Drought in Somalia killed 43,000 people, at least 20,000 of them children

Somalia has suffered five years of little to no rainfall

A mother and children displaced by drought outside a temporary shelter on the outskirts of Baidoa, in Somalia. AP

About 43,000 people died in Somalia’s drought last year, 20,000 of them children under five, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Five years in a row with little or no rainfall was catastrophic for Somalia’s food security, according to the report, leaving about half of the country’s 17 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

The report said the crisis continues and deaths in the first half of 2023 could exceed 30,000.

Somalia has had little respite from drought, last suffering catastrophic harvest failures in 2016 and 2017. At the time, the UN said more than seven million people were facing hunger and more than a million were displaced.

In the current crisis, the UN said at least 100,000 Somalis have fled to Kenya and are living in camps, also escaping conflict in their country.

“These results present a grim picture of the devastation brought on children and their families by the drought,” Wafaa Saeed, the UN children's agency representative said while presenting the report in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.

A report on Somalia's humanitarian requirements during the last crisis, the UN’s Drought Impact Needs Assessment, said the cost of alleviating the situation with aid would be at least $1.8 billion.

The Red Cross said the current drought is the worst to hit the country in 40 years.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which sets the standard for determining the severity of a food crisis, said last December that famine had been temporarily been averted but that the situation was getting worse.

Francesco Checci, a co-author of the study, said the lack of a famine designation should not distract from the scale of the crisis.

“What we are actually showing is that it isn’t time to slow down in terms of funding and humanitarian response.”