Explained | How grave is the drought emergency in Somalia?

A joint statement by the U.N. FAO, OCHA, UNICEF and WFP stated that nearly roughly six million people in Somalia — roughly 40% of its population — are now facing extreme levels of food insecurity with pockets of famine conditions in certain areas.

Rains in Somalia have ‘faltered’ for three consecutive seasons, with some areas experiencing it on as many as four occasions till date. The ensuing drought has exposed Somalia to famine-like conditions accompanied by skyrocketing food prices and huge funding shortfalls.  

Calling for urgent humanitarian assistance for the country, United Nations Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Adam Abdelmoula, in March,  said: “As we speak now, 1.4 million children under five years of age are severely malnourished [in Somalia], and if we don’t step up our intervention, it is projected that 350,000 of them will perish by the summer of this year. The situation cannot be more dire than that.”  

On April 12, similar concerns were echoed in a joint statement of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and World Food Programme (WFP). They sought an immediate injection of funds to scale up lifesaving assistance in Somalia, adding that the recent events had exposed nearly 40% of the Somalian population to the risk of a famine.  

The impact of the drought was compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic political turbulence, and large-scale displacement of people to ‘better-off’ areas within the country. As per the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit’s (FSNAU) estimates, 4.1 million people in Somalia would require urgent humanitarian assistance between February and June 2022.  

The country in the Horn of Africa has been struggling with multi-season drought since late 2020. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s (IPC) latest report says persistent insecurity, conflict, and unresolved political tensions, particularly in central and southern Somalia, accompanied by global supply and price shocks are exacerbating the food security situation.  

Somalia experiences two bouts of rainfall — between September/October and December in the Deyr season, and the Gu season between April and June.  

The FSNAU notes that the 2021 Deyr season started late, ended early, and had an erratic distribution. The cumulative rainfall was 40-60% below average across most parts of southern, central, and adjacent parts of northern Somalia. This resulted in massive crop failures in central Somalia, below-average crop production in southern and north-western Somalia, and the third-lowest Dyer harvest since 1995 in southern Somalia. Cereal production in southern Somalia is estimated at 42,700 tonnes for the season, 58% below the 1995-2020 average.