Name: Somalia in need of humanitarian aid as it faces worst drought in decades
Uploaded: 2023-04-12T19:26:29.000Z
Duration: 5 min 34 s
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Somalia is facing its worst drought in 40 years, claiming tens of

thousands of lives. Last year alone today, U. N Secretary General

Antonio Gutierrez was in its capital Mogadishu on his first official

visit to the Horn of Africa in six years, and he called for massive

international support for Somalia. Stephanie Sai has more

Somalia faces one of the world's most acute humanitarian crisis.

There are many causes climate change and drought as well as ongoing

armed conflict across the Horn of Africa. 24 million people are extremely

food insecure, and in Somalia, humanitarian agencies warned nearly

eight million people, half of the population is still in dire need

of humanitarian assistance. To discuss the challenges. I'm joined

by Omar Mahmoud, a senior analyst for East Africa for the International

Crisis Group. He joins me from Maputo, Mozambique. Omar thank you

so much for joining the news hour. There was a massive humanitarian

mobilization last year that brought Somalia back from the brink of

famine. And yet 43,000 people died, half of them Children. Put that

tragedy into context for us. Essentially, Somalia is going through

a very difficult climatic period right now because you've had five

consecutive rainy seasons that have been below par and that's essentially

unprecedented. And you know, there's 1/6 1 underway right now. The

projections are that this will also be Under par. You know, Somalia

is one of the most climate, vulnerable nations out there and in the

world and on top of it, you have a very pressing security situation

where it's even difficult to access some of the populations in need.

So it all creates kind of a perfect storm. And that is the reason

that nearly two million people today are living in camps specifically

for displaced people within the country. We spoke to Mercy Corps

County director Do JaRon, who frequently visits the camps, and he

described the situation when you ask them, how do they really sustain

themselves? They will tell you the only cook the evening meal. So

imagine somebody with five young Children and all he gets his baby

a multipurpose cache of $80 a month. To buy some food. And I'm trying

to sustain those five Children with that little food, which comes

only in the evening from day to day and the rest of the time they

depend maybe on just water and hang around with him for the next

field. That is significant. So not even within the camps. Can Children

and families get enough to eat when you were last in Somalia? Omar,

How would you compare what you saw to last year when the country

was facing famine? Have things gotten better or worse? Well, I mean,

it's it's basically a continuation. You know, I think the concerns

around famine and whatnot, some of the humanitarian response was

able to avert that, but temporarily, you know that's still on the

horizon. There's still concerns that if the response isn't the same

level as it was last year, and your funding is always an issue here

that these kind of dynamics could could re emerge. There's no natural

relief on the way, unfortunately with the climatic conditions, so

that's why the humanitarian response is needed to continue, and I

want to go back to climate change. But first I want to ask you about

the security situation because we know that nearly a million Somalis

who need assistance live under territory controlled by Al Shabaab.

How does that affect their access to aid? What's it's quite difficult

for those populations that live under al Shabaab control either after

have to suffer kind of under that way, or they make the choice to

basically flee to these I d. P camps and that's where we see these

numbers, especially in southern Somalia growing quite a bit, But

that is, of course, a perilous journey. You know, it takes quite

quite a bit of time to get to some of these camps as well. Um and

not a lot of food there all the time as well. Besides the urgent

need for immediate food assistance Secretary Guterres said today

that Somalia needs the conditions to build resilience and also get

on what he called a path toward development. I know you study policy

in this region. Billions of dollars have gone into humanitarian aid

there over the years. What other kinds of investments are needed.

If you look at The vulnerability of Somalia to climate shocks and

climatic changes, and how the intervals between these climatic changes

is reducing overtime basically increases the vulnerability of the

country and the population climate adaptation work can basically,

you know, take that reality and into context rather than just simply

responding to humanitarian response and developments. But kind of

move the needle forward. And so there's a lot of kind of projects

around finding new water sources, you know, digging deeper boreholes,

rehabilitating infrastructure around canals and other irrigation

systems that already exists, But it kind of fallen out of out of

repair. And so I think, channeling some of that some of that focus

and work into some of those things can then also help for the future

Omar Mahmoud with the international crisis group. Thanks for joining