New York-SANA
The United Nations announced that famine threatens about 22 million people from southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya, passing through Somalia, as a result of an unprecedented drought since the end of 2020.
The news agency AFP quoted the United Nations as saying in a report: The number of people threatened with hunger has almost doubled in the Horn of Africa since the beginning of last year, as it was 13 million people, but now it has reached about 22 million people.
The report indicated that 5.6 million people currently suffer from acute food insecurity in Somalia, 12 million in Ethiopia, and 4.3 million in Kenya, as the population of this region lives mainly from livestock farming and agriculture, while more than 1.7 million people were forced to leave. their homes in search of water and food.
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most affected by climate change, as the lack of rain during five consecutive seasons since the end of 2020 caused the current drought, which is unprecedented for at least 40 years.
The last famine that struck the region in 2011 claimed the lives of 260,000 people in Somalia, half of whom were children under the age of six. Hunger resulted from a lack of rain during two consecutive seasons.
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