En million somaliere mangler stadig mad, efter at FNs fødevareorganisation FAO for nylig indrømmede, at den humanitære indsats mod den tørkeskabte sultkatastrofe i Somalia i 2011 kom for sent, var for utilstrækkelig og for påvirket af sikkerhedssituationen. Den gode nyhed er, at det nu også regner i Somalia.
NAIROBI, 22 May 2013 (IRIN) – Over one million people in Somalia are currently food insecure, according to a May report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET). This number is a significant drop from the 3.7 million considered food insecure in mid-2011.
The improvement has been attributed to good ongoing ‘gu’, the March-to-June rains, and the 2012 October-November ‘deyr’ rains. Successive droughts and poor rains had culminated in a famine in Somalia in 2011.
258.000 deaths
The famine led to an estimated 258,000 excess deaths, meaning deaths above normal mortality numbers, according to a 2 May study commissioned by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) and FEWSNET.
Most of these deaths were in the Banadir, Bay and Lower Shabelle regions, where 4.6 percent of the overall population is estimated to have died. In the Lower Shabelle region, a death rate of at least 9 percent was recorded among all ages, with 17.6 percent of under-fives there dying between October 2010 and April 2012, the study notes.
Insufficient aid
“There is consensus that the humanitarian response to the famine was mostly late and insufficient, and that limited access to most of the affected population, resulting from widespread insecurity and operating restrictions imposed on several relief agencies, was a major constraint,” said the study.
Humanitarian workers are keen to avoid a repeat of the famine, which has been described by many as a mainly “manmade” disaster. In the following IRIN asks a Somalia experts and international analysts whether the conditions that led to the famine are still in place, and whether another famine could occur in Somalia.
