May 24. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Around a million people have been forced to flee their homes in Somalia during the last four months, a record number in this period of time, due to the mixture of conflict, drought and floods, as indicated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
The figures published by these organizations reveal that the conflict is among the main causes of the displacements registered from January 1 to May 10, while more than 408,000 people have been displaced by the floods and another 312,000 by the impact of the drought. Most of the displacements have been in the Hiiraan (centre) and Gedo (south) regions.
“These are alarming figures among some of the most vulnerable, forced to abandon what little they had to head into the unknown,” said the director of the NRC in Somalia, Mohamed Abdi, who stressed that “with one million displaced in less than five months, only the worst can be feared for the coming months, as the ingredients of this catastrophe are boiling over in Somalia”.
Thus, many of the internally displaced are arriving in overcrowded urban areas or places that are already hosting the displaced, placing a heavy burden on already strained resources and exposing vulnerable people to increased protection risks, including family separation and violence. of genre.
The UNHCR representative in Somalia, Magatte Guisse, explained that “the humanitarian needs in Somalia continue to grow.” “We are working with humanitarian agencies to best respond, but with daily commuting, these needs are overwhelming.”
“It is a huge tragedy to witness the impact on the most vulnerable in Somalia. They are the least responsible for the conflict and the climate crisis, but they are the ones who are hit hardest,” he said.
There are currently more than 3.8 million internally displaced people in the African country, where around 6.7 million people have problems meeting their daily needs. In addition, more than half a million Somali children suffer from acute malnutrition, yet humanitarian agencies have only received 22 percent of the resources needed to address the crisis.
“We call on international donors to increase funding to better protect those most likely to bear the current crisis, otherwise we will never see the end of this human tragedy,” Guisse added.
