MOGADISHU: Food insecurity and acute malnutrition in Somalia has not reached “IPC Phase 5 Famine” levels between October and December 2022, although the situation there is still a crisis, UN agencies and aid groups said on Tuesday.
The assessment was issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which sets the global standard for determining the severity of food crises.
Humanitarian organizations have warned for months that parts of Somalia’s Bay region were on the verge of famine because of the impact of a two-year drought, compounded by rising global grain prices and a long-running Islamist insurgency.
The IPC said in a report that following the commendable response efforts of humanitarian actors and local communities, the food insecurity and acute malnutrition situation has not reached famine levels.
“The underlying crisis however has not improved and even more appalling outcomes are only temporarily averted,” the IPC said. “Prolonged extreme conditions have resulted in massive population displacement and excess cumulative deaths.”
The IPC said in a report that 214,000 people in Somalia were classified as being in IPC Phase 5 Catastrophe in October-December.
This was expected to rise to 322,000 in January-March and 727,000 in April-June amid an anticipated reduction in funding for humanitarian assistance, it said.
The IPC said Phase 5 Famine was projected in April-June among agropastoral populations in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts and displaced populations in Baidoa town of Bay region and in Mogadishu.
These population groups are already experiencing very high levels of acute malnutrition and mortality, the report added.
Somalia’s last famine, in 2011, killed more than a quarter of a million people.
Some aid workers have warned that this time could be even worse than in 2011. The drought has laid waste to the Somali countryside, leaving crops shrivelled and the scrublands dotted with the corpses of emaciated livestock.
Somalia not at famine levels between October and December — UN agencies, aid groups
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Somalia not at famine levels between October and December — UN agencies, aid groups
Drone strike kills 10, including 7 children, in Sudan’s El-Obeid: medical source
- An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone strike on the Sudanese city of El-Obeid killed 10 people including seven children on Monday, a medical source told AFP.
An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan, which the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to encircle for months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the RSF, with some of the worst violence currently unfolding in Sudan’s strategic southern Kordofan region.
El-Obeid, the region’s main city, lies on a key crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum with the vast western Darfur region — where the army lost its last major position in October.
Following its victory in Darfur, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan, seeking to recapture Sudan’s central corridor and tightening its siege with its local allies around several army-held cities.
Hundreds of thousands face mass starvation across the region.
Last year, the army broke a paramilitary siege on El-Obeid, which the RSF has sought to encircle since.
Drone strikes on Sunday caused a power outage in the city but left no reports of casualties.
Last week, a coalition of armed groups allied with the army said they had retaken several towns south of El-Obeid, which according to a military source could “open up the road between El-Obeid and Dilling” — one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to flee internally and across borders.
It has also created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, and been described as a “war of atrocities” by the United Nations.
