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Overview
Somalia’s food crisis is a protracted one, lasting over three decades. The ongoing conflict is having devastating impacts on the country, triggering food insecurity and displacement. Moreover, the effects of conflict are compounded by climate extremes – the frequency and duration of droughts have increased in the past few years, contributing to significant desertification of arable lands in the country. Other disasters, such as floods and storms, also contribute to the country’s food crisis and displacement. As a result, widespread crop failures are increasingly normal, reducing the supply of food for much of the population. By the end of 2024, at least 3.6 million people (or 19 percent of the entire population) were facing crisis levels of food insecurity or higher – otherwise known as acute food insecurity or Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 3+. Of these people, 1.3 million (or 6.9 percent of the total population assessed) are IDPs (IPC, 2024).
While this may seem a small proportion, the share of IDPs reporting acute food insecurity (34 percent of the total IDP population) is much higher than the share of non-IDPs reporting crisis levels of acute food insecurity (15 percent of the total non-IDP population). This indicates the disproportionate impact of food insecurity on IDPs. In the 2023 Global Report on Internal Displacement, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) demonstrated that many of the countries with the largest numbers of IDPs also face crisis levels of acute food insecurity, or higher (IDMC and NRC, 2023). There were only 49 countries where IPC data was available, and 37 – or three-quarters – of the countries had internally displaced populations, highlighting the correlation between acute food insecurity and internally displaced populations.
Somalia is the only country where the entire population, including IDPs, has been assessed by the IPC across various regions since 2017. It is also the only country where such information has been disaggregated by displacement status since 2022. Despite the short period of analysis, spatially disaggregated data over time can allow for a better understanding of the evolution in situations of acute food insecurity. Detailed analyses can further help to unmask generalizations, indicating clear deteriorations in situations that warrant closer attention. Even when situations may be improving at the national level, as the country reduces the cyclical state of food insecurity, this may not be the case for all regions nor for all groups of people. IDPs may still continue to face acute food insecurity in some regions. If food assistance is reduced or stopped due to national level improvements, this may further push IDPs in specific regions into worse levels of acute food insecurity.
Having a trends analysis over time of the situation, using available data, can help to identify periods of acute food insecurity across the country, so that timely and efficient reallocation of resources can take place. Yet, such information remains rare, especially data disaggregated by IDP status. With Somalia, the availability of time series data, disaggregated by displacement status, currently makes this a unique case study to understand evolving food insecurity status among the country’s displaced populations. It is with this intention that the IDMC and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have collaborated on this analysis.