Almost half a million children in Somalia are facing severe malnutrition and are at risk of dying from hunger, an NGO warned on Monday as international aid efforts are being scaled back.
Somalia, one of the world’s poorest nations, has been ravaged by decades of civil conflict, climate disasters, and the ongoing insurgency by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab. The country has only recently begun recovering from a prolonged drought, while widespread flooding in 2023 displaced nearly one million people.
CARE International highlighted that the number of children under five suffering from severe malnutrition had risen to 1.8 million, according to a March 29 report by a UN-backed monitoring body. Of these, 479,000 are at imminent risk of death without urgent intervention.
The NGO warned that the crisis is accelerating faster than expected, driven by seasonal challenges and the impact of the 2024 drought. In the hardest-hit areas, the number of people in “emergency conditions” surged by 50 percent.
Ummy Dubow, CARE Somalia’s country director, stated that women and children are bearing the brunt of the crisis. “Every day, we hear countless human tragedies in the centres we run,” he said, describing pregnant women sacrificing their nutrition, mothers watching their children suffer from acute malnutrition, and young girls being pulled from school to help families survive.
The situation is worsened by funding cuts, with aid organizations being forced to reduce operations. The 2025 UN aid plan for Somalia is only 11 percent funded, leaving many facilities under-resourced and unable to meet the escalating needs. “The already overstretched and under-resourced facilities will buckle under increasing needs, and lives will be lost,” Dubow warned.
