Iran War Adds to Somalia’s Malnourished Children’s Woes

NAIROBI/GENEVA – Somalia’s most vulnerable children are being squeezed from every side: drought, deep aid cuts and now the fallout from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which has sent transport costs and fuel prices soaring and threatened the flow of lifesaving nutrition supplies.

For families already living on the edge, the disruption is more than an economic headache. Aid workers say shortages of therapeutic food are forcing clinics to turn away children with severe acute malnutrition and to ration the stock that remains.

Nearly half a million Somali children under the age of 5 are affected by “severe acute malnutrition” or “wasting,” the deadliest form of hunger, and delivery delays are compounding the damage caused by shrinking assistance.

In Baidoa and Mogadishu, health workers say they have had to make scant supplies of special milk and peanut-based nutrient paste last as long as possible, even as demand keeps rising.

“Since the needs are large and we don’t have a lot of supplies, we have had to keep ​reducing the amount we give children,” nurse Hassan Yahye Kheyre said.

At his clinic, which treats more than 1,200 children, 225 cartons of peanut paste are left, and the International Rescue Committee says they are likely to run out within two weeks.

“If treatment is on-and-off, the children will become very weak, physically and mentally. And it ⁠may not be possible to reverse it,” Kheyre added.

The IRC is among three aid organizations warning that transport delays and higher costs tied to the war in Iran are aggravating an already fragile situation.

In southwestern Baidoa, at a clinic operated by IRC local partner READO, Muumino Adan Aamin has been trying to secure peanut paste for her 11-month-old daughter, Ruweido.

Ruweido is supposed to receive three sachets a day, but Aamin has been turned away twice because the clinic had no stock.

Aamin once came close to losing another child, Anisa, during the 2017 drought that pushed Somalia to the brink of famine. “Just bone and skin,” she said of the toddler, who survived only because of peanut paste.

Nine years later, another drought has driven 6.5 million people, or one in three Somalis, into acute hunger, leaving aid groups scrambling to fill the gaps.

An IRC shipment of peanut paste that should have fed more than 1,000 children became stuck two months ago at the Indian port of Mundra, where diverted cargoes have clogged the docks because vessels cannot enter the Gulf, said Shukri Abdulkadir, IRC’s Somalia coordinator.

After being informed that the India-made peanut paste would need at least 30 more days to arrive, IRC canceled the order.

The group then placed an emergency request for 400 cartons from Nairobi and is shifting supplies from Mogadishu to Baidoa while it waits.

But freight and manufacturing costs have climbed so sharply that a single carton now costs $200, up from $55, according to CARE International, whose latest order now covers only 83 children instead of 300.

In 2024, shipments of therapeutic milk and ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) from Europe to Somalia generally took 30 to 35 days. By 2025, that had stretched to 40 to 45 days as ships rerouted around Africa because of security risks in the Red Sea.

Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28 and Iran shut the entrance to the Gulf, a shortage of vessels has pushed delivery times to 55 to 65 days, said Mohamed Omar, head of Health and Nutrition at Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Mogadishu.

At the same time, the IPC global hunger monitor says more than 2 million people in Somalia are now in the “Emergency” phase, one step short of famine.

Admissions of severely malnourished children at ACF-supported health centers in January-March were 35% higher than during the same period last year.

At Daynile General Hospital, where 360 children are being treated for wasting, staff said on April 20 that they barely had enough supplies to last the week.

“Some children’s nutritional status has already worsened,” said health and nutrition supervisor Xafsa Ali Hassan.

Somalia was not among 17 impoverished countries chosen to receive a share of this year’s funding allocated to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) by the United States, the donor that has imposed the steepest cuts to foreign aid.

OCHA says more than 200 health facilities have closed and mobile teams have been disbanded.

In December, the agency said more than 60,500 severely malnourished children had already gone untreated because of the cuts, warning the figure could rise to 150,000 if the funding shortfall continued.

Then the war with Iran broke out, and domestic fuel prices in Somalia jumped 150%.

“Somalia is really hard hit by the Iran war because people are still reeling from the impact of the previous drought,” said IRC’s Abdulkadir. “It’s very difficult for people to absorb these shocks.”

OCHA has appealed for $852 million from international donors to prevent a full-scale famine.

That is far below the $1.42 billion it sought last year, and even that smaller target has so far been met by only about 14%.