Food insecurity becomes a famine…
UN OCHA has declared that a famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia, and warned that the famine could soon spread to the rest of southern Somalia.
A famine is declared when three measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger coincide: “at least 20 per cent of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope; acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 per cent; and the death rate exceeds two persons per day per 10,000 persons.”
Severe drought, failed harvest, years of civil war and now economic collapse have placed 100,000 people in the southern South Sudan at risk of starvation, with an additional one million people on the brink of famine, according to UN agencies.
- Tens of thousands have already perished.
- More than three million people have been forced from their homes.
- Many are living in UN refugee camps across the country.
- One and a half million have fled across the border to neighboring countries.
Famines have been declared previously in southern areas of Sudan in 2008; in Gode in the Somali region of Ethiopia in 2000; in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1996; in Somalia in 1991-1992, and Ethiopia in 1984-1985, according to WFP.
Fire Earth 