The worst drought to hit Somalia in a decade could soon begin claiming lives in the Horn of Africa nation, the international Red Cross warned on Wednesday.
”People aren’t dying of hunger today in Somalia, but that could change fast,” said Pascal Hundt, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) mission there.
”If there is no rapid, effective response to this crisis now, and if there is no rain in April, the situation is going to get worse, and people will start getting hungry — and will start dying,” Hundt told reporters at the ICRC’s Geneva base.
The rains normally arrive in the region in April, but have mostly failed over the past four seasons and forecasters say the outlook is poor this year.
Two million Somalis are currently affected by drought, out of a total population of up to 12-million.
Even in the best-case scenario, said the ICRC, if the rains arrive as normal in April the first harvest will not be ready until July.
At present, Somalia is in a ”pre-famine” situation, the aid group warned, in particular because livestock pastures have withered.
In coming weeks in Somalia’s south-western Gedo region, about 80% of livestock is likely to die, it said.
”We are seeing a process of spreading poverty,” said Hundt. ”People have sold the few goods they had, and they can’t sell their animals because they are no longer worth anything on the market. They are running out of ways to survive”
In an effort to help nomads in the region, which borders Ethiopia and Kenya, the ICRC is buying livestock from herders, which enables communities to buy grain, and is handing out meat to the most vulnerable.
Last month, the aid group bought 25 000 goats, which helped feed 150 000 people.
Jacques de Maio, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Horn of Africa, said people are increasingly competing with animals for scarce water resources. Aid workers have come across children whose heads have been ripped off by hyenas at waterholes, he said.
The drought, which is also affecting four million people in Kenya and a million in Ethiopia, is of particular concern in Somalia because the country has been ravaged by 15 years of civil war.
The conflict has not only killed between 300 000 and half-a-million people, but has also wrecked public services, leaving people to fend for themselves.
Regular clashes between rival militias force many people to flee their homes, increasing the problems caused by the drought. They also place an extra burden on medical services: across Africa, Somalis are the most likely to suffer from bullet injuries, noted De Maio. — Sapa-AFP