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Somalia + 4 more

Horn of Africa - Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #7, Fiscal Year (FY) 2017

Attachments

HIGHLIGHTS

  • FEWS NET expects persistent food security crisis through early 2018

  • USAID/OFDA staff assess health, nutrition, and WASH needs in northern Kenya

  • USG announces nearly $126 million in new humanitarian assistance for Somalia and Somali refugees in the Horn of Africa region

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

  • On July 8, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced nearly $639 million in new humanitarian funding to support emergency response activities in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen—the four conflict-affected countries facing severe food insecurity and malnutrition crises—as well as neighboring countries hosting refugees fleeing those crises.
    The new funding includes nearly $126 million in new humanitarian assistance for drought- and conflict-affected Somalis, which brings the total U.S. Government (USG) humanitarian assistance for Somalia to nearly $336.7 million to date in FY 2017.

  • Response stakeholders continue to highlight concerns regarding deteriorating nutrition conditions in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Nutrition actors in Somalia have admitted approximately 126,000 severe acute malnutrition (SAM) cases to date in 2017, including approximately 25,000 new cases admitted in June. In addition, nutrition actors in Ethiopia reported nearly 110,700 SAM admissions between January and April—marking a 125 percent increase from the same period in 2016—and nutrition actors in Kenya reported nearly 43,600 SAM admissions between January and May.

  • Approximately 761,000 people in Somalia were displaced by drought between November 2016 and June 2017, the UN reports. The total includes an estimated 13,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who arrived in Bay Region’s Baidoa town between June 1 and 23, primarily from remote villages in Bay and neighboring Bakool Region’s Rabdhure District. Primary needs among the newly arrived IDPs include emergency food and shelter assistance and access to safe drinking water, according to the UN.

  • Between June 19 and 23, USAID/OFDA staff traveled to northern Kenya’s Marsabit and Turkana counties—where nutrition actors have identified pockets of malnutrition exceeding 30 percent, more than twice the UN World Health Organization (WHO) emergency threshold—to evaluate humanitarian response activities and remaining needs.