SOMALIA: Thousands at risk of malnutrition in Sool area

NAIROBI, 10 October 2003 (IRIN) - Thousands of people in northern Somalia are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance due to falling incomes and rising malnutrition, a food security watchdog has warned. According to the US government's Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS), about 11,170 pastoralist households in the Sool Plateau are at risk. The gu (April-June) rains largely failed in the area, and while the better-off households migrated with their animals to other areas, the poor households were left behind. "After four years of successive rain failures, poor livestock productivity and significant livestock losses, pastoralist households face fewer options for obtaining food and income," the FEWS report said. It was estimated that over 50 percent of livestock had died over the past four years, meaning that incomes had dropped by half, as the marketability and prices of animals declined. "Poor households increasingly resort to extreme coping mechanisms (such as culling new-born calves to save the mothers) and environmental degradation (particularly cutting trees for charcoal making), which further weakens their livelihood base," the report pointed out. It warned that malnutrition was likely to worsen as households diverted food expenditures for increasingly expensive water. An inter-agency assessment team is visiting the area this week. A Somali agronomist told IRIN the problems in the Sool Plateau are complicated by the fact that the area is claimed by both the self-declared republic of Somaliland and the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland. The region falls geographically within Somaliland, but most of the clans who live there are associated with neighbouring Puntland.