One-third of Somalis to face hunger in March: UN officials

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Some 6.5 million people, or about a third of Somalia's population, will face crisis levels of hunger through March, an increase of 1.7 million since January, UN officials warned Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters via video link, World Food Programme (WFP) Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response Ross Smith said the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report for Somalia, released on Tuesday, confirmed fears that the humanitarian situation in Somalia has significantly worsened.

"Of these, two million of the most vulnerable women and children are expected to face severe hunger," with over 1.8 million children under the age of 5 to face acute malnutrition in 2026, he said.

Smith said Somalia is in the midst of a very complex hunger crisis, where two rainy seasons have failed, conflict and insecurity persist, and thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in search of shelter, food and basic services.

Meanwhile, agencies in Somalia, including WFP, are facing a severe lack of resources, he warned, adding that without urgent funding, WFP's life-saving emergency food and nutrition assistance in the country will be forced to cut support to the most vulnerable and eventually come to an end soon.

Rein Paulsen, director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), highlighted the drought that is having a devastating effect on Somalia's agriculture. "Concretely, this means widespread crop and livestock losses in addition to large-scale displacements of people."

As a result of the drought, the country's last main cereal harvest was 83 percent lower than the long-term average between 1995 and 2025, and livestock births have also dropped, said Paulsen, stressing the urgency of life-saving assistance to protect lives and actions to prevent a collapse of rural farming pastoral livelihoods.

To respond to the situation, FAO needs 85 million U.S. dollars to support a million of the most vulnerable, high-risk, underserved rural people at the moment, but it has just 6 million dollars to date, he said. ■