Almost 70% of the workforce is dependent on subsistence farming or tending livestock. Poverty indicators are therefore vulnerable to the unstable climate conditions experienced in the Horn of Africa region where years of severe drought are punctuated by widespread flooding, a profile likely to be aggravated by climate change. 2008 appears likely to bring a second successive failure of the main gu harvest - cereal production in 2007 was described by the World Food Programme (WFP) as the “worst in 13 years”. The secondary deyr rains at the end of 2007 also failed totally. The result is a food security emergency in the central and south regions of Somalia, with estimates of the numbers requiring assistance undergoing rapid upward revision to 3.5 million by the end of 2008, almost half of the population.

© United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

Two factors threaten to plunge a hotspot of food insecurity into a humanitarian disaster. First, the global explosion of food prices which squeezes the capacity of poor communities to cope with crop and livestock failures has hit Somalia particularly hard. Aid agencies are reporting price increases of 300% for staples such as rice and maize. Second, the delivery of food aid is seriously obstructed by the anarchic conditions of a conflict zone. The UN has been forced to pass a resolution allowing international naval vessels to enter Somali waters to defend food shipments against rampant piracy. On land, road transport is forced to negotiate its way through the country’s estimated 400 roadblocks, each operated by gun-toting militias demanding arbitrary payment. A tragic development in 2008 has been the targeting of aid workers, culminating in the murder of the acting head of UNDP in July.

These impossibly difficult conditions for delivery of food aid may explain in part the underfunding for the UN’s emergency appeal for $641 million. There is also concern that Somalia has become a forgotten emergency, suffering donor fatigue and media blackout. Meanwhile, the renowned resilience of the Somali people is being tested to the limit with rates of malnutrition exceeding emergency levels - Unicef reports that one in six children under age five has acute malnutrition.

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