Horn of Africa Update: March 2012

The situation in the drought‐affected areas of the Horn of Africa has improved significantly. However, an estimated 9 million people are still in need of assistance. Livestock body conditions remain good despite the rapid deterioration of vegetation conditions due to abnormally dry and very hot conditions in the pastoral areas of north and northeastern Kenya, southern Ethiopia and southern Somalia.

In Somalia, the current estimation by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit of people in need of humanitarian assistance is 2.51 million from February to June 2012. However, if the Gu rains are below average as predicted, additional populations are likely to fall into crisis, mainly among agropastoralists and pastoralists.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to scale up resilience activities in the coming months to prevent people from losing livelihoods and productive assets and the gains from the recent Deyr harvest. According to the just‐concluded Kenya Short Rains Assessment, most parts of the country are in Stressed food security phase (IPC Phase 2) with only small pockets facing Crisis food security (IPC Phase 3). The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Kenya is now approximately 2.8 million.