Editor's note: Fikrejesus Amahazion is an educator and researcher based in East Africa. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Already reeling from a combination of recurrent desert locust invasions, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic turbulence and widespread insecurity and conflict, the Horn of Africa is now on the precipice of another possible major humanitarian crisis: hunger. 

According to the World Food Program (WFP), the food-assistance branch of the United Nations, more than 13 million people face severe hunger as the driest conditions in decades spread a devastating drought across the region. Meanwhile, projections from the Food and Agriculture Organization indicate that more than 25 million people in the region could face high acute food insecurity by mid-2022 – which would place the Horn of Africa among the world's largest-scale food crises.

The stark warnings came last week alongside urgent calls for an immediate scaling up of time-critical assistance in order to avoid a repeat of past famines that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Just over a decade ago, in 2011, a severe drought contributed to a famine outbreak in Somalia that saw approximately 260,000 people, many of them women and young children, perish from starvation.

"Harvests are ruined, livestock are dying, and hunger is growing as recurrent droughts affect the Horn of Africa," explained Michael Dunford, regional director of the WFP Regional Bureau for Eastern Africa.

During a briefing last week, the United Nations Children's Fund's Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Mohamed M. Fall also laid out the particular threat posed to children. "The situation of children and families in the Horn of Africa is dire. They are desperate. Millions of lives are hanging in the balance," he declared. "This ongoing climate-impacted emergency is depriving children of having a home, a meal, a classroom, and access to life-saving health services."

Combination of factors

The current crisis and potential deepening catastrophe in the Horn of Africa are the result of a deleterious combination of various factors. The most proximate cause is that the region is in the midst of one of its severest droughts in decades, induced by harsh, climate-fueled La Niña conditions. The ongoing series of dry seasons – with a fourth consecutive failed rainy season potentially still to come – has led to severe water scarcity, decimating livestock and crops and greatly increasing the risk and severity of disease and malnutrition.

It has also contributed to rising displacement. Farming families throughout the region are leaving their homes, driven by the need to seek alternative sources of food and water for their animals, which are their main source of income and nutrition. This situation is not only extremely difficult and challenging, but also can significantly raise the risk of conflict between groups and communities as they compete for increasingly scarcely available resources. At the same time, many of the particularly vulnerable have been turning to displacement camps to seek assistance.

The recurrence of droughts in the Horn of Africa is in many ways a vicious cycle. As the droughts in the region have increased in both severity and frequency, aggravated by a mix of climate change, desertification and land degradation, there has been little to no opportunity for sufficient recovery among affected regions and communities.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has also played a role in the crisis, particularly through disrupting food systems, pushing millions of families into poverty, and increasing food and nutrition insecurity – especially for already vulnerable children and families. Regional coverage of critical nutrition services for children, adolescents and women in need has also sharply declined, thus putting millions of people at risk.

What is more, regional food accessibility, coping capacities and agricultural production have been hit hard – as the shocks noted above have unfolded alongside – and been closely interlinked to a massive multi-year desert locust upsurge, rapidly increasing food prices, and protracted conflict and insecurity in a number of areas in the region.

Taking steps for the short- and long-term

Most immediately, it is imperative that governments and the international community collectively step up and take early action in order to avert a large-scale humanitarian tragedy. Support needs to quickly get to the most at-risk communities. One of the fundamental lessons of the 2011 famine in Somalia is that a large number of deaths could have been prevented, had the global community acted sooner and more effectively. Although a response was eventually mobilized, it was very much a case of "too little, too late."

However, it is also important that more is done to establish long-term stability and food security in the region. The Horn of Africa requires robust and durable solutions to be able to adapt to the harsh impacts of climate change, while greater investment and cooperation must be directed toward building the resilience and capacities of communities and individuals to meet their own needs in the future.

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