‘We pray for rain’: Ethiopia faces catastrophic hunger in severe drought

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According to estimates, more than 6.8 million people in the affected regions will require immediate humanitarian assistance by mid-March. Drought, conflict, and the economic downturn, according to Unicef, will cause nearly 850,000 children in those areas to be severely malnourished this year.

Nimo Abdi Duh's upper arm circumference is just 12cm, and while the number means nothing to her, it does to the medical personnel who are treating her. Nimo, two, is malnourished, as are so many other children in Ethiopia's arid lowlands.

“We have been affected by the drought,” says her mother, Shems Dire, looking anxiously on. “We don’t have milk to give to the children. My child is sick due to lack of food, and this happened because of the drought … Our cattle have been harmed by the drought. We have lost so many."

Aid workers and local officials say that another crisis is slowly unfolding in Ethiopia, which is already dealing with humanitarian strife brought on by civil war. Severe drought has hit much of the country's southern and north-eastern regions.

"Three consecutive rainy seasons have failed," says Gianfranco Rutigliano, Unicef's country director. "Things will get better if it rains in April." But if that doesn't happen, we'll have something similar to what we saw in 1999 or 1993-94." Drought-induced crises hit Ethiopia during those years, causing millions to go hungry and some to die of starvation.

"We lost many cattle. Who knows, people may also die next? I haven’t seen such a drought before."

UNICEF aid for necessities 

Unicef has launched an appeal for £23.7 million to help get essential supplies to those in need, including water trucking, well rehabilitation, and child nutrition. "As they say in West Africa, ce sera la catastrophe [it will be a disaster]," Rotigliano warns if the money isn't raised.

The lowlands of Ethiopia's south-eastern Somali region and parts of Oromia are thought to be the most severely affected by the drought, with an estimated 4.4 million people facing critical water shortages.

The lack of rainfall, which came on top of a locust invasion in Jijiga, Somalia, according to Abdi Farah Ahmed of the regional health bureau, caused crops to fail, livestock to die, and malnutrition to rise. He adds that many people had fled their homes.

Food assistance about to run out due to intense fighting

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that providing nutrition supplies to Ethiopia, torn by conflict in the north, will run out next week. The stocks have not been replenished since mid-December over the escalating war which struck the country. 

"The escalation of conflict across northern Ethiopia means that no WFP convoy has reached Mekelle since mid-December. Stocks of nutritionally fortified food for the treatment of malnourished children and women are now exhausted, and the last of WFP’s cereals, pulses and oil will be distributed next week," the agency said in a statement.

'We depend on our cattle'

Zainab Wolie, a mother of seven children from Saglo village in Somalia, says the lack of rain has been particularly hard on her family. She used to sell some of her goats to supplement her income, but due to the drought, she lost nearly all of them.

“We depend on our cattle. We lost many of them. Who knows, people may also die next? I haven’t seen such a drought before … Five years ago, there was drought in our area, but at least we had food. But now we don’t have enough food for our family,” she says.

She is far from the only person who has lost livestock. The bodies of animals that died as a result of the drought litter the landscape of Saglo. Cows, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys have all died, leaving their owners alone.

“The situation is desperate,” says Ayes Mohammed, a mother of five from Gebiass village in Somali, who has lost 20 cows and 80 goats and sheep to the drought.

“Goats and sheep do not make it. For the cows, there is still some hope if we get fodder soon. I worry about my children. I feed them borrowing food from the neighbors for the last 10 days. But today, I am glad that the government distributed food in our village. I got 20kg of rice and 20kg of sugar.”

Abdirahman Ali Hussein, a healthcare worker in Somalia's Korahey zone, believes, however, that the government will be unable to solve the problem on its own. The drought is also affecting the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region in the country's south-west, as well as Afar in the north-east, where Tigrayan forces and federal government troops have been fighting recently.

“The government is trying to supply everything but there is overload,” says Abdirahman.