Somalia: UN launches appeal for extra $18 million of flood relief

The United Nations today launched an appeal for $18 million to help hundreds of thousands of Somalis affected by the worst floods in the impoverished Horn of Africa country’s recent history.

The Somalia Flood Response Plan needs $28.6 million in funds, but $10 million has already been provided through the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced as it launched the appeal in Geneva.

Eric Laroche, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said “the humanitarian crisis affecting the Somali people, who are exhausted by years of conflict and disaster, is now deepening.”

An estimated 350,000 people have been seriously affected by the floods, with the Shabelle and Juba valley river basins in the south and central parts of Somalia among the hardest hit. Some villages have been submerged and others entirely isolated, while granaries have been destroyed and irrigation systems blocked or damaged and thousands of hectares of farmland flooded.

OCHA warned that if persistent rains continue this month, up to 900,000 Somalis could be at risk in the worst-case scenario.

The floods are the latest in a long series of disasters in Somalia, which has been plagued by civil war and has not had a functioning national government since 1991. Last year it was hit by a devastating drought.

The funds raised in the OCHA appeal will be used to provide health care, water and sanitation services, food, logistics, education and early recovery activities.

In north-eastern Kenya, which has also suffered in the floods, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) continues its operation to deliver emergency supplies by helicopter to towns that have been cut off by rising waters.

A four-ton delivery of supplies was sent to the town of Gurufa at the weekend, while two other helicopters ferried aid from Nairobi to Wajid, a town in southern Somalia.

WFP hopes to eventually provide aid to as many as 2.7 million Kenyans for the next three months, as well as up to 160,000 mostly Somali refugees living in Kenyan camps.