Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ GENEVA: The UN has said that humanitarian funds and support from local communities have helped avert a dreaded famine in Somalia this year, but the situation remains catastrophic.
UN assessment
The United Nations agency of humanitarian OCHA said that the latest assessment found that, technically, Somalia was not yet in the grip of a full-blown famine.
OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said in Geneva that the report has not to lead to a declaration of famine in this state, largely thanks to the response of humanitarian organizations and local bodies.
He alerted that “this does not mean people are not experiencing catastrophic food shortages.
Jens said that they had kept famine outside the door, but nobody knows how much longer.”
The United States, meanwhile, said that it was contributing another $411 million in emergency food, shelter, and other relief to Somali people, bringing its contribution to $1.3 billion this year.
Samantha Power, the US Agency for International Development administrator, said that the Famine Review Committee’s warnings serve not as a stamp of inevitability but as an alarm bell alerting us to our last lingering opportunities to avoid catastrophe.
Somalia has been tormented by decades of civil war, political crisis, and an Islamist insurgency.
Millions of Somali people are in danger of starvation across Africa, in the grip of the worst drought in 4 decades after 5 consecutive failed rainy seasons wiped out livestock and crops.
Laerke alerted that if assistance is not scaled up, famine is expected to occur between April and June 2023 in southern Somalia, including in the capital.
He said that the Agropastoral populations in Burhakaba and Baidoa districts and displaced people in Baidoa town and Mogadishu were most at risk.
The data report indicated surging numbers of people at the highest level on the UN’s 5 scale food insecurity classification, known as IPC, which means they have dangerously little access to food and could face starvation.
According to the report between last October and next June, the number of people at IPC5 in Somalia was expected to more than triple from 214,000 to 727,000.
He said that at the same time, some 8.3 million people across the country are expected to be at crisis level (IPC3) or above between April and June next year, up from 5.6 million nowadays.
Laerke warned said that the condition can hardly get any worse.
He said that a full 2.7 million of them were expected to be at IPC level 4, facing major food shortages, water issues and very high acute malnutrition, and excess mortality.
James, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said that the famine declaration had, for now, only has turned away.
There is no doubt that many children have died and are dying now.
