Drought, famine, and al-Shabaab: Learning from the past in Somalia

Ayla Kaufman

“We had no strength to bury her,” described Fatuma Omar, a Somali mother whose daughter died of malnutrition. Fatuma’s harrowing story is not uncommon; central and southern Somalia are experiencing their worst drought in 40 years. Today’s crisis is quickly mirroring Somalia’s famine of 2011, where drought induced a lethal food crisis for which international assistance was delayed. In hopes of spurring aid today, humanitarian organizations have–to no avail–called on the UN to declare a famine in the country. Absent a formal classification of famine, international food relief is unlikely and risks repeating the deadly mistakes of 2011. 

More than 20 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently affected by drought. Rising temperatures exacerbate the naturally arid climate of the region, fomenting drought conditions as potential rainfall instead evaporates. In Somalia, the result has been an unprecedented failure of four rainy seasons, with predictions for the fifth season indicating rainfall is already 60 percent lower than average. More than 90 percent of the country is subsequently facing severe to extreme drought, jeopardizing agriculture irrigation, drinking water, and pastoralist’s water supplies. Somalia’s constraints on domestic food production are compounded by a limited capacity to import food. The country’s primary food suppliers are Russia and Ukraine, who collectively provide over 90 percent of Somalia’s wheat imports. The Russia-Ukraine war has stalled key grain deliveries, which has more than tripled the cost of staple goods such as wheat, rice, flour, and sugar.

Somalia’s food crisis is further exacerbated by al-Shabaab’s influence. The Islamist militant group has capitalized on the drought to amplify their territorial control, which encompasses an estimated 800,000 Somalians affected by the drought. A key method that al-Shabaab uses to assert control is through taxing Somali residents’ crops, livestock, and proximate water sources, diverting harvest revenues from food scarce Somalians. By destroying and poisoning wells, al-Shabaab also establishes dependence on the group for water, punishes unloyal residents, and aggravates water scarcity. The group then precludes assistance from the federal government and international sources by attacking aid trucks and their recipients, thereby cementing al-Shabaab as the sole water and food service provider. Under a heightened state of dependence, Somalia’s drought has enabled al-Shabaab to increase their legitimacy, influence, and profits, while worsening the country’s food shortages. 

Between domestic restrictions on food production, limitations on Russian and Ukrainian imports, and al-Shaabab restrictions on water availability, Somalia faces a food crisis. Part of Somalia’s Baidoa and Buurhakaba districts are already experiencing famine, and the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs projects that the Bay Region will experience widespread famine by the end of the year. However, in order to formally classify that a country is experiencing famine–which has not yet happened in Somalia–the UN and Somalia must make a joint famine declaration. Famine is a technical term defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). According to the IPC, a phase five famine classification requires a country to meet three criteria, all of which are likely present in Somalia.

First, the IPC specifies that under a famine, more than 20 percent of households experience an extreme lack of food. In Somalia, 7.8 million people are currently hungry and 7.1 million of those individuals face acute food insecurity, meaning that their lives are in immediate danger without assistance. Additionally, 300,000 Somalians are at risk of starvation, over a million individuals are internally displaced due to drought, and 40 percent of the population will require food aid to stave off hunger. As nearly half of Somalia’s total population are suffering from food insecurity, surely the country meets the household threshold for a famine declaration. 

Somalia also meets the second IPC metric for famine, which requires that 30 percent of children experience acute malnutrition. In fact, the World Food Program estimates that 45 percent of Somali children, or 1.5 million children under the age of five, are acutely malnourished, but expected to be severely malnourished by the end of the year. According to UNICEF, one Somali child has been admitted to a health facility for severe to acute malnutrition every minute of every day since August. Lastly, famine classification requires that for every 10,000 individuals, two adults or four children die daily. Although exact figures are lacking, and all calculations underestimate deaths in unmonitored rural areas, thousands have already died in Somalia and hundreds of thousands more are at risk of death. A higher death rate than Somalia’s famine in 2011 is anticipated as twice as many Somalians are affected by today’s drought, which has already lasted longer than in 2011. 

Despite clear famine conditions, concerns over al-Shabaab have deterred the UN and Somalia from formal declaration. On one hand, foreign governments critical to UN support of a famine classification are wary that a declaration would increase pressure for humanitarian assistance which al-Shabaab could seize. Guaranteeing financial assistance reaches citizens rather than the extremists is virtually impossible since al-Shabaab taxes cash donations and food aid. Inadvertent international financing of the group would not only incur reputational damage, but is frequently barred by legal measures that prevent financial aid by countries, like the US, from benefitting designated terrorist groups. Al-Shabaab attacks on aid deliveries also deter foreign investors who are not certain that their donations will reach the intended recipients. Likewise, the Somali government has avoided declaring famine out of concerns that doing so would undermine confidence in the newly elected president and unintentionally facilitate leverage for al-Shabaab to delegitimize the central government. 

Similar concerns over al-Shabaab resulted in a delayed famine declaration and insufficient international aid during Somalia’s 2011 famine; not declaring a famine today risks repeating the same mistake. In the absence of a famine declaration in 2011, investors faced inadequate pressure to provide food relief. Consequently, half of the total 260,000 deaths in 2011 occurred before famine was officially declared. Many experts and agencies believe that if the UN and Somalia had acted on warning signs earlier in 2011, deaths would have been averted. While no funding mechanism is triggered by famine declarations, aid from UN agencies and pressure on international donors historically surges once famine is identified. The same logic applies to today. Humanitarian assistance to Somalia has been sluggish without a famine declaration as only 45 percent of the UN’s requested $2.26 billion in assistance has been funded. Aid workers argue that a formal famine declaration would shift donor attention to Somalia, thereby increasing life-saving assistance. Somalia cannot wait; the food crisis demands urgent attention and humanitarian assistance–regardless of famine classification–but formally declaring famine would go a long way to catalyze international action.