SOMALIA: Agencies alarmed by worsening humanitarian crisis

Photo: Marco Manzelli/unifi

A man preparing his land with oxen in the Boodlay area of Northwest Somalia

NAIROBI, 30 July 2004 (IRIN) - Aid agencies working in Somalia have expressed concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa country, saying that drought was spreading from the northern region to the central areas and that up to a million people needed help. "Preliminary estimates are that upto a million vulnerable Somalis in both agricultural and pastoral areas will require some form of humanitarian assistance to avert high malnutrition, potential death, and collapsed livelihoods that will have long term effects," the the Somalia Aid Coordination Body (SACB), comprising donors, UN agencies and International NGOs said on Thursday. The crisis had been triggered by the cumulative result of successive poor rains and civil conflict in some areas, it added in a statement. Preliminary findings from the Somalia Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU), and the USAID-funded famine alert network, FEWS Net, show that the cyclical drought affecting the northern regions of Sool and Sanaag over the past four years was spreading to the central regions of Mudug and Galgaduud, the SACB said. Strategic crop growing areas of Middle and Lower Shebelle, Bakool, Gedo and Middle and Lower Juba regions had also been devastated by low and erratic rainfall. FSAU estimated that the resultant poor harvests will lead to a cereal deficit of at least 70,000 mt. The overall cereal deficit would be exacerbated by severe loss of purchasing power that hundreds of thousands of pastoralists would face this year due to cumulative animal losses and declining incomes from livestock products that were the mainstay of their livelihoods. In the most effected areas, the length and severity of the drought was the worst experienced since the extreme drought of 1974, according to SABC. Across Somalia’s borders, in the Somali Region of Ethiopia and Northeastern Kenya, the reported food security crises would greatly inhibit natural migration patterns used by Somali pastoralists to cope with drought. "Somalia has become one of the worlds forgotten emergencies" Maxwell Gaylard, the acting chair of the SACB executive committee and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, said in the statement. "In the context of the other crises in the region, there is a real danger that Somalis in need of assistance will once again suffer from international amnesia," he added. The World Food Programme (WFP) recently appealed for US $14 million to expand its current programme that was helping drought-affected regions in the country for the remainder of 2004/05. WFP food stocks have reached critical level, and the agency's Somalia country director Robert Hauser warned that WFP might not be able to assist critically vulnerable people after food ran out at the end of July. "Donors and the authorities in the regions concerned responded to the crisis last year, enabling the aid agencies to mount a well-coordinated response," said Gaylard. "However, the failure of another rainy season will require a much more concerted effort at providing relief if we are to avoid unnecessary suffering and deaths," he added.