Displaced civilian families, including men, women, children and the elderly continue to pour into the relatively safer areas such as Baardheere and Beled-Xaaow. These internally displaced people are facing very severe humanitarian conditions; they lack water, food, shelter, and healthcare.
The majority of the displaced persons fled from the Kenyan Troops air and ground incursion. They lost their livestock and livelihoods as well as their homes in rural areas, including Fahfah-Dhuun, Busar, Darasalam, and other parts of the Gedo region of the Jubaland State of Somalia.
Some of the displaced people from the Kenyan Troops incursions have spoken with the media outlets told that Kenyan Forces have bombed their homes, livestock and other civilian facilities including schools and hospitals. They also told the reporters that they left everything they have behind and fled only with their children.
One elderly woman sent an appeal to the Government of Somalia and the international humanitarian agencies to urgently send aid packages, including food, water, medicine. Another woman said, we used to have livestock and other livelihoods to feed our families, however, now we do not have anything to live off.
According to a statement by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on September 23, 2019, the humanitarian situation in Somalia is facing tough times. UNOCHA’s Office in Somalia said in their website “According to the 2019 post-Gu analysis results, issued by FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) and Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), shortfalls in cereal production during the Gu cropping season – up to 70 per cent in southern areas – have led to abnormally high sorghum prices countrywide.
The results also indicate that, in the absence of sustained humanitarian intervention, up to 2.1 million people across Somalia face severe hunger through December 2019, bringing the total number of Somalis expected to be food insecure by the end of the year to 6.3 million.”
In its report on the humanitarian situation in Somalia, UNOCHA estimated the number of internally displaced people at around 2.6 million people. These climatic shocks coupled with the Kenyan Forces air and ground raids on civilian targets have sparked one of the worst humanitarian situations in Somalia.
