Famine threatens 22 million people in the Horn of Africa

Famine threatens about 22 million people from southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya, passing through Somalia, as a result of an unprecedented drought since the end of 2020 and is expected to continue in the coming months.

The number of people threatened with hunger in the Horn of Africa has almost doubled since the beginning of 2022, when it was 13 million.

Currently, 5.6 million people suffer from "acute food insecurity" in Somalia, 12 million in Ethiopia, and 4.3 million in Kenya, where the population of this region lives mainly from livestock and farming, according to the United Nations.

More than 1.7 million people have been forced to leave their homes in search of water and food, according to the latest World Food Program report, published on January 23.

The last famine that hit the region in 2011 claimed the lives of 260,000 people in Somalia, half of whom were children under the age of six. Hunger resulted from a lack of rain during two consecutive seasons.

Swarms of locusts destroyed crops across the Horn of Africa, and more than 9.5 million head of livestock died due to lack of water and pastures due to drought, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The crisis was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which led to High prices of food and fuel have attracted humanitarian aid funds to a large extent.

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