Rains fail in Somalia, thousands at risk, UN representative warns

With an apparent failure of the traditional short September to November rainy season Somalia faces “an acute humanitarian crisis,” and needs increased aid, the United Nations representative there said today.

“We are already facing an acute humanitarian crisis…due to four years of consecutive drought,” Maxwell Gaylard, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said in a statement issued from Nairobi.

Mr. Gaylard said that the problem was particularly acute in the Sanaag and Sool regions of the Sool Plateau, which stretches through the central part of the country, and where the lack of rain could “precipitate a humanitarian disaster affecting 15,500 pastoralist families.”

“With the current rains apparently failing again, we can expect that most remaining livestock will die, the local economy will collapse and this could trigger large-scale population movements to towns that would adversely affect the health and welfare of the communities, in particular children,” he said.

“To avert a full-scale disaster,” said Mr. Gaylard. “We need donors to urgently and generously support emergency interventions designed to save the lives of the most vulnerable while at the same time rebuilding their capacity to be self-reliant.”

According to a press statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “The September to October Deyr season has passed with no rainfall and precipitation forecasts indicate only a marginal likelihood of significant rainfall this season in much of the Sool Plateau, further impoverishing families already struggling to survive.”

OCHA said that an interagency study of the area found “livestock herds, especially camel, were already decimated by starvation and disease, which has further impoverished pastoralist families almost entirely dependent on the sale of animals and their milk for income. Those livestock still alive are in too poor a condition to sell. At the same time, food and water prices have increased to such an extent that most households cannot afford to purchase even the most basic necessities for survival. As a result, many have begun cutting trees to sell as charcoal, causing environmental damage and reducing fodder for camels.”

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have launched emergency operations in the areas, OCHA said.