The UN has warned that 4.3 million people, or 25% of the country’s population, may die hungry by year’s end due to devastating floods in the impoverished Horn of Africa.
The World Food Programme (WFP) reports that the floods have had a serious negative impact on communities that are still trying to recover from the worst drought in decades, which almost killed millions of people.
Although famine has not yet broken out in Somalia because to humanitarian assistance, the WFP reports that the country is currently seeing its highest levels of malnutrition in over ten years.
Due to insufficient funding, the UN agency is only able to provide food assistance to less than half of those most in need.
“But with a quarter of Somalia’s population – 4.3 million people – expected to face crisis food insecurity or worse… by the end of the year, support from the humanitarian community remains a lifeline”, added the WFP.
At least 31 people have died and some 500,000 have had to leave their homes in Somalia due to flooding caused by incessant rain, according to an official report on Sunday.
Since the beginning of November, Somalia has been experiencing incessant rainfall due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has flooded homes and farmland. El Niño is currently amplifying the rainy season in the Horn of Africa, with serious consequences in Ethiopia (at least 20 dead) and Kenya (at least 15 dead).
Somalia, where the majority of the country’s 17 million inhabitants live off livestock and agriculture, is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, experiencing extreme weather phenomena with greater frequency and intensity.
This poor country is also prey to attacks by Islamist fighters, affiliated to al-Qaeda, who have been waging a bloody insurrection for over 15 years.
