WORLD
UN declares famine in Somalia, issues aid appeal
Baku, July 20 (AZERTAC). The United Nations officially declared a famine in parts of Somalia, Wednesday, as malnutrition rates rise to extreme levels. The U.N. is now appealing for immediate action to keep the crisis from spreading to other parts of the region, VOA reports.
The United Nations says consecutive droughts over the last few years in Somalia have created a famine in two regions of the south.
Speaking at a news conference in Nairobi, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Mark Bowden called it a “desperate situation.”
“We estimate that almost half of the Somali population, 3.7 million people, are affected by this crisis and a full 2.8 million people live in the south, the most seriously affected area," said Bowden. "It is likely that tens of thousands will already have died, the majority of these being children.”
While the world has been watching a food crisis unfold in Somalia, this is the first time the United Nations has used the term “famine.”
That classification means that malnutrition rates have exceeded 30 percent, that more than two people per 10,000 are dying each day, and that many cannot get access to food and other essentials.
To be precise, the famine has only been declared in the regions of southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle in Somalia, but the U.N. warns it could spread to other areas in coming months.
Asked if the United Nations could have done more to prevent this crisis, Bowden told VOA that they did not have the resources.
“We had been hoping to avoid famine, we spent a lot of our resources that we had at the beginning of the years specifically to help those communities that we thought might migrate, to stop migrations which is one of the major causes of death," said Bowden. "We spent our money, we didn`t have enough to scale up as we now need to.”