The United Nations expressed fears on Wednesday of ”famine conditions” arising in southern Somalia if violence there is allowed to escalate.
”The current fighting in the area is seriously disrupting the humanitarian operations currently under way and unless the conflict is stopped immediately, we could be witness to the kind of famine conditions experienced in 1992,” the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Maxwell Gaylard, said in a statement.
”The conflict could lead to larger-scale violence that might eventually spread to other areas of Somalia and put the latest reconciliation achievements and a process to form a government in jeopardy,” Gaylard said.
The Lower Juba Valley region has been a battleground between militiamen loyal to Somali warlords Mohamed Said Hirsi Morgan and Barre Shore Hirale.
Gaylard also warned that due to a severe drought this year, there will be high malnutrition rates and possible hunger-related deaths in the Lower Juba Valley region.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Lower Juba Valley has one of the highest recorded malnutrition rates in Somalia, with 19,5% acute malnutrition rates recorded between April and June 2004.
No functional government to speak of has existed in Somalia since 1991, the year dictator Mohammed Siad Barre fled the country in haste amid escalating clan warfare that has ravaged the country ever since.
Since then, nobody has managed to exert authority in the whole of the Horn of Africa country, which is currently split into numerous fiefdoms governed by unruly warlords. — Sapa-AFP