Issued in collaboration with FAO’s Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU)

Renewed conflict in Mogadishu exacerbates ongoing humanitarian emergency

Renewed armed conflict in Mogadishu in late October has caused an estimated 90,000 new people to flee toward the Shabelle Valley, a region already facing a severe humanitarian crisis due to conflict, floods, drought, displacement, malnutrition and limited humanitarian access. These shocks have drastically reduced livelihood options for and increased the humanitarian needs of populations in these areas. Immediate live-saving interventions, including clean water, shelter, food, health services, sanitation and protection, are urgently needed.

The resurgence of armed conflict has further stressed the 600,000 people already facing an acute food and livelihoods or humanitarian crisis in peri-urban areas of Mogadishu and the Lower and Middle Shabelle regions. The new wave of displacement will increase competition for already overstretched resources among internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host populations.

In the Shabelle Valley, global acute malnutrition rates are 17 percent and severe acute malnutrition rates are 4.8 percent, both of which are above the emergency thresholds established by the World Health Organization. Poor water and sanitation conditions, limited dietary diversity, increased food sharing and reduced food access are all compounding the already precarious food security conditions. The risk of further deterioration of this extreme food insecurity is high in Mogadishu and the Shabelle regions, especially given the new waves of displacement at the beginning of the hunger period befor the deyr season harvest (January and February 2008). IDPs without adequate shelter and sanitation conditions are at increased risk of waterborne diseases (such as acute watery diarrhea), which is likely to contribute to even higher levels of malnutrition.

The humanitarian situation is further aggravated by continued increases in staple food prices, due to disruptions of Bakara market – the main market in Mogadishu – and depreciation of the Somali shilling against the US dollar, due to increasing supplies of new shilling notes and decreasing trader confidence in the currency. In Shabelle Valley, the epicenter of the current crisis, the shilling has depreciated by almost 50 percent since January. Continued rapid devaluation of the shilling, increased transportation costs and conflict-related disruptions in internal trade and import activities continue to push prices higher, negatively affecting household purchasing power and food access, particularly for displaced and poor families who have lost access to income-earning opportunities and have limited savings and food stocks. Prices of imported food commodities like rice, sugar and vegetable oil are now at peak levels in all markets.

Although food security conditions in northern and northeastern Somalia are generally stable, the impact of recent conflict and displacement in Sool Region could result in an overall deterioration in food security conditions. Concern is also growing in some pastoral and agropastroal areas of Hiran, Galdagud and Mudug regions in central Somalia, where the quantity and distribution of the deyr rains received to date are below average.

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