Leading United Nations agencies and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have jointly issued a warning about a rapidly intensifying hunger emergency in Somalia, which is pushing 6 million people — nearly a third of the population — towards critical levels of acute hunger. The country now has one of the world's worst malnutrition crises, affecting around 1.9 million children, of whom 493,000 face severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
“The humanitarian context in Somalia is worsening faster than we originally projected and expected,” George Conway, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, told journalists in Geneva on Friday.
The current crisis is being driven by multiple shocks, including severe drought, insecurity and limited humanitarian assistance.
Conway noted that the situation was being exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and its resulting global supply chain crisis.
“Children are paying the highest price. Nearly two million young children are acutely malnourished, meaning they're dangerously undernourished and physically weakened, placing them at high risk of illness or death,” he stressed.
“Almost half a million are so severely malnourished that they require urgent treatment to survive”, added the veteran humanitarian.
Severe acute malnutrition is the deadliest form of malnutrition and can be fatal within weeks if left untreated. Children diagnosed with SAM require immediate, intensive treatment because they are extremely vulnerable to life-threatening complications, with a death rate 12 times higher than that of well-nourished children.
Malnutrition also weakens the immune system, making children more susceptible to infectious diseases. For example, total measles cases in Somalia doubled between January and March 2026 compared to the first quarter of 2025, with the greatest impact on vulnerable children who are already acutely malnourished.
On Friday, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and OCHA issued a joint call for an urgent scaling up of lifesaving assistance.
This follows an updated IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) analysis, released on Thursday, which confirms that acute food insecurity and acute malnutrition in Somalia remain extremely concerning and continue to deteriorate, with a risk of famine in one location.
According to the latest IPC update, an estimated 6 million people across Somalia are facing crisis levels of acute food insecurity (IPC 3) or worse until June 2026. This includes almost 1.9 million people facing emergency levels of food insecurity (IPC 4), a figure which has tripled in less than a year.
A real and credible risk of famine
Conway continued that humanitarian assistance is most urgently needed in the South West State, where the UN has confirmed "a real and credible risk of famine in Burhakaba district."
People in the Burhakaba district of the Bay region in south-west Somalia are at risk of famine if the worst-case scenario develops. Nearly 40 percent of children under five in this area are already acutely malnourished. This scenario would be triggered if the Gu season rains fail between April and June, food prices continue to rise sharply and humanitarian assistance does not reach the most vulnerable populations through to June 2026.
This marks the first famine risk analysis since the crisis of 2020–2022, when famine was narrowly averted through massive and sustained humanitarian interventions following the longest drought in recorded history.
While Somalia's people have endured drought since 2024, the current Gu rainy season from April to June has brought some relief to certain areas. However, concerns are growing that not enough rain will fall, which would further heighten the need for humanitarian assistance, already proving prohibitively expensive.
“Given the drought situation and the drying up of water points, a lot of communities are reliant on water trucking,” Conway said.
“And the cost of water trucking obviously increases with the crisis with the cost of fuel. So, in some locations, we've seen water prices for water trucking triple over the course of the past month.”
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires highlighted numerous places where healthcare to treat diseases linked to acute hunger is no longer available, or is being stretched thin by supply chain delays due to the ongoing disruptions in the Middle East.
Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) is the standard treatment for children suffering from severe hunger, but the longer the Middle East crisis continues to impact fuel prices, particularly for air freight, the more uncertain its continued supply becomes.
“We have a factory in Nairobi that produces a lot of the RUTF that we provide for Africa and other countries, but Somalia is a specific case whereby moving these supplies by road is not as feasible,” Pires explained.
“We depend on air freight and obviously with the fuel rising, the fuel prices rising so significantly, that cost will become very complicated for us to manage looking forward […]. It's a matter of life or death for them.”
Food prices, linked to fuel price increases and maritime supply chain disruptions, have risen by up to 20 percent, weakening household purchasing power and pushing families closer to the brink. However, the current crisis is being exacerbated by multiple factors, including the severe drought and an increased risk of flooding in riverine and low-lying areas.
Humanitarian assistance massively reduced due to a brutal slashing of funding
The compounding shocks have been exacerbated by a major reduction in services and humanitarian assistance. This is due to funding cuts from leading donors, such as the United States and Germany. More than 500 health and nutrition facilities have closed across the country due to these cuts, resulting in disease outbreaks going uncontrolled and mortality risks rising.
According to the UN agencies, humanitarian assistance in the most at-risk areas, including Burhakaba, is being scaled up despite severely limited resources. However, coverage remains limited nationwide, with nearly 90 percent of people receiving little or no support. As of today, only 17 percent of the 2026 Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan has been funded.
At the same time, emerging El Niño forecasts signal a heightened risk of flooding later in the year, with some areas along the Shabelle River already experiencing above-average river flows, which could intensify sooner than anticipated.
Alongside the ongoing impact of the conflict in the Middle East and inadequate support, projections indicate that levels of acute food insecurity and malnutrition will persist until late 2026.
OCHA, FAO, UNICEF and WFP are therefore calling for an urgent scaling up of lifesaving, multi-sectoral humanitarian assistance, including in the areas of food security, nutrition, health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), for people in IPC Phase 3 and worse, including those at risk of famine.
The UN agencies and the UN humanitarian office note that there is a narrow but critical window of opportunity in the coming weeks to prevent famine. They emphasize that sustained and predictable funding are essential to averting a humanitarian catastrophe, as any further delay could cost lives.
“We risk a preventable catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. We must act now, at scale and without delay, to save lives and prevent the worst from happening,” Conway said.