Children carried the greatest immediate danger. Nearly two million young children were acutely malnourished, leaving them physically weakened and more vulnerable to illness or death. Almost half a million were severely acutely malnourished and required urgent treatment to survive, according to UN humanitarian officials.
The most acute warning concerned Barakaba district in South West state, where the UN said there was a real risk of famine. Under the IPC framework, famine means at least one household in five faces an extreme shortage of food and conditions include exceptionally high acute malnutrition and death. The warning did not declare that famine was already present; it identified a serious possibility if conditions and assistance deteriorated further.
Somalia had experienced drought since 2024. The Gu rainy season, which normally runs from April through June, brought limited relief in some places, but concern remained that total rainfall would be insufficient. Drying water points forced many communities to depend on water delivered by truck. George Conway, the UN’s senior humanitarian official in Somalia, said water-trucking prices had tripled in some locations over the preceding month as fuel costs rose.
Aid delivery was also becoming more expensive and uncertain because of conflict-related disruption in the Middle East and a wider supply-chain crisis. UNICEF said health services for diseases associated with severe hunger had become unavailable in some locations or were stretched by delayed supplies.
Ready-to-use therapeutic food is central to treating children with severe acute malnutrition. UNICEF obtains much of the product used in the region from a factory in Nairobi, but road delivery into Somalia is often impractical. Reliance on air freight made the operation especially exposed to higher fuel prices, creating concern about whether adequate supplies could be maintained.
The warning combined several reinforcing risks: prolonged drought, uncertain seasonal rain, expensive water access, disrupted health services and rising transport costs. UN agencies said the humanitarian outlook was deteriorating faster than expected. Their assessment called for urgent action to sustain nutrition treatment and other relief in the hardest-hit areas, particularly South West state, before extreme food deprivation crossed into famine conditions.
Each pressure could weaken the response to the others, particularly where children required timely therapeutic feeding and communities depended on purchased water.
