Aid agencies say Somalians facing human catastrophe

DROUGHT-HIT Somalia is stretching the work of relief workers to their limits and is facing a fully-fledged humanitarian catastrophe, aid agencies have warned.

“We are no longer talking about a humanitarian crisis or a humanitarian emergency,” said Jens Oppermann, the country director of Action Against Hunger (Action Contre La Faim, ACF).

“We are seeing this as a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.

Thousands of Somalis have fled in recent months to neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya in search of food and water, with many dying along the way, as the region suffers what the UN has described as the worst drought in decades.

Many too have risked conflict by fleeing into Somalia’s capital Mogadishu in a desperate search for aid.

Food prices in Somalia have soared 270% in a year, he said. “We see people coming into Mogadishu in a state that we have not seen before,” Oppermann added, describing “unimaginable suffering beyond the scale of what is acceptable.”

“We are not able to provide enough assistance to everyone,” he said.

ACF has been working in Somalia since 1992.

Meanwhile, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said they were boosting efforts to support refugees fleeing across the border into Kenya after assessments found “alarmingly high rates of malnutrition”.

“I expected to find a difficult situation but not a catastrophic one,” said Anita Sackl of MSF.

In Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, 37.7% of children under five checked by MSF were suffering from acute malnutrition, with 17.5% of those facing a “high risk of death.”