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5 million Somalis face food insecurity

Somalia

About 40 percent of the population in Somalia is dire need of food due to a prolonged drought and conflict which has led to continued displacement of its people.

This is according to the UN which added that a significant number requires urgent assistance

“Between August and December 2016, we project a total of five million people facing acute food insecurity across Somalia. What is significant about this number is; we now have more than 1.1 million people of the five million total facing acute food security crisis and emergency,” said Daniel Molla, Principal Advisor, Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit Somalia.

Malnutrition levels have also increased dramatically over the last six months especially amongst children.

“On the nutrition side we estimate over 300,000 children to be acutely malnourished including over fifty thousand that are severely malnourished and in urgent need of nutrition support,” Molla added.

The situation is of serious concern as this comes at a time that the country is facing multiple challenges and the organisation says urgent action needs to be taken to reduce the risk of it sliding into a catastrophe.

Efforts to reduce levels of vulnerabilities are undermined by a number of factors, including the conflict between the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab and Somalia’s African Union-backed government, natural catastrophe and funding gap.

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