NAIROBI: Almost half a million children in Somalia face severe malnourishment and are at risk of dying from hunger, an NGO warned Monday, just as international aid operations are scaled back.
The Horn of Africa nation is one of the world’s poorest, enduring decades of civil war, climate disasters and a bloody insurgency by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab.
The country only recently began to recover from a long-running drought, while widespread flooding in 2023 saw almost one million people displaced.
CARE International said the number of severely malnourished children under five had increased to 1.8 million, citing projections by a UN-backed monitoring body dated March 29.
“Of these, 479,000 are expected to be severely malnourished and at risk of dying without urgent help,” it said.
CARE International said the country’s “malnutrition crisis is accelerating faster than predicted” thanks to “seasonal challenges and the fallout from 2024’s drought”.
As a result, in the hardest-hit areas across the country the number of people in “emergency conditions surged by 50 percent”.
Ummy Dubow, CARE Somalia country director, said women and children were most affected.
“Every day, we hear countless human tragedies in the centres we run. Pregnant women sacrificing their nutrition, mothers watching their children waste away from acute malnutrition, and young girls being pulled from school to help families survive,” he said in a statement.
The situation was being exacerbated by funding cuts, with aid groups forced to scale back operations and this year’s United Nations aid plan for Somalia currently only 11 percent funded.
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