The ravaging drought in Somalia, the worst in four decades, is expected to worsen following the fifth failed rainy season.
United Nations and several aid agencies have warned that famine could be announced any day. “Famine is at the door,” chief Martin Griffiths, UN humanitarian, said in September.
“There is no argument that 7.8 million people are without enough food or that 1.3 million have had to leave their homes because of the drought and the conflict between al-Shabaab insurgents and the Somali army…or that people are dying as a result,” Tracy McVeigh writes.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, believes it would be “risky” to declare famine, expressing worries that the international aid community would skew the government’s coordination capacity and see development money rerouted.
“Announcing or declaring a famine itself is a very difficult situation that does not affect the famine victims only but halts the development, changes the perspective on everything,” he said.
According to Afyare Elmi, the director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies in Somalia, there is no “data” to warrant a declaration of famine. “Nobody is saying people are not dying, people are dying. Don’t focus on debating the technicality,” he said.
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There are regions of Somalia such as Galkayo where the rate of acute malnutrition among under-fives is 52 per cent, as per McVeigh. “The three markers for a declaration of famine in a region are for malnutrition to exceed 30 per cent, for at least 20 per cent of households to face extreme food shortages, and for two people in every 10,000 to die as a result of this every day.”
