Irinnews.org: Analysis-‘Leaving behind whatever dies’

The severe drought in Ethiopia has made headline news. But it has also scorched northern Somalia – a region far less able to cope with the impact.

Some 385,000 people are already facing a hunger crisis in self-declared independent Somaliland and semi-autonomous Puntland, further to the east.

The UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, says an estimated 1.7 million people, nearly 40 percent of the 4.6 million people living in these areas, are in need of humanitarian assistance and livelihood support.

“Of these, 1.3 million people are at risk of slipping into acute food insecurity if they do not receive assistance,” it warned.

Ali Sheikh Omar Qabil, director of the Family Health Department at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN that the El Niño-linked drought had affected more than 650,000 people in Somaliland, and was particularly bad in its western regions. “People are suffering hunger, diseases and high rates of malnutrition,” he said.

Although the total number in need in neighbouring Ethiopia is far greater – potentially 16 million could be drought-affected by the middle of this year out of a population close to 100 million – Somalia is far poorer, its government is less effective, and humanitarian access is much more limited.

Deaths from malnutrition

As a result of El Niño, two consecutive rainy seasons have failed in Somaliland and Puntland.

Somaliland’s worst-affected regions are the scrublands of Awdal and Selel, whose shallow watercourses normally rejuvenate the arid land when it rains, providing pasture for livestock.

The forecasts for the Gu rains (April to June) “are less than favourable,” according to a statement from the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA. It has appealed for $105 million to urgently scale up “critical, life-saving” aid and to build resilience in northern Somalia. “If funding is not secured now, the consequences will be grave,” it added.

There have already been malnutrition-related deaths in Somaliland. “We know of about 12 persons who have died from malnutrition and hunger in the drought-affected areas of the region,” Adwal Governor Mohamoud Ali Ramah told IRIN.

The search for food

Pastoralists have been forced further and further afield in a search for grazing. The Somaliland military and private transporters have been able to truck some of those who become stranded back to their areas of origin, including between 700 and 1,000 families from Ethiopia’s Somali region who crossed the eastern border looking for pasture.

 “People are walking from the Guban plateau… toward the southern Oogo [mountains] after they lost all of their animals,” said Muhumed Abdi, from Gerisa village in Selel region. “They are leaving behind whatever dies – whether human being or animal.”