NAIROBI
\nThe UN\u2019s humanitarian chief warned on Monday that drought-ravaged Somalia was on the brink of famine and time was running out to save lives.
\n\u201cFamine is at the door and we are receiving a final warning,\u201d Martin Griffiths, head of the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a press conference in Mogadishu.
\n\u201cWe are in the last moment of the 11th hour to save lives,\u201d he declared.
\nAn upcoming food and nutrition report on Somalia has concrete evidence that famine will strike two regions between October and December, Griffiths said.
\n\u201cI\u2019ve been shocked to my core these past few days at the level of pain and suffering we see so many Somalis enduring,\u201d said Griffiths, who began a visit to the country on Thursday.
\nSomalia and its neighbors in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya are in the grip of the worst drought in more than 40 years following four failed rainy seasons that have wiped out livestock and crops.
\nHumanitarian agencies have been ringing alarm bells for months.
\nThe UN\u2019s World Food Programme (WFP) last month said the number of people at risk of starvation across the region had increased to 22 million.
\nIn Somalia alone, the number of people facing crisis hunger levels is 7.8 million, or about half the population, while around a million have fled their homes on a desperate quest for food and water, UN agencies say.
\nIn 2011, famine in parts of Somalia, one of the poorest countries on the planet, cost the lives of 260,000 people, more than half of them children under the age of six.
\nGriffiths described scenes of heart-rending suffering during his visit to Baidoa, one of the two areas at risk of famine, saying he saw \u201cchildren so malnourished they could barely speak\u201d or cry.
\nThe conflict-wracked country is considered one of the most vulnerable to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis.
\nA deadly insurgency by the radical Islamist Al-Shabab group against the fragile federal government is limiting humanitarian access to many areas.
\nA long-running political crisis also diverted attention away from the drought, but new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud used his inauguration speech in June to appeal for international help to stave off looming disaster.
\nIn recent years, increasingly extreme droughts and floods have added to the devastation caused by a locust invasion and the Covid-19 pandemic.
\n\u201cSomalia is facing unprecedented levels of drought which have particularly hit rural communities, alongside other impacts like conflict, Covid-19, macroeconomic challenges, and a recent desert locust upsurge,\u201d the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a statement on Friday.
\nIt said people\u2019s means to produce food and earn income were \u201cstretched beyond breaking point.\u201d
\nThe UN\u2019s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said the Horn was likely facing a fifth straight failed rainy season over the months of October to December.
\nAt the start of this year, the WFP had put the number at 13 million, and appealed for donors to open their wallets at a time of great need.
\nFunds were initially slow in coming, with Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine among other crises drawing attention from the disaster in the Horn, humanitarian workers said.
\nThe war in Ukraine has also sent global food and fuel prices soaring, making aid delivery more expensive.
\nIn June, British charity Save the Children had issued an alert that the international community was \u201csleepwalking toward another catastrophic famine\u201d in Somalia.
\nOCHA has said the March-May 2022 rainy season was the driest on record in the last 70 years \u201cmaking the 2020-2022 surpass the horrific droughts in both 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 in duration and severity.\u201d
\n\u201cAn estimated 2.3 million girls and boys are at imminent risk of violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, and death from severe acute malnutrition as result of food and nutrition crisis across Somalia,\u201d it said in August.
\nIn 2017, more than six million people in Somalia, more than half of them children, needed aid because of a prolonged drought across East Africa.
\nBut early humanitarian action averted famine that year.
\nThe Inter-Agency Standing Committee chaired by Griffiths brings together the heads of 18 organizations inside and outside the UN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI The UN\u2019s humanitarian chief warned on Monday that drought-ravaged Somalia was on the brink of famine and time was running out to save lives. \u201cFamine is at the door and we are receiving a final warning,\u201d Martin Griffiths, head of the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a press conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-281704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n