Somalia in crisis: Famine should be a word we only associate with history
Maryan Madey, who fled the drought-stricken Lower Shabelle region, holds her malnourished daughter Deka Ali, 1, at a camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, on Saturday, September 3. Picture: AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh
This week, our worst fears have been realised. The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition analysis report shows concrete indications that famine will occur in two areas of South-Central Somalia between October and December of this year, the first time that famine has occurred on such a scale since 2011.
Famine should be a word we only associate with history. The progress in human civilisation, food production, and distribution means that no one should go hungry anymore, wherever on earth they are located.
Until recently, that progress was relatively well assured, with hunger levels dropping steadily around the world each decade and the existence of famine becoming slowly eradicated.
Since 2015 however, that progress has been reversed.
A combination of increasingly evident climate extremes and rising levels of conflict has led to surging levels of food insecurity across several regions of the world.
The economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine have now exacerbated this trend dramatically.
The epicentre of this suffering is in the Horn of Africa — Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya — where a drought of unprecedented length and severity has pushed millions of people to the brink of starvation.
Ethiopia and South Sudan have had no rain over the past two years. Parts of all of these countries are bone dry. Water points have dried up, one-in-three livestock are now dead and many more will die.
Although climate change, conflict, Covid and other factors have led to this extremely grave situation, we must confront another cause — inaction.
Famine does not happen suddenly like earthquakes or hurricanes; it is a slow onset disaster and in 2022, we have all the tools to forecast it.
Warning after warning has gone largely unheeded, as the focus of the international community has been fixed elsewhere.
Now famine is finally on the horizon. It is a searing indictment of our international order, but the question is, what do we do now?
Earlier this year, the threat of the world’s first ‘climate change famine’ in Madagascar was overcome, thanks in large part to a robust humanitarian response.
In 2017, the threat of famine stalked several regions of the world, from the Horn of Africa, to northern Nigeria, war-torn Yemen and South Sudan. At that time, a robust response was delayed, causing great levels of avoidable suffering.
But when it was eventually adequately resourced, the humanitarian effort — a combination of donors, national governments, non-government organisations and local organisations — was muscular and transformative. It managed to arrest the spiral of starvation and suffering.
Millions of lives were saved and people were supported to get back to a level of normality.
But many of the communities affected in 2017 were never really allowed to recover in a meaningful sense. The same drivers of food insecurity — conflict, climate extremes, persistent underfunding and economic strife — never abated.
At the same time, other manifestations of climate breakdown such as locust infestations and a drought of unprecedented ferocity have brought millions to their limit. The number of people at risk of starvation in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa has now increased to 22 million.
This is truly an extreme situation; our response cannot be business as usual.
We are in an era of mega crises, challenges so immense that they can be almost overwhelming to comprehend. And yet, we have shown that we can respond effectively when we are focused and committed.
The co-operation, collaboration, and extraordinary action shown during the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a massive reduction of suffering and saved countless lives.
We need to finally acknowledge that the people on the frontlines of the other mega crises of our times, like the people caught up in the climate extremes evident across the Horn of Africa or Pakistan, also demand this level of response.
As the United Nations General Assembly meets later this month, we must ensure that Ireland’s leadership to end conflict and hunger is sustained at the highest political level with the welfare of humanity at the centre.
We need to recognise that the knowledge to end global humanitarian need, end hunger, and minimise the impacts of crises exists, but the resources available are grossly inadequate.
Martin Griffiths, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, clearly called it out when he said that a world that has resources to wage wars must have the means to save lives.
He is right and the same can be said of climate change. Until we put the same level of extraordinary effort into responding to climate change as we did for the pandemic, millions of people will continue to suffer and die.
Governments must work together, to allocate the necessary levels of funding needed to avert the multiple hunger crises unfolding, prioritising efforts to avert widespread famine in the Horn of Africa.
There is no single solution to today’s record level of humanitarian suffering but there is a choice to respond at scale, with speed and with a truly ambitious level of commitment.
We have shown that we can mount an ambitious response to the pandemic; we must do the same for the millions now facing catastrophe.
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