drought

The Horn, East and Central Africa are facing a profoundly alarming hunger crisis. More than 66 million people are in need of humanitarian aid as climate extremes have caused widespread food and water shortages. Oxfam is on the ground responding but we urgently need your help to save more lives.

Battered by cyclones and ravaged by extreme drought, poor communities in the Horn of Africa and Mozambique have found themselves on the front line of a climate crisis they did little to create.

As drought devastates the Horn of Africa yet again, the following analysis comparing 2019 to earlier droughts paints a bleak picture and indictment on the humanitarian community. The urgency to better respond is exacerbated by people’s lack of recovery from the 2017 drought and a further deterioration predicted in coming months.

More than 15 million people are in need of aid as drought hits parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia again.

Climate change is now affecting every country on every continent, but it is the world’s most vulnerable people who are hit the hardest. In the south of Niger, Oxfam works on sustainable income generating activities to make the population more resilient to climate change and food insecurity.

Thousands of Somali families were displaced to urban centres by the 2017 drought. Research by a group of NGOs indicates that they do not intend to return home anytime soon. It also shows how precarious and limited are the livelihood opportunities for displaced people in Somalia.

Climate change is already forcing people from their land and homes, and putting many more at risk of displacement in the future. This paper describes the effects on communities and how responding to these growing realities demands far stronger action towards ending global climate pollution.

More than three years after it was initiated in the aftermath of the 2011 famine, the early-warning, early-action trigger mechanism for Somalia remains a work in progress. This paper looks at how the mechanism has functioned during the 2016/7 drought crisis response.

There is growing scientific analysis suggesting that the impacts of current and recent droughts in East Africa are likely to have been aggravated by climate change. Without global efforts to reduce emissions and to help the world’s poorest people cope with the effects of climate change, this crisis will continue to repeat itself.

For many people in East Africa, the current drought is the worst in living memory. Nomadic pastoralists are among the hardest hit. Their livestock is completely wiped out, meaning they have no means to feed themselves. In eastern Somaliland, Oxfam witnessed entire communities on the move, desperately searching for water and pasture.