UN emergency food aid in Somalia may halt by April amid severe hunger

Families in Somalia pushed to the brink amid severe hunger; urgent food aid needed to avert worsening conditions.

Life‑saving emergency food and nutrition assistance provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Somalia could be forced to a halt by April due to a lack of funding, the United Nations agency has said.

In a report published on Friday, the WFP warned that the country is facing one of the most complex hunger crises in recent years, driven by two consecutive failed rainy seasons, conflict and a sharp drop in humanitarian funding.

The warning comes as at least 4.4 million people, roughly a quarter of the population, face crisis-levels of food insecurity or worse, including nearly one million women, men and children experiencing severe hunger, according to WFP data.

Ranked among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, Somalia has endured recurrent droughts and floods.

“The situation is deteriorating at an alarming rate. Families have lost everything, and many are already being pushed to the brink. Without immediate emergency food support, conditions will worsen quickly,” said Ross Smith, WFP director of emergency preparedness and response. “We are at the cusp of a decisive moment; without urgent action, we may be unable to reach the most vulnerable in time, most of them women and children.”

The WFP, the largest humanitarian agency active in Somalia, said it has already been forced to reduce the number of people receiving emergency food assistance from 2.2 million in early 2025 to about 600,000.

This translates into the agency being able to support only one in every seven people in need of food assistance, according to the report. Nutrition programmes have also been slashed from assisting nearly 400,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children in October last year to 90,000 in December.

“If our already reduced assistance ends, the humanitarian, security and economic consequences will be devastating, with the effects felt far beyond Somalia’s borders,” Smith said.

This warning comes on the heels of another issued last month by Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF.

The organisation said that its teams in Somalia had been witnessing “a worrying trend” of increasing numbers of children suffering from preventable diseases, such as severe acute malnutrition, measles, diphtheria and acute watery diarrhoea.