In a message to G7 leaders meeting in Germany on Sunday, Michael Dunford, regional director of the World Food Program (WFP) for East Africa, said governments should donate urgently and generously if there was any hope of avoiding disaster in the Horn of Africa. “We need money and we need it now,” Dunford said. “It simply came to our notice then [a famine in Somalia]? Unless there is… a mass escalation from now on, it will not be possible, honestly. “The only way, at this point, is if there is a huge investment in humanitarian aid and all the stakeholders, all the partners, come together to try to prevent that.” The Horn of Africa has suffered four consecutive failed rains and is experiencing the worst drought in four decades, a climate shock exacerbated by ongoing conflict and rising prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Across East Africa, 89 million people are now considered “acute food insecurity” by the WFP, a number that has risen by almost 90% in the past year. “It simply came to our notice then [that rate of growth] slowing down. “If nothing else, it seems to be accelerating,” Dunford said. Last year, the United Kingdom and other G7 leaders pledged $ 7 billion to help countries prevent famine, but calls for East Africa failed to raise enough funds to stave off famine. Now the same leaders are being called upon to commit to an immediate funding package as Somalia, the country hardest hit, is being devastated. By September, at least 213,000 people in the worst-hit areas are expected to suffer from famine, according to the latest Food Safety Phase (IPC) Integrated Classification report. On a recent visit to the country, Claire Sanford, deputy director of humanitarian aid at Save the Children, said she had met mothers who had already buried many children in the past year and whose surviving children were now suffering from severe malnutrition. A three-month-old baby with acute malnutrition, whom Sanford met “never managed to spend the night and we heard a series of stories where this was happening.” “I can honestly say in the 23 years of my response to the humanitarian crisis, this is by far the worst I have seen, especially in terms of the level of impact on children,” he said. “The hunger that my colleagues and I have seen in Somalia has escalated even faster than we feared.” A Somali woman fleeing drought-stricken areas gives water to her baby in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, June 4, 2022. Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP In 2011, Somalia experienced a famine that killed more than 250,000 people, mostly children, but Sanford said many of those it met said conditions were even worse now. “We have really failed as an international community to let the situation reach its current level. In 2011, we promised as a community that we would never allow it, but never again. “And yet we failed in that promise,” he added. Dunford said insufficient funding has hampered teaching efforts since the 2011 famine. It is not that we did not take the lessons of 2011. There were many, very good lessons from that crisis. “We just could not implement it to the extent required due to lack of funding.” In April, the UN received only 3% of the $ 6 billion funding for its call for Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan. Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam GB, said the current crisis was due in part to the British government’s “failure to show compassion” and its decision to cut its foreign aid budget by ,6 4.6 billion last year. According to the latest IPC assessment for Somalia, an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five are experiencing acute malnutrition by the end of the year, including 386,400 who are likely to be severely malnourished. These numbers are only expected to increase.
