Somalia: Drought and Famine Displacement Monitoring Dashboard (September 2022)

By the end of September, 1,170,842 people had been displaced by drought since January 2021. Drought displaced 68,393 people in September 2022, a 31 per cent decrease from August 2022.

Bay region (26 per cent) and Lower Juba region (22 per cent) have seen the most new arrivals, followed by Gedo, Banadir, and Bakool regions (14 per cent, 11 per cent and 11 per cent respectively).

The significant flow of arrivals in Bay is a continuation of a displacement trend that was first observed in July 2022, when the Bay region received 40 per cent of new arrivals, compared to only 2 per cent in June 2022.This increase of displacements from and within Bay region is occurring in the backdrop of a projection of famine occurring in two districts of Bay (Baidoa and Burhakaba) between October and December 2022, unless humanitarian assistance is rapidly scaled up. The decrease in movements toward Banadir region (11 per cent compared to 28 per cent in August) and increase in movements toward/within lower Juba region are new trends (22 per cent against 7 per cent of the displacements in August).

Even though the proportion of new arrivals observed per region has changed this month, the patterns of places of origin per region have remained consistent.

The majority of new arrivals in Bay region originated in Bay, so the movements were intra-regional. The remaining 17 per cent came from Bakool region. Similarly, in Lower Juba and Bakool regions, 100 per cent and 95 per cent of new arrivals were intra-regional, respectively. In contrast, in Banadir region, 80 percent of IDPs were from Lower Shabelle and 18 percent were from Bay region. In Gedo region, 46 per cent of movements originated in Bakool region, 13 per cent in Bay region, and 41per cent were intra-regional.

Across the country, 26 per cent of departure movements originated in the Bay region, 22 per cent in Bakool region, and 21 per cent in Lower Juba region (against 6 per cent in August). The share of movements from Lower Shabelle (mostly toward Banadir) has decreased from 23 per cent in August to 9 per cent this month.

72 per cent of all movements were intra-regional on average across all regions.

The data in this snapshot comes from the Protection and Return Monitoring Network (PRMN) and is collected through Key Informant interviews. As a result, the findings should be considered as estimates. The significant increase in movements observed in January 2022 could be related to the interconnectivity between conflict and drought-induced displacement. For example, while data collectors may have identified drought as the primary cause of displacement, conflict was certainly a factor as well.