According to a new report by Save the Children NGO, the drought crisis in Somalia is the worst it has been in 100 years, forcing millions of families to leave their homes in search of food and water.

·Save the Children ran a multi-sectoral rapid needs assessment of 1,770 randomly selected households – encompassing 12,539 people – across 15 of the 18 regions of Somalia and Somaliland from 16th to 30th November 2021. The methodology covered a zone of 5.2 million people, or 33% of the population of Somalia, with a division of 605 households from Puntland, 591 households from the Southern States, and 574 households from Somaliland.

In the assessment conducted in November 2021, nearly 60% of assessed households reported at least one person in their family had lost their source of income, majorly due to the escalating death of livestock. Also, more than one-third of households go without food over 24 hours. 

Major Drought Period In Somalia

This is not the first major drought in Somalia. Somalia has experienced three major drought crises in the past decade; in 2011/12, 2016/2017, and now in 2021/22.

In the 2011/12 drought crisis, the UN declared a famine in Somalia as 3.7 million people were experiencing crisis levels of food insecurity. A slow global response to the early warnings of that famine led to at least 250,000 people, half of them under the age of 6, dying from hunger and related conditions in the southern and central regions of the country.

In the 2016/17 drought crisis, over 2.9 million people faced crisis-to emergency-level food insecurity (IPC 3 or worse). A faster and more substantive global response led to lives being saved. By the end of the crisis, 68% of the new UN funding appeal had been met by donors.

This year, the latest food security projections show that 4.6 million Somalis will face crisis-to emergency-level food insecurity from February to May 2022. Critically, only 2.3% of the current UN appeal to respond to the crisis has been met by donors.

Another forecast by James Swan, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia, said during a humanitarian conference at the UN headquarters in Mogadishu in 2021, shared that nearly 7.7 million Somalis will need humanitarian aid in 2022.

Meanwhile, nearly 700,000 camels, goats, sheep and cattle died from drought-related causes over two months, according to the assessment.