Wanlawayn district, Somalia, 28th March 2024: For decades, Somalia has been in a fragile state characterized by chronic conflicts, droughts, famine, floods, and disease outbreaks, the latest catastrophic event being a drought in 2022 that killed 43,000 people, half of whom were children. These natural disasters and man-made hazards are the key drivers of Somalia’s perennial humanitarian crisis, internally displacing millions of people and fueling food insecurity and malnutrition, the latter compounded by poor feeding practices among vulnerable communities in Somalia.
Recently, widespread flooding triggered by El Nino affected an estimated 700,000 people in the Southwest State, including 140,000 children below the age of five years. In Walanweyn district, nearly one in five children are malnourished, well above the national average of one in six children.