A Third of Somalia is in Urgent Need of Food Assistance, an Increase of 42.5 Percent over the December 2010 Figure
In our modern, secular age, most people are focused on themselves—on their work, entertainment and the acquisition of material things. Few understand, or make any connection between, widespread weather-related events and ancient Bible prophecies. Yet those sobering prophecies are coming alive today!When Jesus was asked, "What will be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?," He said His return would occur at a time characterized by "wars and rumors of wars… famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:3–8). The Apostle John saw a vision of four horsemen that would usher in the end of the age (Revelation 6:1-8). A white horse pictures false religion. A red horse pictures war and violence that will spread around the earth. A black horse, with a rider holding a pair of scales, pictures a time of scarcity, soaring food prices and famine. A pale horse portrays death by hunger, disease and natural disasters that will affect one quarter of the earth!
The prophet Joel predicted that the Day of the Lord—Christ's return—would bring unprecedented disasters, including a devastating period of drought in which "the grain is ruined, the new wine is dried up… the harvest of the field has perished… all the trees of the field are withered… Is not the food cut off before our eyes?" (Joel 1:10–16). The prophet Jeremiah spoke of a coming time of judgment that would include "droughts… because the ground is parched, for there was no rain in the land… no grass" (Jeremiah 14:1–6). Isaiah prophesied that in Egypt "The waters will fail from the sea, and the river will be wasted and dried up… and everything sown by the River [the Nile] will wither… the fishermen will also mourn" (Isaiah 19:5–8).
- Douglas S. Winnail, Droughts and Famines Increasing, Prophecy Comes Alive, July 2007
Famine Major Events in 21st Century
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Great Famine of 2011 - Tragedy Looms in the Horn of Africa
July 10, 2011allAfrica.com - In 1984, a Kenyan photographer and cameraman named Mohamed Amin shocked the world into action with his images of famine victims in Ethiopia.
Today, 15 years after he was tragically killed in the crash of a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines flight off the Comoros Islands, famine once again stalks the Horn of Africa, threatening the lives of 10 million people in what the USAid-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net) describes as one of the world's most severe food security emergencies.
Perhaps no country in the region is as badly affected as Somalia. The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) estimates that 2.85 million people -- a third of the population -- are now in humanitarian crisis and in need of urgent assistance, an increase of 42.5 per cent over the figure in December 2010.
"We are no longer on the verge of a humanitarian disaster; we are in the middle of it now," Isaq Ahmed, the chairman of the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation, a local NGO working in the south of the country, told IRIN on June 28. "It is happening and no one is helping."
Indeed, the numbers coming out of Somalia paint a terrible picture of a population caught in a perfect storm of calamities: A two-decade long brutal conflict that has seen the country play host to one of the largest displaced populations in the world; the worst drought in a generation has precipitated a sharp decline in food production; rising food prices mean that even the little available is out of reach of the impoverished population; and funding shortfalls for relief agencies resulting from a faltering global economy.
The prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under five years is an objective crisis indicator, reflecting the wider situation of emergency affected populations, including their food security, livelihoods, public health and social environment, say Helen Young and Susanne Jaspars in their paper The Meaning and Measurement of Acute Malnutrition in Emergencies: A Primer For Decision-makers.
According to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 75 per cent of the estimated 241,000 malnourished children in Somalia reside in the volatile southern regions where the country's internationally recognised Transitional Federal Government is battling a brutal insurgency in the latest iteration of the country's 20-year civil war. In some of these areas, 1 in 3 children is malnourished, more than double the emergency threshold of 15 per cent.
In August 2010, the national level of acute malnutrition was 15.2 per cent with 16.6 per cent in the south. Five months later the situation had deteriorated in most parts of the country and a national rate of 16 per cent was reported, with 25 per cent in the south. Assessments conducted in April 2011 confirmed a sustained crisis. Complicating the situation in the south even further, Al Qaeda-linked extremist insurgents continue to bar international humanitarian agencies from access to the needy populations, accusing them of promulgating Christianity and Western ideology.
The conflict has also created huge numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Since January, the UN estimates the drought has added a further 55,000. These are most often the poorest of the poor and it is no coincidence, therefore, that they are suffering disproportionately. While a third of the general population is in crisis, the ratio among IDPs is twice that. In February, 910,000, or 62 per cent of the country's 146,000 IDPs, were identified by FSNAU as being in crisis. The situation is now driving more people to flee the country altogether, many of them having to walk for up to a month to reach refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.
At the Daadab refugee camp in Kenya, the largest in the world, about 1,300 Somalis are arriving every day, nearly two-thirds of them children.
"Nearly every child or parent we have spoken to says they are not just fleeing fighting in Somalia -- the drought and food crisis are equally perilous to them now," Catherine Fitzgibbon, Save the Children's Kenya programme director, told the BBC.
"Children are arriving in Dadaab barefoot, after walking six weeks. They're covered in sores and wounds, they're acutely malnourished, they're completely dehydrated and that is preferable to the conditions they are living in in south-central Somalia... A mother arrived at one of our feeding centres saying she'd actually left her children behind in the village because she couldn't watch them die. She had walked away and left her six children in a house. Two of them ended up dying and we managed to reach four others," added Sonia Zambakides, the organisation's emergency manager for Somalia
For those left behind, relief, when it has come, has often been a case of too little too late...
Malnutrition and Famine in Africa
| Sources | See graphic for details. Note: PNUD= UNDP, United Nations Development Programme, HCR=Hauts Commissariats aux Réfugiés? |
| Link to web-site | http://www.grida.no/climate/vitalafrica/english/27.htm |
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