A new food security and nutrition analysis reveals that famine is unfolding in parts of Somalia, while staggering levels of suffering can be seen across the country. In response, the heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system, issued a statement today calling for a huge injection of funds to enable a massive scale-up of assistance.

The people facing famine and extreme hunger in Somalia today are overwhelmingly livestock owners and rural families. Their survival depends on the survival of their herds. Their children’s nutrition is inextricably linked to the health and productivity of their animals. Those animals have been dying at a shocking rate for the last year.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has already moved to convert its ongoing support to these rural communities into cash assistance, alongside critical livestock feed, care and water, but much more is urgently needed.

Unprecedented levels of drought, alongside skyrocketing food prices, conflict, and COVID-19 have forced over a million people – predominantly women and girls – from their homes, their lands, their entire way of being and into camps. They face enormous protection risks in these camps and have to rely on external assistance to meet every single need – water, food, health care, shelter. The number of people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance has increased from 4.1 million at the start of 2022 to 7.1 million people between June and September 2022.