on a different schedule, because at the moment, the truth is we need to do more because the needs are increasing, but we have less. [7:34] And that's not enough. [7:35] And we're seeing this really across sectors. [7:37] It's not just health and nutrition. [7:39] It's education. [7:40] We are seeing the school in the camp has been recently closed because of the funding cuts. [7:45] And it's currently running on volunteer basis. [7:48] So the teachers are providing education because they're here and they want to, but there's no resources at the moment being provided to them. [7:57] And yesterday we were at a health facility where the children were and we saw several malnourished kids. [8:05] Some of them had to be rushed to the hospital because they're having breathing problems. [8:10] Some of them are severely malnourished. [8:13] Just tell us about the rate of malnutrition here in Somalia and how disturbing is it? [8:19] It's extremely high. [8:21] Just this year, they're forecasting 1.84 million children under five suffering from acute malnutrition. [8:27] That's a huge number. [8:28] And we've seen these numbers very high across the years in Somalia. [8:33] Malnutrition is not just linked to food security, but also to the availability of health and nutrition services, which are shrinking in country. [8:42] The availability of proper safe drinking water, proper sanitation services, and all of this is impacting. [8:50] We're also seeing an increase in diseases, as you mentioned. [8:52] And yesterday we met with severely actually malnourished children that on top of their malnutrition condition, they also had other diseases because they had not been vaccinated. [9:04] And this comes again as the backdrop of the funding cuts where these programs are being shrunk. [9:09] Kismayo right now is hosting 500,000 IDPs in this area alone, it's 25,000. [9:19] So describe to me when an IDP who has just arrived, what kind of services can they expect to get? [9:30] Yeah, it really depends a camp like this, as we saw earlier, we receive health and nutrition services, they receive water, but other services have been discontinued. [9:41] And we mentioned the school no longer provides the services that were able to be provided earlier. [9:48] So even the services that are here have shrunk. [9:50] So what is happening is we're seeing people arriving yesterday, we met someone who walked for three days to arrive to this camp and reach her sister, but there's not enough services being provided and then she might want to move on. [10:04] So secondary displacement is happening more and more frequently because of the services and commodities available shrinking everywhere we go and prices of key commodities increasing even in urban settings like where we are. [10:17] So what is your biggest concern if this continues? [10:22] Definitely the situation of children across Somalia is extremely concerning, we're seeing the malnutrition rates not going down, we're seeing the spread of child illnesses across the country, dropout rates are extremely high right now and they keep going up because of the drought. [10:41] So we want to make sure that the children like the ones we're here with right now have a chance at life, get access to health and nutrition services as needed as well as access to education and, you know, a chance at life. [10:59] Yes. [11:00] Yes. [11:01] Yes, we have been speaking to the humanitarian director of Save the Children and we're not just talking about this camp when we come about when we come when you talk about the drought. [11:14] We have displacement camps here in Kismayo, in Baidoa, in Mogadishu, all these are urban centers and one of the things that we notice is that Somalis are very resilient. [11:29] So they help each other, they share whatever available resources that they have, they share food, they share, they share tents and shelters and we have Somalis in the diaspora who are also helping. [11:49] They are crowdsourcing so that others can get help, but the situation here is very, very dire. [11:59] All right, Catherine. [12:00] Many thanks for that. [12:01] I'll just hear it's Catherine Soy. [12:02] They're reporting live from Kismayo in Somalia. [12:05] Thanks also, Catherine, to Francesca San Giorgi of Save the Children.