\n<\/p>\n
Published On 27 Apr 2026<\/span>27 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Across Somalia, communities are suffering through a deepening hunger crisis, driven from their homes by drought and left waiting for critical humanitarian assistance that has not arrived.<\/p>\n September\u2019s failed Deyr rains mark the latest blow in a relentless climate crisis, destroying livelihoods, killing livestock, and forcing another year of harvest failure.<\/p>\n More than 500,000 people have been displaced so far this year \u2013 more than 90 percent of them by drought \u2013 in addition to the 3.3 million Somalis already uprooted.<\/p>\n Displaced families now face the highest risk of starvation, according to the UN OCHA\u2019s Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026.<\/p>\n Fatima, 40, has fled five times \u2013 three times because of conflict, twice because of drought. Each time she has left behind land, livestock, and the small possessions her family has managed to save.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the fifth time I have fled,\u201d she says. \u201cI am still facing the drought and I have nothing to feed my family.\u201d<\/p>\n Families have walked for days, eating wild plants along the road and have arrived in displacement camps in Baidoa and Dollow with nothing.<\/p>\n Many reach the sites malnourished and exhausted, carrying children too weak to walk. What they find there is not relief, but abandonment.<\/p>\n Aid funding in Somalia has declined sharply. This year, only 14 percent of the funds requested for humanitarian response have been received, according to OCHA\u2019s Financial Tracking Service.<\/p>\n Somalia was intentionally left out of the $2bn global humanitarian aid pledge announced by the United States for this year\u00a0due\u00a0to allegations of aid diversion, corruption and the destruction of a US-funded World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in the country, according to officials.<\/p>\n \u201cHumanitarian services are one of the only things we can rely on, but it is completely gone,\u201d says a man displaced from Bakool who walked more than 100km to reach Baidoa. The April\u2013June rainy season, known as Gu, has begun, but it offers limited relief.<\/p>\n For families who have lost their herds and farms after years of successive droughts, rain alone cannot rebuild what has been destroyed. People need immediate assistance.<\/p>\n