Over 15 million people could be suffering from famine by mid-2022 due to a serious humanitarian situation caused by drought in the Horn of Africa, a UN agency said on Saturday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned that if decisions are not made, a growing food insecurity and increasingly widespread displacement will be imminent, which would generate a large-scale worsening in forthcoming months.
The Horn of Africa is presently facing the worst drought in decades and has already accumulated manifold failed rainy seasons, a phenomenon added to conflicts, insecurity, extreme weather conditions, plague of desert locusts and the impact of the socioeconomic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to IOM, 3.5 million of people most at risk live in Kenya, 7 million in Somalia and a further 7 million in Ethiopia, nations in which rural communities depend on natural resources greatly hit by drought.
Thousands of hectares of crops have been ravaged and in Kenya alone 1.4 million livestock died in 2021, a situation that is forcing tens of thousands of families to leave their communities for food, water and pasture.
IOM´s data indicated that the most acute drought in past 40 years in Somalia forced as many as 2.9 million people to leave, and estimated that one million will soon continue such a path due to the serious situation that led the Government to declare a State of Emergency in November 2021.
Prensa Latina
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