GENEVA: The United Nation’s children’s agency yesterday said that 200,000 children may die of starvation this year in war-ravaged Somalia if it does not raise enough funds to provide vital aid.
“If funding is not received immediately, Unicef will have to suspend essential life-saving health services within one month,” spokesman Christophe Boulierac said.
Unicef, which has been providing 70 percent of all health services in Somalia, has so far received just 10 percent of the $150m it needs for its activities in the country this year, he said.
The lack of funding is dramatic, amid warnings that the troubled country, which was hit by an extreme famine less than three years ago, could be sliding back into a food crisis.
Some 50,000 children under the age of five are already suffering from severe malnourishment and Unicef warned that could balloon to 200,000 without aid from the UN agency.
Somalia was the hardest hit by extreme drought in 2011 that affected over 13 million people across the Horn of Africa, with famine zones declared in large parts of the war-ravaged south.
Some 250,000 people, around half of them young children, died in Somalia during that famine, according to the UN.
AFP
