The underlined factors are really the truth, the number one is climate change. Somalia has caught up in a spiral of droughts and floods. And we see this impact on people, in terms of losing their livelihoods losing their crops, and then forcing them to move. Second, of course, is the conflict that has gone on in Somalia for more than 30 years.
That means people are unable to go about their daily lives because of insecurity. Immediately, it’s to save lives so to make sure that children treated for malnutrition, to provide safe water to communities without which we are at risk of having cholera and diarrhea and it’s also to make sure that we address diseases like cholera as well as diarrhea as well as measles because we know that when these diseases strike, we are likely to see deaths go up.
Initially, the response was rather slow I mean we had been warning about the crisis in Somalia from as far back as November last year. But it’s only in the last few months that we have seen the International Community step up to provide the funding that is needed. We are saying that this is adequate and we are grateful for it.
However, as we are seeing now, the needs are escalating almost on a day-to-day basis, and we will still need to continue to receive funding to help people that are suffering between now and even well into next year.
I think what we need to look at is how we can support these communities in addressing their health needs, their nutrition needs, and indeed, of course, their food needs, but also ensuring that we secure the future of children by putting them in school as well as providing a much safer environment for them.
So to this end, we working with the FAO, the world food program for example to look at how we can address these various needs, and indeed that also includes much more climate-resilient agriculture as well as looking at some of the techniques that can be used within this type of climate in order to improve yields.
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