East Africa Hunger Crisis: Concern's Response

Dear Supporter,

Concern Worldwide continues to respond to the hunger crisis in South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. We have 1,200 staff working in the four target countries, where we are providing emergency nutrition programming, safe drinking water and latrines, emergency cash transfers, and other lifesaving interventions. Thanks to your generous support, our teams have been able to increase food distributions and scale up our work to save lives in areas that are most critically affected. Today, I want to spotlight the situation in South Sudan, along with Concern’s ongoing response in the country.

Since our last update, famine has officially been declared “over” in South Sudan, based on the most recent Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report. However, the reality on the ground paints a more complicated picture. More than 1.7 million people in South Sudan are still on the brink of starvation, and over one million children are currently malnourished. While the efforts of international agencies like Concern appear to have helped stabilize the situation, it’s also likely that many people migrated to areas where it was easier to access assistance, which has had the effect of dispersing rather than truly alleviating needs.

The food crisis in South Sudan is largely the result of a conflict that has been ongoing since 2013, and has been inflamed by long standing ethnic tensions. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed the economy, and forced close to four million people to flee their homes.    

Since the onset of the food crisis, Concern’s staff of 350 in South Sudan has reached more than 400,000 people in that country with emergency nutrition programming, food distributions, clean water and latrines, and preventative healthcare. Concern operates in Unity State, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and Juba, and our acute malnutrition program is treating critically ill children in 52 clinics across those regions. These services are part of what helped pull South Sudan back from famine, but the situation remains precarious. 

Due to these circumstances, many families in South Sudan have found themselves in desperate situations. Aweng, 25, and her husband returned to South Sudan after years of exile from the war. However, upon their return, life quickly became harder than ever as conflict spread throughout the country again. The end result was an extreme lack of food for Aweng, and she was forced to survive on just one basic meal a day. Her poor nutrition meant that she didn’t produce enough breast milk to feed her baby daughter, Adut. 

At 20 months old, Adut was acutely malnourished and weighed just 9.7lbs, or the equivalent weight of a healthy newborn. Thankfully, Aweng and Adut accessed help at a Concern emergency nutrition center. Adut was put on a Concern-supported program of high energy peanut paste, called Plumpy’nut, which is packed with micronutrients and vitamins. She has since started to gain weight.  

Thanks to your support, families like Aweng and Adut can begin the road to recovery, free from hunger and the insecurities that come with conflict. Concern Worldwide will continue to respond in South Sudan, along with the three other target countries, for as long as the crisis continues. 

Dear Supporter,

I am pleased to share our first report through GlobalGiving on the progress our project has made to combat the hunger crisis in East Africa. With your generous support, Concern Worldwide continues to respond to the devastating situation in South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, where 20 million people are currently at risk of starvation. Concern has scaled up its operations, with over 1,200 experienced staff currently on the ground providing life-saving support to the increasing numbers of people throughout the region who need urgent assistance. A critical component of Concern’s response is to treat the growing number of malnourished children. We are also delivering cash transfers, distributing food, and providing access to clean water and hygiene. Today, I want to spotlight the situation in Somalia and our ongoing response to it.

In Somalia, lack of access to water is the key driver of the crisis. The current drought, which is the result of three failed rainy seasons in a row, is the most severe in living memory. Over half the population (approximately 6.2 million people) is in urgent need of food assistance, including more than 350,000 children under the age of five who are acutely malnourished. So far, humanitarian aid has helped to minimize the loss of life, but the sheer scale of this crisis is overwhelming and the threat of famine is looming large. Wells have dried up, crops have failed, and livestock are dying in massive numbers from lack of food and water. The short supply of food has sent prices soaring and people have been left with no choice but to leave their homes and villages in search of food and water. So far an estimated 600,000 Somalis have been displaced from their homes, often walking for days or weeks in search of food and water.

In Somalia alone, Concern has provided over 14,000 families (over 70,000 people) with emergency cash transfers so they can buy the food they desperately need, and we’re providing clean water to tens of thousands of people in the worst hit drought affected areas. Concern has also expanded its emergency nutrition response by establishing outpatient therapeutic and supplementary feeding programs, reaching almost 7,000 malnourished children and breastfeeding mothers.

The journey to find relief is often filled with unimaginable suffering. Aayan* and her three-year-old son Aadan* arrived at a Concern nutrition center in late March after a harrowing 37-mile trek during which Aayan lost two of her other children. There was just nothing she could do to save them. When Aadan was assessed by the Concern team, he weighed only 20 pounds. Suffering from loss of appetite, edema, and skin disease, he was diagnosed as severely malnourished and has been admitted to Concern’s nutrition center for the care he so urgently needs.

In Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia, animals are the main source of livelihood for herders like Hani*, providing income, food, and valuable assets. Over the course of the current prolonged drought, Hani has watched her animals die in droves. Before the drought, her family owned more than 459 animals, but less than 60 sheep, goats, and camels have survived. Without them, Hani doesn’t know how she and her family will survive. Devastated by his family’s desperate situation, Hani’s husband hung himself from a tree, leaving the 47-year-old mother of seven completely on her own. Hani is currently receiving emergency water supplies and cash transfers from Concern Worldwide to help support her family.   

Concern plans to continue to scale up our response in Somalia and the rest of East Africa in order to reach as many beneficiaries as possible for as long as the crisis continues. On behalf of Concern and the people we serve, we thank you for your generous support as we provide life-saving resources to families facing hunger and drought in East Africa.  

*Name changed for security