Displaced
Somalia has been in a constant state of war since 1991, bringing the country to a virtual collapse and chaos.
Because of the permanent conflict, natural hazards like droughts and floods have an even more devastating effect on the population: water sources become scarcer, diseases spread faster, and humanitarian aid routes are cut off, making life extremely difficult.
This is a story about the millions of Somalis that have been forced to leave their homes to survive since 2016.
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Life expectancy in Somalia is less than 58 years, the 3rd lowest in the world [1]
The income per capita has gone down to the bottom of the ranking since 1990.
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More than 4 million Somalis (one-third of the population) live amidst conflict in extreme poverty [2]. There are over 1.5 million people at imminent risk of death for malnutrition [4].
Almost 1 million children are acutely or severely malnourished [6], and the infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world: 1 out of 8 children will die before their fifth birthday [5]
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In these conditions, people are forced to leave their homes. When they do so without leaving the country, we call them Internally Displaced People (IDP).
There were over 40 million IDPs in the world at the end of 2018.
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The main reasons for internal displacement are conflict or fear of conflict, drought, and a lack of livelihood opportunities.
Nine out of ten IDPs will not be able to return home for one to three years, and half for up to 5 years.
Chronic displacement can occur when IDPs have problems returning home, or settling elsewhere [7]
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An estimate of 2.6 million Somalis are internally displaced [3], located in close to 2000 informal settlements across the country, the majority in urban areas.
More than 80,000 people were displaced from Gaalkacyo town in Mudug region after armed violence broke out on 7 October 2016.
In 2016 and 2017, the recurrent droughts dramatically decreased food production, increasing malnutrition, diseases, and an acute food insecurity situation near to generalized famine, which led to more than 620,000 people having to leave their homes.
While the country slowly recovered from the extreme droughts of 2017, increased rainfall in April 2018 caused severe flooding in central and southern Somalia, worsening conditions for thousands of IDPs living in already overcrowded settlements.
Between April and June, about 830,000 people were affected, of which nearly 290,000 were displaced
Somalia is one of the most troubled countries and long-standing humanitarian crises in
the world. All gains are fragile as climatic shocks, armed conflict, and violence keep increasing.
Along with humanitarian action, we need substantial investment in resilience-building and development of solutions.