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UN: Further $900m needed for Somalia crisis response

May 11, 2017 at 3:18 pm

The United Nations is seeking a further $900 million this year for Somalia, where more than six million people need humanitarian assistance and 275,000 malnourished children are at risk of starvation, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said today.

“This morning we presented the revised humanitarian response plan seeking an additional $900 million to the end the year,” Guterres said in opening remarks to an international conference on Somalia hosted by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Somalia is in the grip of an intense drought. In the worst affected areas, lack of water has wiped out crops and killed livestock. Communities are being forced to sell their assets and borrow food and money to survive.

 A Somalian woman fills her plastic bottles with water at Dakamur camp in Somalia's Bay state on March 27, 2017 [Arif Hüdaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency]

A Somalian woman fills her plastic bottles with water at Dakamur camp in Somalia’s Bay state on March 27, 2017 [Arif Hüdaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency]

Lack of access to basic health services means that 1.9 million people may die of preventable diseases this year, the Disasters Emergency Committee says on its website. Maternal mortality rates are already amongst the highest in the world.