Attachments
Highlights
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Gender Based Violence cases continue to increase with close to a 50 per cent rise in the reported cases when compared to the previous reporting period.
Woman and girls remain the most vulnerable to gender-based violence as they represent 88.6 per of new GBV cases registered by the end of June. The trend requires more robust preventive as well as response interventions in IDP sites which is where the majority of cases are reported from. -
Since the start of the year, UNICEF and partners have supported 104,462 children (43 per cent girls) to remain in schools or return to school. All UNICEF-supported schools across Somalia remained open during the school break, with special catch-up classes in the afternoon for children who missed classes due to drought-induced displacement. UNICEF urgently requires an additional US$4.5 million to maintain the education results we have reached through to the end of the year and to further extend support to displaced children.
Situation Overview and Humanitarian Needs
The humanitarian situation in Somalia continues to deteriorate due to the drought crisis, with an estimated 4 million children in urgent need of assistance. Despite the large scale humanitarian assistance delivered, the FSNAU-FEWSNET post Jilal assessment2 indicates an elevated risk of famine (IPC 5), due to a combination of severe food insecurity, high acute malnutrition and high disease burden. The number of people in need has increased to 6.7 million with 3.2 million of these people in crisis. The drought is also uprooting people, with 761,000 people displaced since November 2016, including 22,000 people displaced from 1-23 June 2017. 3 This is an increase of 174,000 newly displaced people in Baidoa and 161,000 people in Mogadishu since the start of the crisis.
The projected number of children who are, or will be, acutely malnourished has increased by 50 per cent since the beginning of the year to 1.4 million, including over 275,000 who have or will suffer life-threatening severe acute malnutrition in 2017. Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) admissions have increased by more than 50 per cent when compared to 2016 data covering the same months, consistent with the planning scenario used by the clusters and UNICEF. The post-Jilaal 2017 FSNAU survey indicates that the prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM) in the livelihood zones of Bay, Bakool, Sool, Sanaag, Bari, Nugal regions, as well as in the Baidoa and Mogadishu IDP camps, is critical (15-30 per cent). While food access was found to be relatively better than previously projected, levels of acute food insecurity remain severe and are expected to persist throughout 2017 given the high likelihood of a third consecutive poor harvest in July.
Severely malnourished children are nine times more likely to die of killer diseases like acute watery diarrhoea (AWD)/cholera and measles. In 2017, as of the third week of June, 53,015 cases of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD)/cholera have been reported; 4 more than three times the 2016 caseload, with 795 deaths recorded and a case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.5 per cent. More than 12,336 measles cases have also been reported since the start of the year, and an estimated 4.5 million people are in urgent need of WASH assistance.