Pastoralists Parched and Dying on Somalia's Sool Plateau

NAIROBI, Kenya, December 10, 2003 (ENS) - No rain fell on Somalia's Sool Plateau during the past three months - the Deyr season of short rains that normally sustain the pastoral people on the plateau and their animals. The current drought is the worst in living memory - there have been seven consecutive seasons of complete or partial rain failure.

The United Nations says a humanitarian crisis is taking place on the Sool Plateau that requires an immediate, concerted and coordinated response from the international community to avert a full scale disaster.

The Sool plateau region is claimed by both Somaliland and Puntland, an autonomous territory in the north of Somalia. Intense fighting has raged across the region in the past few months.

A recent United Nations and NGO assessment of the area - which spans the Sool, Sanaag and Bari regions of the Sool Plateau - found that livestock herds, especially camels, were devastated by starvation and disease. Camel herds have been diminished by 70 percent in some areas, and camel reproduction has dropped.

The impoverished pastoralist families are almost entirely dependent on the sale of animals and their milk for income, but the animals that are still alive are too scrawny to sell.

At the same time, the assessment workers found, food and water prices are so high that most households cannot afford to purchase even the most basic necessities for survival.

Somalis make their way across the burning desert. (Photo courtesy United Nations)

UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Maxwell Gaylard is "deeply concerned" that the failure of the rains on the Sool Plateau could lead to a humanitarian disaster affecting 15,500 pastoralist families.

"We are already facing an acute humanitarian crisis, in particular in the Sanaag and Sool regions of the Sool Plateau, due to four years of consecutive drought," said Gaylard.

"With the current rains apparently failing again, we can expect that most remaining livestock will die, the local economy will collapse and this could trigger large scale population movements to towns that would adversely affect the health and welfare of the communities, in particular children."

The UN's Food Security Assessment Unit for Somalia, supported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the U.S. Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning System Network have also expressed grave concerns about worsening malnutrition and deteriorating food security if immediate action is not taken.

In its annual Africa Report released Monday, the FAO said, "An estimated 93,000 people are in need of urgent food and other humanitarian assistance," in the Sool Plateau due to successive drought, crop failure and the widespread loss of livestock.

In response to the crisis, UNICEF and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) have begun emergency action to supply food, water and cash, and have increased their monitoring and surveillance activities in the affected area.

The WFP is set to begin distributing food to more than 60,000 vulnerable people facing severe shortages. As the drought area straddles the borders between the two territories of Somaliland and Puntland, the United Nations has obtained access and security assurances from both authorities. The food distributed in the critical areas will be delivered from both sides.

WFP Representative for Somalia Robert Hauser said, “The Sool Plateau has not experienced rain for a long time and reserves of groundwater are drying up. This year’s Deyr rains appear once again to be failing and both the people and their livestock are in a dire situation."

“We need to intervene immediately to prevent widescale malnutrition and stave off a humanitarian disaster,” said Hauser.

The impact of the drought on livestock has been so dramatic that even if the next rains in February are good, milk production will remain low and many families will have no animals to sell.

“WFP urgently needs more funds if we’re to continue our planned assistance over the next five months," said Hauser. "We need some US$6.5 million to buy about 8,600 tons of food aid. If the resources were available, we would expand assistance beyond the 64,000 people to an additional 41,200 needy people in 18 villages,” he said.

Representatives of Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in Somalia say they have received unconfirmed reports of the first human deaths from the drought.

The NPA workers say the water reservoirs have dried out. "The few boreholes in the area are operating day and night unable to meet the demand of water. As a result the water price has increased by 600 percent, a price totally out of range for the local pastoralists," the NPA says.

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently granted US$450,000 to NPA's relief work in the Somalian Sool region. The grant helps in facilitating water transportation into the affected areas. NPA also builds boreholes and rehabilitates wells by digging deeper and securing them from contamination. There is still a great need for more funding for NPA's relief work, the organization says.

This Somali woman is the recipient of seeds through the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Special Relief Operations Service. (Photo courtesy FAO)

The collapse of the central government of Somalia in 1991 disrupted all sectors. Now, after more than a decade of civil war and an absence of central authority, the country is fragmented, with isolated and independent administrative entities emerging in various regions.

In London on December 3, the international community took a financial step to help Somalia. The Somali Financial Services Association (SFSA) was launched during a conference on the Somali remittance sector, attended by representatives of remittance companies and financial regulators from the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the United States.

The SFSA, which is supported by the UN Development Programme Somalia, is composed of 14 remittance companies, and aims to provide both advocacy and technical support to the industry.

It will also serve as a self-regulatory body for the companies in the absence of a central Somali government.

“Remittance companies are the largest employers in Somalia,” says SFSA Secretary General Mohamed Djirdeh Houssein. “They also handle millions of dollars belonging to the Somali people. We thought it important to set up a supervisory and accountable authority which would also develop a code of conduct and best practices for the industry.”

Remittance companies remit some US$750 million into Somalia annually from the Somali Diaspora which goes to provide daily subsistence for the Somali population, as well as facilitating trade and investment.

Somali remittance companies are currently the only functioning financial institutions in Somalia. The UNDP says these companies have proved to be "trustworthy, reliable, efficient and cost effective, but they are also at risk of being used for the purposes of money laundering."

“Remittances into Somalia help to avert humanitarian crises,” said Gaylard, who was present in London. “The Association will help safeguard this lifeline into Somalia and contribute to the development of the economy and the capacity of those who drive it.”