Somalia drought: Urgent investment can save lives now and earlier action could protect lives in the future

Aamina. Fawzia. Nala. All mothers. All grief-stricken. All women whose heroic efforts to save their children were not enough. Mother after mother who I spoke to in Somalia told me of burying babies on their gruelling walks from drought-destroyed livelihoods to the hope of help, the search for water.

They are part of a rolling tragedy unfolding in the Horn of Africa, where a climate-induced catastrophe has hundreds of thousands of children on the brink.

Numbers are often perilous when talking about catastrophes for they risk erasing the human face of a crisis, but some numbers count. Consider this: Every minute in Somalia, a child is admitted to a health facility with the deadliest form of malnutrition. Some treatment centres are overflowing, with children being admitted in wards meant for adults.

Many don’t even make it that far. Hunger is a lethal threat, but so too is its companion, disease. When children are severely malnourished, they are up to 11 times more likely than well-nourished children to succumb to conditions like diarrhoea or measles.

The outlook for children amid the drought in Somalia is grim. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Famine Review Committee has projected that parts of the country will face famine by the end of the year. More than half of the country’s children – yes, more than half of all Somalia’s children – are likely to be malnourished by June next year.

And yet it’s misguided to get consumed by whether famine will be declared. The Famine Review Committee has also emphasized that the size, severity, and mortality will continue to rise even before a ‘famine’ is declared.

Mostly, as we must recall from the 2011 famine in Somalia, about 50% of the more than 260,000 deaths occurred before a famine was officially declared, at least half of the victims being children. In other words, we must learn the lessons from the past. We cannot wait for famine to be declared.

The evidence in support of acting early in the face of drought and malnutrition – as happened in Somalia in 2017 – is overwhelming. Children’s lives are saved, the devastating and permanent damage of malnutrition on children’s brains and bodies is prevented, as is the destruction to countries’ workforces and economies.

The World Bank has found that a response that is even just one month quicker, results in a 0.8% boost in income per capita in the long run. Early action also enables partners to ultimately spend less and families themselves to avoid catastrophic losses.

However, research commissioned by the Start Network found that less than 1% of humanitarian funding goes to anticipatory action, although at least half of all humanitarian crises are foreseeable.

UNICEF teams are doing all they can to help children affected by the Somalia drought – including deploying mobile teams to find and treat children with malnutrition in locations that are hard to access (300,000 children have been treated for the deadliest form of malnutrition this year), supplying water to half a million people in three months, and counting, sanitation and healthcare.

Nonetheless, although substantial funds have come in over the past months – thanks to USAID, the UK Government, and the European Union – we simply do not have enough funding we need to address the rapidly increasing needs, to stop this tragedy becoming a catastrophe, or to prevent it happening again next year, or in the years to come.

UNICEF’s three-year appeal to help families build resilience in the Horn of Africa region is severely underfunded. Given climate change bears the greatest responsibility for today’s tragedy, business as usual is, quite literally, lethal.

Yes, there is insecurity in Somalia, yes everything is worsened by global food shortages and price rises on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the greatest impact here remains a climate crisis. We are careering towards planetary tipping points. The consequences are unimaginable. And, terrifyingly, nothing we have seen so far even hints at the scale of what will come next.

There are solutions. First and foremost, governments and business must fulfil the promises they have been making. As the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres put it: “Some government and business leaders are saying one thing – but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic.”

We need this to change. In areas ravaged by climate change, where drought will doubtless hit again and again, investing in social protection and cash transfer programmes is one of the most effective ways to help families deal with current challenges while also building resilience for the long term.

When families lose everything, cash transfers allow them to make ends meet as well as rebuild and retain their livelihoods, choosing which needs to prioritize. It is also a more cost-effective approach for humanitarian response, a 2018 USAID study found that safety net programming in the Horn of Africa can save an average of $230 million per year.

UNICEF is already supporting such social protection schemes across the Horn of Africa, with the support of the World Bank, the Swedish International Development and Co-operation Agency (Sida), the European Union and others.

However, we need more investment to help more families not only survive events like the Somalia drought but also recover and thrive. Recent evidence has emerged from Malawi showing that households who receive small, monthly cash support from the long-term, unconditional Social Cash Transfer Programme were more resilient, able to avoid poverty and food insecurity even in the event of negative shocks such as droughts, floods or lean seasons.

Better resilience is also associated with the ability of families to weather a negative shock without resorting to so-called “negative coping strategies”, such as marrying off daughters for dowry, reducing food consumption or withdrawing children from school to work.

Improving water systems is also crucial in helping families build their resilience to climate change. Successful work on mapping groundwater using geospatial imagery and data is already underway in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

The World Bank has scaled up its work in this area, with a $385 million investment across the Horn of Africa, which includes support to UNICEF’s work on groundwater mapping being pioneered in the region; while the KfW development bank is supporting UNICEF to implement its Climate Resilience and WASH programme in four countries, including Somalia, strengthening water systems, and exploring innovative methods of drilling for groundwater. Both areas are in urgent need of additional funding to scale up.

We fear that Somalia’s children could soon die on an unprecedented scale and, unimaginably, worse could be ahead in the months and years to come. For those who survive the Somalia drought and famine, their families will face a long and difficult road to recovery.

The US Government is the most significant partner for the lifesaving component of UNICEF's Horn of Africa Drought Call to action appeal, while Germany’s KfW is a key partner for the resilience pillar.

However, we desperately need more parties to step up and commit further flexible resources for the Horn of Africa, to ensure UNICEF and partners can move quickly and efficiently and to make sure that all children’s needs – from nutrition to education and child protection – are accounted for.

We know how to save and protect lives in Somalia and potential for the long term. Now we must secure urgent investment and action to achieve it.