Day: May 31, 2022

Meeting the needs

FAO has welcomed a $12 million contribution from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for a new project to provide emergency agriculture and livestock supplies to thousands of farming and pastoral communities in 14 of the most severely affected counties.

“This generous contribution from CERF means that FAO can urgently provide essential agricultural inputs to vulnerable farming households before the main agriculture season starts in June. It will ensure that they can produce enough food to meet their needs for the months to come,” said Babagana Ahmadu, FAO Representative to the?Sudan.

The project will target 180,000 households, or 900,000 people, among the most vulnerable farming and pastoralist communities, including internally displaced people, returnees, and refugees.

Reducing dependence on aid

As twothirds of Sudan’s population lives in rural areas, FAO said providing smallholder farmers with agricultural support is essential to the humanitarian response.

The project covers both agricultural and livestock assistance, which aims at rapidly reducing dependence on emergency food assistance and provides a basis for medium and longer-term recovery.

Assistance covers the provision of crop, legume and vegetable seeds, donkey ploughs and hand tools, veterinary vaccines and drugs, animal feed, as well as donkey carts and productive livestock.

It also includes provision of cash and the rehabilitation of community assets such as small-scale water infrastructure, pasture and hafirs, or artificial ponds for harvesting rainwater.

Ukraine war impact

FAO said the situation looks grim for millions in Sudan. The war in Ukraine is causing further spikes in food prices, and the country is dependent on wheat imports from the Black Sea region.

Interruption in grain supplies to Sudan will make it more difficult and expensive to import wheat, with current local prices per tonne, costing 180 per cent more when compared with the same period last year.

Additionally, high prices for fertilizers on global markets will also affect imports, and, ultimately, agricultural production.?

While the CERF allocation is timely and vital, FAO added that another $35 million is urgently needed to ensure adequate support for two million vulnerable farming and pastoral households in Sudan.?

Starvation threat in East Africa

Meanwhile, UN agencies and their partners are calling for a rapid scale up in action to address the looming threat of starvation in East Africa following four failed rainy seasons.

The drought, which is affecting Somalia, as well as parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, is likely the worst in 40 years, and the situation is set to worsen.

The warning came in a statement issued on Monday by FAO on behalf of the 14 partners, who include meteorological agencies and humanitarian organizations.

Some 16.7 million people in the region currently face high acute food insecurity and figures are projected to increase to 20 million by September, they said, citing data from a regional platform co-chaired by FAO.

“The climate conditions that cause the current drought are expected to prevail until the end of this year, posing a serious threat to the October-December 2022 season,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Devastation and displacement

The rainy season from March to May of this year, which appears likely to be the driest on record, has devastated livelihoods and driven sharp increases in food, water, and nutrition insecurity.

Over a million people have been displaced in Somalia and southern Ethiopia alone, while an estimated 3.6 million livestock have died in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Furthermore, it is estimated that in the worst-affected areas of Somalia, one out of three livestock have perished since mid-2021.

The partners said the latest long-lead seasonal forecasts indicate that there is now a concrete risk that the October to December rainy season could also fail.

“Should these forecasts materialize, the already severe humanitarian emergency in the region would further deepen,” they said.

Source: United Nations

At a news conference in Mogadishu, Somalia’s special envoy for humanitarian issues on Monday said more than six million Somalis were affected by the record drought.

Abdurahman Abdishakur Warsameh said the number of people suffering was quickly approaching half of Somalia’s population.

Warsameh said the drought has hit 72 of Somalia’s 84 districts and that six of them were already facing famine-like conditions with extreme food insecurity.

He says our people are starting to die now. Deaths have begun, famine is looming in some areas, and drought is turning into famine. Warsameh says the Somali people at home and abroad should help us in taking on some of the responsibility.

The special envoy did not give any figures on how many Somalis have died from hunger but appealed for aid to reach those in need.

Warsameh said the current drought, the worst in forty years, had displaced nearly 700,000 Somalis from the countryside and forced them to seek help in nearby cities.

He said the U.N. and aid agencies requested $1.4 billion for drought relief but so far received only $58 million.

Warsameh said international aid was more focused on the COVID pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and crises in Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.

The humanitarian envoy also said not much attention is given to humanitarian needs because of Somalia’s focus on politics last year and a half of delayed elections.

International aid agencies warned Monday that the threat of starvation was worsening in Somalia and neighboring countries across Ethiopia and Kenya.

The Horn of Africa region is facing a record fifth rainy season without adequate rain, according to meteorological experts and humanitarian groups, which include U.N. agencies.

Source: Voice of America

At the beginning of May 2022, the estimated number of people affected by drought in Somalia rose to about 6.1 million, of whom over 760,000 are displaced and in urgent need of food, water and access to health care. The ongoing rainy season remains below average at this stage, and thus unlikely to improve the situation in the short or even mid-term.

“This is the worst drought I have seen. Some livestock used to remain behind in the previous droughts, but this one has finished everything. We used to have goats, camels and good shelter. All these have been destroyed by the drought. We don’t have shelter. We don’t have livestock. We just live by the grace of God and what we receive from people.”

Since the beginning of 2022, the ICRC has been scaling up its operations in Somalia, and across drought-affected countries of Africa, helping affected people and communities. In Somalia, the ICRC has focused on the most affected and hard to reach areas and on some IDP settlements. We have distributed emergency cash grants and rehabilitated boreholes and wells. We have enhanced our primary health care response, including identifying and treating malnutrition among children and pregnant and lactating women. We have also strengthened the monitoring of protection needs and provided of Restoring Family Links (RFL) services to separated families.

”The ICRC gave us cash for three family members, which made hope alive and we also got some assistance from local leaders here in Afmadow town,” says Asli Hussein Hassan, at Afmadow town IDP centre.

Asli and her husband lost all their possessions, including their livestock. But the hardest to bear for Asli has been a loss of her two children.

88,000 out of over 120,000 households have already received cash grants, while others have been registered for support. Families in the most affected areas of Somalia receive cash grants amounting $90 each. The inflation, however, threatens to decrease the value of this support.

“We are walking a tightrope here. We have to make the difficult decision of whether to increase the amount of cash we give each family or bring in more families and give them very little. The reality is this situation will likely continue,” says Juerg Eglin, head of the ICRC in Somalia.

Emergency rehabilitation of water supply points and maintenance of water pumps have been instrumental to allow almost 300,000 people to access safe drinking water and the delegation continues to work to help many more. The ICRC and the Somali Red Crescent Society’s (SRCS) teams support and maintain health clinics, while hospitals and outpatient centres are working hard providing help to pregnant women and engage in health promotion.

Humanitarian concerns

Several years of below average rain has destroyed livelihoods across Somalia. Current predictions for the next rainy season remain pessimistic.

People continue to leave the most affected rural areas for urban centres. The pressure is mounting affecting host communities and the infrastructure of Somali towns.

At the same time, soaring global prices of staple commodities such as wheat, cooking oil and petrol as well as inflation are aggravating the situation in a context where conflict and overall insecurity have already eroded the resilience of communities and continue to impede humanitarian access in many areas.

The above situation makes the long-term prognostic very worrying. Humanitarian funding remains low, whereas humanitarian needs continue growing with increased urgency, among a population that is already under great stress and whose capacity to cope becomes more limited every day.

ICRC Operational Response Update

To support communities affected by the drought, the ICRC has been:

Improving access to water and sanitation

Given that more than 85 percent of the entire water availability depends on ground water production, our drought response focuses on increasing the production and securing the latter’s quality. This includes electromechanical quick fixes, re-drilling of boreholes, increasing the water storage by constructing elevated water tanks, water catchment systems, animal troughs and generator houses for strategic existing borehole/mechanised hand-dug well locations.

Since the beginning of 2022, we’ve distributed fuel and made quick fixes to 26 electro-mechanical boreholes. We have also completed the construction of five water reservoirs (berkads) as well as half a dozen hand-dug wells and rainwater catchment systems alongside the construction of community water sand filters and animal troughs. Currently, we are working on rehabilitation of around a dozen hand dug wells and a couple of water tanks of 50 cubic meters. Additionally, work on 10 water reservoirs (berkads), a water tank generator and a half a dozen electro-mechanical boreholes quick fixes is ongoing, while we continue to donate fuel for borehole generators in the conflict affected areas. We are also conducting topographical surveys and assessments for 26 rainwater catchment locations.

Delivering emergency assistance

The ICRC has been delivering unconditional multipurpose cash support to drought-affected and displaced people in the most affected areas in Somalia, focusing on hard to reach localities. However, based on the massive needs and gaps in the humanitarian funding, we have also included a few urban localities (IDP sites) in our response.

Out of over 120,000 registered households, over 80,000 households have received the first round of cash support and over 20,000 have already received the second round of cash support.

Strengthening screening of malnutrition in hotspot areas

In order to reach malnourished people, particularly in the most affected areas, the ICRC and the Somali Red Crescent Society (SRCS) are engaged in a joint response with active mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) screening in six hot spots areas. The identified malnourished people are referred to the nearest nutrition program. To date, more than 68,000 children aged below five and more than 30,000 pregnant lactating women have been screened. Around half of the identified as wasting cases were treated in the SRCS integrated nutrition programs (six Targeted supplementary feeding program (TSFP) for moderately malnourished cases, six Outpatient Therapeutic program (OTP) for severely malnourished patients and two Stabilization centers (SC) for severely malnourished cases with medical complications whereas the remaining were referred to other actors.

Supporting health facilities

The ICRC, with the support of the SRCS, is opening six emergency mobile health clinics to provide integrated health and nutrition services to populations with no access to health care in conflict affected areas. This is in addition to the 26 already functioning Primary Health Cares in other areas. Services provided by the temporary emergency mobile health clinics include an outpatient services and outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) for the treatment of severe malnutrition without complication antenatal care.

Source: International Committee of the Red Cross