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OVERVIEW
Somalia remains in a protracted crisis, severely impacting children's safety, survival, and well-being due to armed conflict, repeated displacement, and climate-induced shocks. In 2024, over seventy inter-clan clashes displaced 250,000 people, with children constituting more than 60 per cent of the displaced. This displacement often leads to family separation, increasing children's vulnerability to violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, psychosocial distress, school dropout, and child labour. These risks are expected to remain high in 2025 due to anticipated climate shocks.
Children face multiple shocks that erode their mental health, protection mechanisms, and resilience, heightening their vulnerability. Recruitment by armed groups, killing, maiming, and abduction are significant risks. By June 2024, 10,000 unaccompanied and separated children were recorded, with 370 recruited by conflict parties, a 20 per cent increase from 2023. Explosive hazards caused over 100 child casualties in 2024, with 30 per cent due to unexploded ordnance.
High psychosocial distress affects children and caregivers, with insufficient mental health and psychosocial support services, especially among displaced communities. Negative coping strategies, such as child marriages, child labour, and school withdrawal, are common. Distress levels are higher among child-, female-, and elderly-headed HHs, minority/marginalized populations, and HHs with children with disabilities. Somali caseworkers handle caseloads ten times higher than minimum standards, and over 60 per cent of affected children lack access to specialized protection services. Children without parental care, from minority clans, and with disabilities face additional barriers due to attitudinal, environmental, and socio-cultural factors.
Many Somali children grow up in communities where FGM, child marriage, sexual assault, domestic violence, and child labour are societal norms. Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is pervasive, with over 500 reported cases of sexual violence against children in the first half of 2024, and 70 per cent of GBV cases affect people under 18 years, with increasing concerns about sexual violence against boys.