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2011 Horn of Africa drought

2011 East Africa drought
FEWS Eastern Africa July-September projection.png
Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) food security projection for East Africa at the height of the drought (July-Sept 2011).
Country Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and neighboring countries
Location East Africa
Period July 2011–August 2012
Total deaths 50,000–260,000
Death rate 0.6-2.8 per 10,000 per day
Theory severe drought, irregular rainfall
Relief $1.3 billion
Impact on demographics 9.5 million in need of assistance in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya

Between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East Africa region. Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis.

According to FAO-Somalia, the food crisis in Somalia primarily affected farmers in the south rather than the northern pastoralists.Human Rights Watch (HRW) consequently noted that most of the displaced persons belonged to the agro-pastoral Rahanweyn clan and the agricultural Bantu ethnic minority group. On 20 July, the United Nations officially declared famine in two regions in the southern part of the country (IPC Phase 5), the first time a famine had been declared in the region by the UN in nearly thirty years. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have died in southern Somalia before famine was declared. This was mainly a result of Western governments preventing aid from reaching affected areas in an attempt to weaken the Al-Shabaab militant group, against whom they were engaged.

Although fighting disrupted aid delivery in some areas, a scaling up of relief operations in mid-November had unexpectedly significantly reduced malnutrition and mortality rates in southern Somalia, prompting the UN to downgrade the humanitarian situation in the Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabele regions from famine to emergency levels. According to the Lutheran World Federation, military activities in the country's southern conflict zones had also by early December 2011 greatly reduced the movement of migrants. By February 2012, several thousand people had also begun returning to their homes and farms. In addition, humanitarian access to rebel-controlled areas had improved and rainfall had surpassed expectations, improving the prospects of a good harvest in early 2012.


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