A regional organization program in East Africa warned on Wednesday that the severe drought hitting the Horn of Africa is likely to intensify this year, threatening the region with a greater famine than the one that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives a decade ago. The Center for Climate Prediction and Applications of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an organization that includes eight countries in East Africa, says in a report: “Forecasts for the upcoming rainy season, March-May, “show a decrease in rainfall and an increase in temperature.
Precipitation during the rainy season makes up a large percentage (up to 60%) of the total precipitation throughout the year in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, parts of Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda). , and sometimes includes Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania) To confirm the fears of meteorologists and humanitarian organizations that this drought of unprecedented duration and severity could quickly cause a humanitarian catastrophe.
In its report, the center said: “In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda that have been hit hard by drought recently, this could be the sixth consecutive rainy season.”
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions hardest hit by climate change, as crises are becoming more frequent and intense.
The past five horrendous rainy seasons have killed millions of livestock and crops, and forced millions of people to flee their communities in search of water and pasture elsewhere.
The report warns that current conditions are worse than before the 2011 drought, as 23 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia already suffer from “acute food insecurity”. According to the United Nations, the most recent famine that hit Somalia in 2011 killed some 260,000 people, half of them children under the age of six, and they starved because the international community did not respond quickly enough. two consecutive rainy seasons compared to five seasons today. On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that some 1.3 million Somalis, 80% of whom are women and children, have been forced to leave their homes to flee the drought.
He added: “If Somalia has not yet reached the stage of famine, 8.3 million Somalis, or more than half of the country’s population, are in need of humanitarian assistance this year. For his part, Workneh Gebeyehu, Executive Secretary General of IGAD, called for an urgent international mobilization to face this worsening drought “so that we don’t feel remorse when it’s too late.”
