At least six million people in Somalia are going days without enough food, with nearly two million young children “at high risk of illness or death,” United Nations (UN) aid teams warned on Friday, 15 May 2026. The worsening crisis is being compounded by the unresolved conflict in the Middle East and the resulting global supply chain disruptions, according to UN News. George Conway, the UN’s top aid official in Somalia, said the humanitarian context is deteriorating faster than projected. Aid agencies have flagged a credible threat of famine in parts of the country. The situation places children at the center of the emergency.
Somalia’s people have endured drought since 2024, and although the current Gu rainy season from April to June has brought relief in localized areas, concerns are growing that rainfall will be insufficient. Nearly one in three people in Somalia is critically food insecure, according to the latest UN-backed assessment from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) platform. The IPC defines famine as a situation in which at least one in five households face extreme food shortages, starvation, and destitution, with extremely critical malnutrition and death. The drought has dried up water points across affected regions. Communities are increasingly dependent on water trucking to survive.
“Children are paying the highest price. Nearly two million young children are acutely malnourished, meaning they’re dangerously undernourished and physically weakened, placing them at high risk of illness or death,” Conway stressed. He added that “almost half a million are so severely malnourished that they require urgent treatment to survive.” The UN has confirmed “a real and credible risk of famine in Barakaba district” in South West state, where assistance is needed most urgently. UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires highlighted that healthcare to treat hunger-linked disease is unavailable or stretched thin in many areas. He attributed this to “all the disruptions that are happening in the Middle East.”
Fuel price hikes tied to the Middle East crisis are driving up the cost of humanitarian assistance, particularly water trucking and air freight.
“Given the drought situation and the drying up of water points, a lot of communities are reliant on water trucking,” Conway said. “And the cost of water trucking obviously increases with the crisis with the cost of fuel. So, in some locations, we’ve seen water prices for water trucking triple over the course of the past month.”
Ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), the standard treatment for children with severe hunger, is also at risk as fuel costs rise.
UNICEF operates a factory in Nairobi producing much of the RUTF supplied to Africa and other countries, but Somalia presents a unique logistical challenge.
“We depend on air freight and obviously with the fuel rising, the fuel prices rising so significantly, that cost will become very complicated for us to manage looking forward…It’s a matter of life or death for them,” Pires explained.
In less than a year, the number of people facing extreme levels of hunger in Somalia has tripled. Communities continue to struggle with worsening shortages and repeated shocks. UN agencies warn that without urgent intervention, the country could slide deeper into famine conditions.
