Executive Summary
Almost 40 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya face an unprecedented food and nutrition emergency. This crisis is driven by five failed or below-average rainy seasons and a looming sixth in 2023. In Somalia and Ethiopia, the rain failure is exacerbated by protracted conflict. The region has also suffered from the negative impact of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war. Many of the countries in the region are net food importers, and the Ukraine crisis has led to an increase in the price of food. In a region where most rely on rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism, cyclic drought has eroded community resilience, leading to a grim humanitarian crisis.
Poor funding is hampering efforts by humanitarian groups to address the crisis. As a result, some groups have resorted to making painful choices of “taking the food from the mouths of hungry people to the mouths of starving people.” According to the World Food Program in Somalia, 7.1 million people face acute food insecurity, and 213,000 people are facing catastrophic hunger levels. In Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, 7.46 million children under the age of five are estimated to face acute malnutrition, including 1.85 million facing severe malnutrition.
Regional governments and international donors know how to respond to the drought but have failed to apply lessons from the past. Indeed, the current crisis echoes the devastating 2011-2012 famine in Somalia when over a quarter million people died, half of whom were children under the age of five. By the time famine was declared, half of the people experiencing famine had died. Donors, humanitarian agencies, and the governments of Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia learned hard lessons from the famine and adopted a “No Regret” funding posture during the region’s ensuing 2017-18 drought. They did not wait for the formal declaration of famine to upscale their aid delivery to people in need and deferred to quick, on-the-ground expertise in their field offices rather than onerous decisions from headquarters at key moments. Ultimately, they saved many lives and livelihoods.
Today, these hard-learned lessons have failed to hold. For over a year, there has been a sustained early warning of a new drought and its consequences for the Horn of Africa. However, those warnings have yet to trigger a response that matches the scale of need. If urgent actions are not taken, history is set to repeat itself on an even larger scale. This does not have to be the case. Lives and livelihoods can still be saved.
Experts know what works: adequate empirical evidence shows that early action, relief, and social safety programs, especially Emergency Cash Transfers, save lives and livelihoods and offer dignity to those in need. National safety net programs can be used to prevent the acute impact of food insecurity and, in the medium term, a path to longer-term poverty reduction. Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya each have social safety programs designed precisely for situations like this. These systems have worked during past droughts. Donors, humanitarian agencies, and national governments should therefore view social safety programs as the connective tissue that links humanitarian aid and development.
In Somalia and Ethiopia, internal conflicts are the chief barrier to delivering humanitarian aid. In 2011, humanitarian groups feared falling afoul of the sweeping counter-terrorism regimes, and Al-Shabaab’s onerous and arbitrary requirement to program in the areas under their control inhibited humanitarian access in southern Somalia. Initially, most areas that experienced famine were predominantly areas under Al-Shabaab’s control, although it spread to the government-controlled areas later. Today, Al-Shabaab does not control as many areas as in 2011. However, between 700,000 and 900,000 people still live in regions controlled by the group, making humanitarian access difficult.
Ethiopia has historically suffered from chronic food insecurity, and the government has addressed some of its causes through the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). The absence of large-scale conflict has also helped. But the outbreak of conflict in late 2020 between the Tigray authority on one side and the Federal Ethiopian government, the Eritrean military, and various militia on the other side has diverted resources towards the war and weakened community resilience. The federal government’s humanitarian blockade has also denied people in need of aid. Additionally, the killing of humanitarian workers and looting of humanitarian aid by parties to the conflict has exacerbated the already perilous situation.
The length and severity of droughts in the Horn of Africa are increasing. However, experts know how to address drought, and the 2017-2018 drought response offered a workable template. Early response, sufficient timely funding, and a combination of humanitarian aid and social safety nets save lives. Regional leaders must heed these lessons, starting with convening a regional summit to sound the alarm and take urgent action to address the ongoing crisis and halt the avoidable cycle of suffering.
Source: Refugees International