The UN says parts of Somalia will be plunged into extreme poverty and starvation by the end of the year. According to the United Nations report, Somalia's southern Bay region will experience severe famine by the end of this year. The ongoing severe hunger and famine and the aftermath of the war in Ukraine have led to the death of thousands of people.
Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian chief, told reporters that during a visit to Somalia, he saw babies so starving they couldn't even cry "it broke my heart in the last few days".
A formal famine declaration is rare and a warning that too little help has come too late. More than a million people in Somalia have been displaced by the worst drought in decades as a result of severe climate change in the Horn of Africa, which includes Ethiopia and Kenya.
A famine is an extreme lack of food, and diseases such as cholera, along with severe starvation and malnutrition, lead to a significant increase in mortality. Figures show that one in five households have severe food gaps, more than 30% of children are malnourished and more than two in 10,000 die every day.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been described as a disaster for Somalia, which has suffered from a shortage of humanitarian aid as international donors focus on Europe. Somalia also sourced at least 90% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine before the war and has been hit hard by scarcity and the sharp rise in food prices.
"Ukraine has occupied the narrative," Griffiths said.
Hungry families in Somalia have been staggering for days or weeks on foot through parched terrain in search of assistance. Many bury family members along the way. Even when they reach camps outside urban areas, they find little or no help.
At one camp outside the capital, Mogadishu, Fadumo Abdi Aliyow showed The Associated Press the graves of her two small sons next to their makeshift home. Disease had overwhelmed their weakened bodies. One was 4. The other was eight months old.
"I wanted to die before them so they could bury me," Aliyow said. Another resident of the camp of 1,800 families, Samey Adan Mohamed, said the last meal she and her eight children had was rice a day ago. Today they only had tea.
The Horn of Africa region has seen four straight failed rainy seasons for the first time in well over four decades. The upcoming rainy season is also expected to fail. That endangers an estimated 20 million people in one of the world's most impoverished and turbulent regions.
The rainfall in this year's failed March-to-May season was the lowest in the last six decades. Next year's March-to-May season doesn't look good either, worrying that this could be the seven-year drought the biblical one.
Hundreds of calls from across Somalia, including from al-Shabab-controlled areas, come in daily to the Somali-run Radio Ergo. Some say no aid is available in camps. Others say water sources have run dry or lament the loss of millions of livestock that are the foundation of their health and wealth.
"People don't cry because they want their voice to be heard," radio editor Leyla Mohamed said. "But you can feel they are hurting, that they feel more than we can hear."