Somalia, UN agencies appeal for sustained funding to avert hunger. Drought, conflict, and high food prices could push 4.4 million people into hunger. Only 12.4 per cent of the $1.42 billion Somalia 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan has been funded, the UN says. The country was pushed to the brink of famine by severe drought in 2022, resulting in thousands of deaths, with nearly half of the victims being children. The warning came as the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which was released on Monday, showed that 3.4million people are already experiencing crisis levels, or higher, of hunger in Somalia. The hardest-hit households include those with low agricultural yields who have depleted their food stocks, internally displaced persons, and pastoralists with limited livestock and below-average earnings from livestock sales, Xinhua news agency reported. The IPC findings also confirm that erratic rainfall in 2024 led to low crop yields, rapid depletion of pasture and water sources, flooding of food crops, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
