Her eyes glued to the feeble movements of her malnourished baby with protruding ribs and sunken eyes, Fadumo Abdi Ibrahim struggled to hold back her tears in the stifling and crowded feeding center in Somalia’s capital. She waved a scrap of fabric over him to create a current of air.
She is one of thousands of desperate people streaming into Somalia’s capital seeking food as a result a prolonged drought, overwhelming local and international aid agencies. The Somali government warns of a looming famine.
An estimated 5 million Somalis, out of population of 10 million, need humanitarian assistance, according to the U.N. humanitarian office. About 363,000 acutely malnourished children “need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished,” the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network said.
Ibrahim carried her 9-month-old boy, Ali Hassan, to Mogadishu 10 days ago. A mother of five, she is a proud farmer who grew corn on her family’s farm in Toratorow,
“We were not able to get anything to eat, not even water – the entire environment is so parched,” she said, cradling her son’s bony legs and waving away flies from his face.
Ibrahim’s journey to Mogadishu wasn’t easy. She and other families hiked all day and night nearly 20 miles across the dry landscape. Hundreds of hungry families are making the trip to seek food distribution in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
Fears are rising of a full-blown famine in Somalia. Large-scale aid is needed to avert an imminent disaster, according to the Somali government.
Somalia’s ongoing conflict against the Islamic extremist rebels of al-Shabab has compounded the problems of harvest failure. The widespread hunger “is taking a particularly heavy toll on children and women, and makes people vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses and to criminal and terrorist networks,” the government said in a statement.
Two consecutive seasons of poor rainfall, more in some areas, have caused large-scale crop failures and high levels of livestock deaths, according to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Coordination.
The U.N. humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864 million to provide assistance to 3.9 million people. Last month, the U.N. World Food Program requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the drought.
Refugee camps are already overcrowded, filling them beyond capacity. Over 7,000 internally displaced people checked into one feeding center recently. Because of a lack of clean water in many areas of Somalia, there is the threat of cholera and other diseases, U.N. experts said.