UPDATE 1-Somalia faces severe malnutrition crisis as WFP warns of aid halt

Somalia faces a severe malnutrition crisis and urgently needs more aid funding ‌to avert a catastrophe, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday, warning it may be forced to halt humanitarian support from July without additional financing.

Somalia faces a severe malnutrition crisis and urgently needs more aid funding ‌to avert a catastrophe, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday, warning it may be forced to halt humanitarian support from July without additional financing. A combination of multiple failed rain seasons, which have wiped out crops and livestock, ‌and ongoing conflict and insecurity is pushing people in Somalia into dangerous levels of hunger at a time of ‌radical cuts in foreign aid and aid shortages sparked by the war on Iran, the WFP said.

Some 6 million people in Somalia, or almost one in three, are facing acute hunger, while 1.9 million children are acutely malnourished, according to the WFP. "Somalia faces a really ⁠severe ​malnutrition crisis and is one of ⁠the biggest malnutrition hotspots in the world," Matthew Hollingworth, WFP assistant executive director for programme operations, told reporters in Geneva. He spoke via ⁠video link from Rome. Somalia faces several overlapping conflicts, including a long-running Islamist insurgency by the Al-Shabaab militant group against the federal government as ​well as political disputes between Mogadishu and regional states over power and security.

The situation in the country bears ⁠similar warning signs to 2022, when Somalia was on the brink of famine following a prolonged drought, but the difference this time is ⁠that ​aid agencies do not have the funding to respond at a massive scale, the WFP said. The agency, which manages 90% of the food security response to Somalia, has had to reduce the number of people it can ⁠reach to 500,000 from 2 million, and could have to halt its services altogether by July due to funding ⁠cuts, Hollingworth added. The WFP ⁠and the wider humanitarian sector also face widespread shortages of life-saving aid, with Ready-to-use-Therapeutic-Food facing delays of up to 40 days, due to supply chain disruption sparked by the war ‌in the Middle ‌East, Hollingworth said.