Monitor: No famine despite soaring deaths in Somalia
BAIDOA, Somalia — In drought-ravaged Somalia, where the starving are streaming into giant refugee camps, it looks like a famine.
In Somalia’s malnutrition wards, where the silence is pierced by the keening of mothers who have lost a child, it sounds like a famine.
Yet the international organization responsible for monitoring global hunger, in a report released Tuesday, declared that the dire crisis triggered by Somalia’s worst drought in 40 years does not constitute a famine — at least not yet.
The organization, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, known as the IPC, determined that conditions in Somalia’s worst hit areas have come close to, but not crossed, the threshold needed to formally declare a famine. But if the drought stretches into next spring, as meteorologists expect, a famine is likely then, the body said.
“Even more appalling outcomes are only temporarily averted,” it said.
The reticence of the IPC, which is controlled by U.N. bodies and major relief agencies, is not unusual: It has declared a famine only twice in the past decade, in Somalia in 2011 and South Sudan in 2017. The “F-word,” as aid workers archly call it, retains an emoHealth tive resonance, able to galvanize global attention and, crucially, to unlock vast amounts of donations. It should be used in only the most extreme situations, the thinking goes.
But Somalia has already plunged deep into that worstcase scenario, according to aid workers, doctors and diplomats who say they are confounded by the IPC’s latest assessment, or believe its methodology is flawed.
By the IPC’s own estimates, the number of acutely malnourished Somalis has more than doubled since January to 5.6 million, of whom 214,000 are already in famine-like conditions. How many have died is unknown, but the number is rising rapidly. The World Organization will publish its first estimate of drought-related deaths in the coming weeks, a spokesperson said. Aid officials expect a death toll in the tens of thousands, if not more.
In the report published Tuesday, the IPC found that although a rapid response by aid groups had staved off earlier predictions of a famine this fall, the respite is temporary.
A combination of factors, including the continued drought, the fight against al Shabab militants, and an expected reduction in foreign aid, will cause the affected population to rise to 6.3 million in early 2023, and to 8.3 million from April onward — about half of Somalia’s population.