Nearly half a million Somali children face the harshest form of malnutrition as cascading climate shocks collide with devastating aid cuts, leaving families like that of 70-year-old Abdi Ahmed Farah without resources to survive. Farah, who has lost all but 110 of his 680 goats to three years without steady rain in Puntland, told aid workers he has considered abandoning his 22 children because he cannot provide for them. His youngest child, born three weeks ago, receives only occasional drops of breast milk as the family survives on one meal a day of rice with sugar and oil.
The U.N. World Food Program director for Somalia, Hameed Nuru, declared that "2026 is the worst year on record for Somalia in terms of drought. Children have started dying." The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report released on Thursday confirmed that 6 million Somalis currently face food insecurity, higher than the 5.5 million projected in February, even as immediate crisis-level hunger affects a staggering portion of the population.
Humanitarian Response Collapses
Aid funding to Somalia plummeted to $531 million in 2025, driven largely by cuts from the United States, which had been Somalia's top donor. In 2022, aid funding stood at nearly five times that amount at $2.38 billion. Antoine Grand, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, warned that "unless there is a sudden and substantial response from donors, the outlook is deeply concerning. A drought of similar severity in 2022 received a response five times greater than what we are seeing."
The World Food Program intended to help 2 million people with food aid this year but has reached only 300,000 because of funding gaps. Mohamed Assair, a manager with Save the Children in Puntland, said, "This drought is not just another cycle of dry season. It's a repeated climate shock with shrinking humanitarian support."
Climate Catastrophe Compounds Human Toll
Production of staple crops of maize and sorghum in the October-December rainy season was the lowest on record in Somalia, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Food security experts warn that nearly a half-million children might face severe acute malnutrition, higher than the number of children requiring treatment during droughts in 2011 and 2022, according to UNICEF.
The Somali government and the United Nations estimated in February that 6.5 million people face crisis levels of hunger, representing a third of the country's population and a 25% increase since January. The crisis is compounded by rising prices from the Iran war, as Somalia buys most of its fuel from the Middle East, and 70% of its food is imported.
Families Forced to Impossible Choices
Farah's family has been at a site outside Usgure village for 10 days, where almost a dozen goat carcasses lie nearby. "There is no market for my goats because they are so thin. Previously we would trade them for rice, but now we can't," Farah said. In Usgure, home to 700 families, community leader Abshir Hirsi Ali said the local economy has collapsed because they rely on pastoralists like Farah. Shops have closed and food rations have run low.
Private water trucks have quadrupled their prices and the cost of a 50-kilogram bag of flour has increased by a third, to $40. A recent, brief shower brought puddles of dirty rainwater. Ali said, "Some families were so desperate they drank it … now there is a high number of people with fever."
Muhubo Tahir Omar, a 47-year-old mother of 11 children, sold her goats to pay for school fees, "but when we didn't pay, the teachers left." Her last goat is now sick. She said, "I'm not only afraid for my family but the future of the whole village."
Displacement and Death
The drought has displaced another 200,000 people this year, the U.N. estimates, adding to the millions already displaced by decades of conflict in Somalia. Kevin Mackey, the Somalia director for humanitarian group World Vision, said, "People are on the move … and when people move, people die." He recently met people who had walked for nine days to get aid in Dollow in the south.
Around 80 families live in a displacement camp outside Shahda village in Puntland. Shukri, a 20-year-old mother of four, usually can eke out one meal a day from handouts. Now there is nothing to eat and limited access to clean water. She said, "The children got diarrhea (from dirty water) and malnourishment worsened. I know a few people who have died."
Many people head to Mogadishu, the capital, where food also remains scarce. Fadumo, a 45-year-old mother of seven, moved there from Lower Shabelle, where livelihoods were already threatened by al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants. She said, "The water sources we depended on for farming, including the river, dried up. Conflict made our situation even worse, forcing us to flee."
Health System Overwhelmed
A center at the hospital in Qardho, Puntland, treats children with severe acute malnutrition. But therapeutic milk is now rarely in stock, and nurses resort to homemade alternatives such as cow's milk, said director Shamis Abdirahman. The center receives around 15 children a month, but they expect more as displaced people arrive.
One 4-year-old, Farhia, weighs a scant 7.5 kilograms. Her eyes are sunken and her bones are prominent under her skin. Her family fled to Qardho when all of their goats died, said her mother, Najma. Najma said, "I don't know what to hope for, or see how we can get back to what we had."
Drought ravaged Somalia in 2022 and an estimated 36,000 people died, according to the U.N. Aid agencies are trying to maximize resources and the Somali diaspora is sending money to help, but humanitarian workers warn it is not enough.
Why This Matters:
The convergence of climate catastrophe and dramatic aid reductions reveals how vulnerable populations bear the costs of policy decisions made far from their communities. When the United States and other major donors withdraw humanitarian support during a worsening crisis, the immediate consequences fall on children like Farhia and families like Farah's who have no safety net. The fivefold drop in aid funding from 2022 to 2025 demonstrates how international commitments to the world's most climate-vulnerable nations remain fragile and subject to political shifts. Somalia's experience shows that climate adaptation and humanitarian response require sustained, predictable support systems rather than episodic interventions. Without robust international cooperation and accountability mechanisms to ensure consistent aid flows, communities facing repeated climate shocks will continue to face impossible choices between survival and displacement, education and food, while children die from preventable malnutrition.