HUNGER CRISIS THREATENS HALF OF SOMALIA’S YOUNG CHILDREN, UN SAYS

Tue 15 February 2022:

According to the United Nations, severe drought is threatening to force nearly half of Somali children under the age of five into acute malnutrition this year, with hundreds of thousands in need of life-saving treatment.

“Malnutrition has reached crisis levels,” Victor Chinyama, head of communications for the UN children’s agency UNICEF’s Somalia operations, said on Tuesday.

“The time to act is now,” he told reporters in Geneva via video-link, cautioning that “if you wait until things get worse, or until famine is declared, it may be too late.”

Somalia has been hit the hardest by the Horn of Africa’s worst drought in decades, with the UN warning that 4.1 million people – a quarter of the Somali population – require immediate food assistance.

Chinyama said children were paying the highest price in the hunger crisis, with 1.4 million of them, or nearly half of all those under the age of five, expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

“Of these, 330,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition,” which can lead to death, he said.

UNICEF, he said, urgently needs $7m by March to buy the therapeutic foods needed to treat those children.

Without the additional supplies, “100,000 children with severe acute malnutrition will miss out on life-saving treatment,” he warned.

Drought’s effects

Severe acute malnutrition can cause stunting and wasting and leaves children so weak that they become far more vulnerable to diseases.

For “a severely acutely malnourished child, or severely wasted child … the risk of them dying from diseases such as measles or diarrhoea is 11 times higher than for a well-nourished child,” UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said.

That is a particularly concerning statistic, since the drought has also brought on a severe water crisis in Somalia, and in turn more disease outbreaks.

Some 7,500 measles cases were registered in the country in 2021 – double the caseload for 2019 and 2020 combined, while about 60,000 people are at risk of contracting diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera, UN figures show.

The drought is also spurring a migration crisis, Chinyama said.

Since November, some 500,000 people have fled their homes in search of food, water, and pasture, adding to the 2.9 million people already displaced within the country.

Drought and displacement expose children to additional dangers, such as armed organizations in Somalia, where the al-Shabab armed group controls large swathes of land.

According to UNICEF, armed groups recruited and utilized 1,200 minors, including 45 girls, in 2021, while another 1,000 children were stolen.

“In many instances, these children were victims of multiple violations,” Chinyama said.

UNICEF has estimated that it will require $48 million to respond to the Somalia crisis this year. It has barely received $10 million so far.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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