Somalia: UN Declares Famine in 2 Regions
The United Nations has today declared famine exist in two regions of southern Somalia, Southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle. As the crisis befalls, an estimate of 2.8 million people living in the south are at the center of starvation.
Speaking at a Nairobi Hotel, U.N. spokesman Mark Bowden said famine is declared when acute malnutrition rates among children exceed 30 percent; more than 2 people per 10,000 die per day.
“Malnutrition rates are currently the highest in the world, with peaks of certain areas in southern Somalia,”warned Bowden. “In southern Bakool and lower Shabelle, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent,with five deaths exceeding 6 per 10,000 per day in some areas,” he added.
Somalia NGO consortium representing 78 agencies working in Somalia is urgently calling on the international community to act immediately to respond to this catastrophe.
“Aid agencies must be given sufficient support to respond to the crisis wherever people require help, including inside south central Somalia, in order to prevent the flow of refugees,” reads a statement from the NGO consortium.
Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said Tuesday that food has become so scarce that there is "in fact a famine" in his country.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing deep concern about the humanitarian emergency in the Horn of Africa, said the U.S. will provide an additional $28 million in aid to the more than $431 million in food and non-food emergency aid assistance.
The security situation has been a point of concern in the pursuit of reaching out to vulnerable groups to provide the massive level of aid needed in the country said the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.
Despite access problems, the U.N. agency said Tuesday it has managed to distribute aid packages to some 90,000 people in the capital, Mogadishu, and towns in southwestern Somalia.
It also handed out non-food aid to about 126,000 people in the Gedo and Lower Juba regions.
Militant group al-Shabab says it welcomes the return of relief organizations, after barring them from its strongholds in central and south Somalia more than a year ago.
Somalia has been a center field of lawlessness and deadly violence for years. Al-Shabab on the contrary, is fighting to overthrow the U.N.-backed Somali government and set up a strict Islamic state amid the worst drought to hit the country in more than 50 years.