Parts of Somalia face famine risk for first time since 2022
This latest emergency is unfolding as foreign aid cuts and the effects of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran make it harder to respond to food shortages driven by several failed rainy seasons and persistent insecurity.
By Aaron RossFriday May 15, 2026
A security officer keeps watch as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher, not pictured, visits a camp for internally displaced Somali people in Baidoa, Somalia, on April 29, 2026. In drought-stricken parts of the country, clinics treating severely malnourished children have been forced to turn away patients and ration supplies after shipping disruptions linked to the Iran war cut off vital therapeutic foods. REUTERS/Feisal Omar/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
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Two global food security monitors warned on Thursday that parts of southern Somalia are now under threat of famine, with one district slipping to a hunger level not seen in the country since 2022.
Somalia, long among the world’s most food-insecure nations because of repeated drought, conflict and poverty, last suffered a famine in 2011, when about 250,000 people died. It also came perilously close in 2017 and again in 2022.
This latest emergency is unfolding as foreign aid cuts and the effects of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran make it harder to respond to food shortages driven by several failed rainy seasons and persistent insecurity.
More than 37% of young children in Burhakaba District in southern Somalia’s Bay Region, which has an estimated population of about 200,000, are acutely malnourished, according to a report from the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
“The IPC analysis found Burhakaba District to be at risk of Famine under a plausible worst-case scenario of failing Gu (season) rains, soaring food prices and below expected delivery of humanitarian food security assistance,” the report said.
“FAMINE COULD RAPIDLY EMERGE”
Famine is defined as a situation in which at least 20% of households in an area face an extreme shortage of food, at least 30% of children suffer acute malnutrition, and two in every 10,000 people die each day from hunger.
FEWS NET, a U.S.-funded early warning system for hunger crises, said in a statement that its most likely outlook assumes seasonal rains will improve enough to temporarily steady conditions, but that a plausible alternative is another failed harvest if rainfall remains poor.
“If the harvest fails, Famine could rapidly emerge in these areas,” FEWS NET spokesperson Hannah Button said, referring to agro-pastoral zones in Somalia’s Bay, Bakool and Gedo regions.
The number of Somalis facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse stood at about 6 million, according to the IPC report. That is down from 6.5 million in February, but above the projected 5.5 million for this period after rains disappointed.
Global cuts to foreign assistance, including reductions by the United States, have sharply reduced support for Somalia.
The IPC report said humanitarian aid for the April-June period had risen significantly, but it still reached only 12% of people facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse.
Overall humanitarian funding for Somalia in 2026 totals $160 million, down from $531 million last year and far below the $2.38 billion provided during the last drought in 2022, according to U.N. data.
“Somalia risks becoming one of the first major crises of the ‘post-aid era’: a place where needs are growing, survival is becoming more expensive, and the response is shrinking,” said Daud Jiran, the Somalia country director at Mercy Corps, an aid group.
Reporting by Aaron Ross, editing by Gareth Jones and Timothy Heritage
