Somalia’s abandoned children

By the time the sun rises in Mogadishu, nine-year-old Ayaan has already decided what she won’t eat today. I see her in my mind: backpack empty, stomach a hollow ache, waiting outside a school that has been shuttered because hope is cheaper than food. As an African-Caribbean woman, I see a mirror. I see the same structural abandonment that has haunted our people across the diaspora for centuries.

We are taught to look at Somalia and see “tragedy,” but I see manufactured catastrophe. For decades, Somalia has endured conflict and climatic shocks, yet in 2025, when the northern regions faced a fourth consecutive season of failed rains, the world’s response was to withdraw aid. Somali authorities declared a drought emergency in November 2025, yet the international community’s 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan was only 23.6% funded by late in the year.

The humanitarian landscape in Somalia for 2025-2026 is defined by a catastrophic intersection of climatic failure and systemic underfunding.

The Nutritional Crisis

• 4 million people were projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) through December 2025.
• 85 million children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by mid-2026, with 421,000 projected to experience severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
• In regions like Benadir and Galgadud, 9 out of 10 households are experiencing “poor” food consumption, indicating a near-total exhaustion of reserves.

Displacement and Protection

• Internal displacement has reached nearly 4 million people, with 680,000 newly displaced in 2025 alone due to conflict and drought.
• 7 million vulnerable people have lost access to protection services following significant funding cuts.
• Human rights violations persist, including 648 verified cases of child recruitment and widespread gender-based violence.
  

The 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) requires €1.233 billion to meet the needs of 4.6 million targeted individuals. However, by late 2025, the plan remained critically underfunded, leading to the closure of over 200 health and nutrition facilities nationwide. While the EU allocated €67.33 million in 2025, this reflects a downward trend from the €84.38 million provided in 2023.

The data reveals a clear reality: without an immediate and sustained increase in international funding and long-term resilience programming, the avoidable deaths the UN warns of will become a permanent stain on the global conscience

We are being conditioned to accept the inevitability of African suffering. When food assistance coverage drops from 1.1 million recipients to just 350,000 in three months, it is a betrayal. It is a systemic choice to let 1 in 8 children die before they turn five.

In the Afro/Indo-Caribbean community, we know what it means to rebuild from nothing. We know that when global power fails Black and Brown children, it is our solidarity that moves the needle.

We must refuse to be spectators to this spectacle of neglect. Somalia’s children don’t need our pity; they need us to hold power accountable. They need us to recognize that their survival is inextricably linked to our own dignity. If we allow 4.4 million people to face acute food insecurity while the world looks away, we are consenting to our own marginalization. It is time to shift the narrative from deficit to power.