Soaring food prices, a devalued currency and drought mean millions of people in Somalia cannot feed themselves, the United Nations said on Monday. And the crisis will get much worse if April-June rains fail or are well below average, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
Somalia, a country of nine million people, already imports more than half its grain needs. Soaring commodity prices and a weakening currency have made those staples 375 percent more expensive than a year ago, the FAO said in a statement. Many households did not have enough money to meet basic needs, said the FAO's Somalia Adviser, Cindy Holleman, in the statement.
Drought in parts of the country and poor rainfall in others meant domestic food production was also likely to be well below normal. "If the Gu (mid-April to June) rains are significantly below normal, the shilling continues to lose value, food prices increase further and civil insecurity worsens, we could see as many as 3.5 million people ... facing acute food and livelihood crisis or humanitarian emergency conditions by the end of the year," Holleman said.
| My heart [urp!] bleeds. We've been treated to the images of starving Somalis for 25 years now. In that time, they haven't bothered establishing anything like a stable government. The closest they've come was the Islamic Courts, and they spent more time shooting people for going to the movies than they did on trying to feed the populace. Religion has trumped development, just as it trumps everything else. Tough on the kiddies, I suppose, but it's the adults' fault -- for being childish. And after 25 or 30 years, it's pretty far down on my list of grave concerns. |
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