East Africa Hunger Crisis: Concern's Response

Dear Supporter,

Concern Worldwide continues to respond to the hunger crisis in Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Thanks to your generous support, our 1,200 staff members on the ground throughout these four countries continue to provide emergency nutrition programming, safe drinking water and latrines, emergency cash transfers, and other life-saving interventions. Today, I want to spotlight Concern’s work in Somalia. 

Somalia has been suffering from an ongoing drought, due most recently to poor consecutive rainy seasons. The lower than expected rainfall of the “Deyr” rainy season in October through December 2016, followed by the shorter than expected “Gu” rainy season in 2017, leading to a serious drought, which has resulted in crop failure and loss of livestock, causing a spike in food insecurity and malnutrition. The situation has caused many to leave their homes in search of food and water, and most of these people eventually end up in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, outside of Mogadishu. People arrive at these camps with only what they can carry, and are acutely in need of assistance.

An important line of assistance for IDPs is unconditional cash transfers (UCT), which are an effective intervention during droughts when markets are still functioning, as they allow people to purchase life-saving food, water, and non-food items for themselves. This gives them choice and dignity while also supporting local livelihoods and markets by providing cash inputs into the local economy. 

This system is especially beneficial because it protects staff and beneficiaries in Somalia’s highly insecure environment, as no actual cash exchanges hands. Concern and partner staff work closely with the community and IDP camp leaders to identify the families most in need of cash support and subsequently select households based on a number of key vulnerabilities. The cash transfers take place using mobile money systems, with families registered through their phone numbers. 

I want to now take the time to share the story of one of our beneficiaries, Uba.

Uba was living with her elderly husband and six children in Furuqlay in the Lower Shebelle region of Somalia when encroaching violence and fighting forced her family to leave. In Furuqlay, Uba’s family had a farm and livestock, but they left everything when they fled. They ended up in a camp for internally displaced persons in Mogadishu. 

“It is not something that I imagined having to one day think about, running and staying with my children in a place that doesn’t belong to us.” Says Uba.  

To make matters worse, Uba’s ninety-year-old husband became sick in the camps. Uba was able to borrow money from a neighbor in order to take him to the hospital, but even after he recovered, he was malnourished. Uba could not afford to feed her family more than one meal a day, if that.

Concern arrived at the camp in August 2017 and began the process of selecting beneficiaries to receive unconditional cash transfers. When selecting beneficiary households, Concern focused on newly arrived families like Uba’s. Uba’s family has so far received two months’ worth of cash transfers. 

When asked about her life since receiving the support, Uba says, “My life is much better than the life my family and I had in Furuqlay. If I compare both, today I’m eating at least two times a day while before there was only a 50% chance to get something to eat once a day. Now I am comfortable and enjoying a less stressful life that Concern Worldwide has enabled inside the camp.”

The cash transfers are not only enabling Uba and her family to eat more full meals every day. With the leftover cash, Uba has also started a small business selling fruits and vegetables. She is currently selling the produce outside of her shelter because she does not yet have enough money to buy a table, but she is hopeful that in the coming months her business will grow.

Uba says that her greatest pleasure is being able to feed her children every day, and thanks to your support, Uba and her family can look towards a brighter and more stable future. 

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.