WFP forced to make ‘hard choices’ as Somalia edges toward famine

As millions of Somalis face food insecurity, the humanitarian sector has largely transitioned from a drought response to famine prevention in recent weeks, said El-Khidir Daloum, country director for Somalia at the World Food Programme, during an online event Tuesday.

An estimated 5.2 million people are already facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse in the country, with the wider region experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. This number could hit 7.1 million in the coming months. Four rainy seasons have already failed, and the next one is likely to do the same — which would be unprecedented.

A humanitarian response plan from the United Nations and its partners is only about 18% funded. Because of this, WFP must prioritize getting food to those most in need — but that comes at the cost of providing food to others, Daloum said during Tuesday’s event, which was hosted by the Overseas Development Institute.

“That prioritization … is just like taking the food from the mouths of hungry people to the mouths of starving people,” he said.

This means WFP must stop its prevention programming for children under 2 years old, as well as lactating and pregnant mothers and deprioritize programming for people in the “crisis” stage of food insecurity under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international initiative of U.N. agencies and other partners. There are just two IPC stages after that: “emergency” and “famine,” which WFP will prioritize, along with people newly displaced by the drought. Daloum said WFP’s strategy now includes prioritizing the scaling up of unconditional food assistance, targeting people who are seeing the “most severe food shortages.”

“These are hard choices, because basically, there are a big number under the crisis stage,” he said. “There’s an opportunity cost [that is] going to be there.”

A WFP spokesperson told Devex the agency was able to reach about 2.3 million people in May, which is only a portion of those in need of food. It aims to reach 4.1 million, if resources allow. WFP will not decrease food rations or the amount of people it reaches with this new strategy, but focus on those who are at most desperate risk of losing their lives.

“The risk of famine in Somalia right now is very clear, very present and really just around the corner. Right now all of our focus is on scaling up and averting a catastrophe,” the spokesperson said.

Stopping prevention programming, in the long term, is “a big problem, because it just means that caseloads of malnutrition that we will then need to treat are going to increase. But the resource shortfall for nutrition is so bad that this is the choice we’ve been forced into making,” the spokesperson added.

The country’s Baidoa district has already surpassed IPC’s acute malnutrition threshold under the famine stage, but an official declaration of famine would first need one of two other criteria to be met as well. Across Somalia, about 38,000 people are “likely” in the famine stage already. In what IPC considers the “most likely scenario” moving forward, about 213,000 people in the most affected areas will face famine by September.

Update, June 8, 2022: This piece has been updated with comments from a WFP spokesperson.