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“Our life here is not life; it is a painful cold, and our livestock died of hunger and disease, and we are afraid that the drought will be prolonged and we are in this state without shelter.” .

Saadia is one of the victims of drought in the Ethiopian Somali region. Her suffering, which she spoke to Al Jazeera Net, summarizes the stories of thousands of residents of the region whose difficult living and environmental conditions push its residents to displacement and displacement under the weight of hunger and thirst.

Somali women in displacement camps due to drought (Al-Jazeera)

Millions need help

The Ethiopian Somali Regional Government had warned of the humanitarian risks due to the drought.

And at the beginning of this year, it issued a report in which it announced that about 3.4 million people of the region's population of 9 million are in need of humanitarian assistance due to the drought in areas in the region in eastern Ethiopia.

The local report pointed to humanitarian risks due to drought and the lack of rain in the usual time.

He said that areas of the region are witnessing a deterioration in food security due to the failure of rains last year, which leads to a shortage of food and animal feed and water scarcity.

According to the report, at least 10 regions are affected by drought, and the purchasing power of poor families is severely reduced due to high food prices and low livestock prices, and the death of about 250,000 heads of livestock owned by residents here.


displacement wave

Attempts to support and relief remain insignificant in the face of the needs of thousands of families who have lost all their livelihoods under the stress of drought, and their stay in the areas of displacement (in and outside the camps) has become the only solution to their survival, as the official spokesman for the Ethiopian Somali Regional Government, Mohamed Roble, told Al Jazeera Net .

The report of the Ethiopian Somali Region revealed that the drought affected 614 schools, of which 210 were completely closed, and the number of affected students was estimated at more than 100,000 students.

He said that some residents have begun to move from drought areas to Jijiga, the provincial capital.

In addition to the exacerbation of the current crisis in the region, there have been migrations of livestock from surrounding areas in Somalia and Kenya in particular.

Last year's rains in Ethiopia were low and below normal, in a country whose economy is based on agriculture, which contributes to more than half of the gross domestic product, 60% of exports, and 80% of the country's total employment rate.

A pool for collecting water in the camps for the displaced in the Somali region (Al-Jazeera)

seasons of failure

The specter of famine looms over regions in East African countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, amid warnings from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in East African Countries (IGAD).

According to the authority's Climate Applications and Prediction Center, the first month of the 2022 agricultural season (which runs from March to May) was particularly dry, and the region recorded temperatures above average precipitation.

A report by the center indicated that the regions of East Africa face a very real possibility of a significant decrease in rainfall rates for the fourth consecutive season, which puts Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in a state of drought not seen in the past 40 years.

In the same context, IGAD Executive Secretary, Raqini Gebeho, said, "We are not only looking at 3 seasons, but perhaps 4 consecutive failed seasons... in addition to other stress factors such as conflicts in both our region and Europe, and the impact of Covid-19. and macroeconomic challenges, all of which have led to severe levels of food insecurity across the Horn of Africa.

29 million without food

The Working Group on Food Security and Nutrition - co-chaired by IGAD and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) - estimates that more than 29 million people face high levels of food insecurity across East Africa.

This coincides with the ongoing war on Ukraine and its negative effects on food globally.

Ukraine is one of the world's largest producers of grain and vegetable oils, and its exports have fallen sharply since the outbreak of war last February and Russia's blockade of its ports on the Black Sea.

Livestock suffering from hunger in front of temporary housing in displacement camps in Somalia (Al-Jazeera)

The story of drought with East Africa

The drought that swept East Africa recently may be the most difficult, but it is not the first for a region that has been experiencing waves of famine for many reasons, mostly wars and conflicts, as well as drought.

Since the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, famines began to recur in Africa on a large scale and more severely until the beginning of the current century.

Historians of famines in Africa have documented frequent famine disasters, especially in the eastern countries of the continent, especially Ethiopia and Somalia.

Somalia experienced a famine between 1991 and 1992 due to drought and civil war, then in July 2011 a severe drought hit the Horn of Africa and claimed thousands of lives in Somalia and neighboring countries.

Drought in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is the region of East Africa most vulnerable to famine for several reasons;

On top of it are wars and drought, as the country witnessed widespread famine between 1983 and 1985, the worst hunger wave to strike the country in a century, leaving 1.2 million deaths, 2.5 million internally displaced, and thousands of refugees.

The famine of 1888 was the worst in this country, and its stories are still told today.

With the continent facing complex risks - it is vulnerable to recurrent shocks (drought, conflict, floods, desert locust infestation and disease outbreaks) - the African Union dedicated this year to what it called "building the African continent's nutrition resilience and accelerating human capital and social and economic development".