Somalia at “risk of relapse”

IRIN: Three years after a famine claimed 260,000 lives in Somalia, 2.9 million people there are still affected by a multifaceted but desperately underfunded humanitarian crisis, and communities are just “one shock away from disaster”, a host of aid agencies have warned in a joint campaign entitled “Risk of relapse.”

“With a third of the population in need of aid, Somalia is clearly in severe crisis,” according to a statement signed by 22 NGOs*. Just 12 percent of Somalia’s humanitarian funding requirements for the year have been met, and there is a shortfall of US$822 million.  The organizations also launched a social media campaign, saying “we can’t fail them again.”

World Vision noted that rains have failed across most of Somalia, and the recent upsurge in the military offensive by AMISOM has led to greater displacement in the south.

“What we have is an early warning that has ingredients of a perfect storm. We urge donors and stakeholders to take immediate action to avert disaster,” said Andrew Lanyon, Chief of Party for the Somalia Resilience Programme (SomReP), an organization that World Vision is a member of, during a media briefing in Nairobi....

Refugees eagerly await the installation of a new water tank. Fleeing famine in south central Somalia, they have arrived in a part of northeast Kenya that has suffered the driest year in six decades. Clean water is in short supply. Photo: Jo Harrison/Oxfam, Oxfam East Africa, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license