As famine threatens to follow a drought that killed 43,000 people last year, Antonio Guterres, the chief of the United Nations, warned on Wednesday that Somalia is suffering the repercussions of a climate crisis that it did little to cause.
According to Guterres, nearly half of Somalia’s population, or 8.3 million people, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, less than 15% of the $2.6 billion in aid the country requires this year has been raised.
Guterres told reporters in Mogadishu that this is inexcusable given the imminence of catastrophe.
In Baidoa, southwest Somalia, the drought and conflict between al Shabaab (an al Qaeda affiliate) and government soldiers had forced many people to abandon their residences.
According to Guterres, it is intolerable that Somalians are bearing the brunt of the climate calamity despite having contributed nothing to it. Climate change is causing widespread destruction.
Women and children make up 80% of the 1,4 million Somalis displaced by the drought caused by five consecutive failed monsoon seasons, he added.
The worldwide standard for assessing the severity of a food crisis, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), declared in December 2017 that famine had been averted for the time being, but warned that the situation was deteriorating.
An estimated one-third of al Shabaab’s territory was acquired in March, according to the U.S. ambassador to Somalia, as a result of a massive government attack aided by associate tribal militias.
The government claims it has slain 3,000 al-Shabaab combatants since the campaign began a year ago, but the guerrilla movement has shown it can strike back with lethal attacks on Mogadishu.
In the coming weeks, the army and its tribal allies will presumably launch phase two of the operation with assistance from the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia.
