Somalia’s child health and nutrition crisis deepens
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Hundreds of health and nutrition facilities closed as Somalia’s child crisis deepens
The short version:
UNICEF is warning that aid cuts in Somalia are closing health, nutrition, water, education and child protection services at a time when children’s needs are growing. This year there has been a sharp rise in severe child malnutrition and increasing pressure from drought, conflict and the threat of flooding. UNICEF says millions of children could be affected if funding continues to decline. The agency is calling for sustained international support to protect children and help families withstand the worsening humanitarian crisis.
This is a summary of what was James Elder, to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today’s press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva
MOGADISHU/NAIROBI, 21 Aug 2026 – “In Somalia today, aid cuts are closing doors to healthcare, shutting down nutrition services, and pushing water, education and protection further out of reach. As ever, children are paying the price
“On the back of unprecedented cuts in humanitarian aid, 205 health and nutrition facilities have already closed. The impact on children has been immediate: in the first six months of this year, Somalia has seen a 32 per cent increase (from the same period last year) in children being admitted to stabilization centres with severe acute malnutrition and complications
“Fewer facilities mean longer journeys for mums and their babies; longer journeys mean later treatment; later treatment means more severe illness and a greater risk of preventable death
“This is the wrong moment to retreat. Somalia is confronting a worsening climate crisis – severe drought in parts of the north, conflict and displacement, and, on the back of the war in Iran, rising costs for fuel and fertiliser. And a record-strength El Niño threatens to compound Somalia’s ongoing humanitarian crisis with severe flooding, forecast to peak in the coming months
“It is a brutal contradiction: the rethe moment when the pressures pushing Somalia’s children into crisis are intensifying – even as the need for generous donor support grows
“This past week I met dozens of malnourished children in stabilisation centres who arrived at a hospital severely ill, because community facilities had closed. Families who have lost crops and cattle are searching for support for their malnourished children
“Take Hajio. She had a home. Her children went to school. She had cattle. Drought and an ever worsening climate started to kill her cattle. Eventually they were all dead. From a relatively prosperous life, she had nothing
“And so she fled, looking for help. Today, she lives in a makeshift shelter of plastic and sticks, offering little protection from the scorching heat or the rain. She came to Burhakaba, in southwest Somalia, because she had heard support would be available. Instead, Hajio received some clothes and tomatoes from a nearby community – itself among the poorest in the country. She received nothing from the international community
“Going programme by programme in Somalia:
In Health: funding cuts have already contributed to a 30 per cent reduction in health and nutrition service coverage. And the potential scale of further disruption is grim. Under severe funding scenarios, as many as 618 health facilities could close nationwide
“In Nutrition: Nearly one million children under five, adolescent girls and women risk losing access to nutrition services in Somalia. The 32 per cent increase in children at stabilisation centres – that I mentioned earlier – is not because more children are becoming sick. It is because preventive and community-based nutrition services have been cut, meaning vulnerable children are less likely to be identified and treated early. By the time they reach specialised facilities, they are often far more seriously ill. They are certainly more expensive to treat.
“This all sits side by side a terrifying reality in Somalia: this year nearly 1.9 million children are projected to be affected by malnutrition, including almost half a million with severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form. And even getting life-saving assistance to the children who need it is becoming harder: the budget for UNHAS in Somalia, the UN’s humanitarian air service that provides critical air connectivity for UNICEF’s life-saving cargo and operations, was cut by 40 per cent between 2025 and 2026.
“These cuts need to be seen in the context of what has been achieved, hence what is at risk. Between 2021 and 2025, UNICEF supported more than 2.25 million admissions of children with severe acute malnutrition. In 2025 the cure rate was 97.6 per cent
“In 2024, a UNICEF-supported oral cholera vaccination campaign reached more than 885,000 people at risk, and thus its target of more than 90 per cent
“We have the programmes. We have the partners. What is missing is the funding
“Water: The current drought is being deeply exacerbated by disappearing aid. More than 1.6 million people need access to safe water, while more than 800,000 risk losing essential hygiene supplies
“Meanwhile, the price of water in rural and pastoral areas has quadrupled: a 200-litre barrel that cost around US$2 now costs US$8. Nonetheless, UNICEF has reached more than one million people through emergency and sustainable water services. But without sustained funding, those gains are also at risk
“Education protects children from exploitation, early marriage, and child labour while giving them – and their communities – a pathway out of poverty. However, years of generous donor investment in children’s futures is being undone far faster than they were built
“The education sector lost US$30 million in 2025, and major donors are expected to reduce contributions by more than half in 2026. More than 78,000 students have already dropped out, with another 660,000 girls and boys at risk. Remembering that during the drought of 2022, UNICEF support meant more than 130,000 children stayed in education
“In Protection: again, current cuts need to be seen in the context of what has been achieved, hence what is at risk. In 2024 & 2025 thousands of children formerly associated with armed groups, or at risk of recruitment, received reintegration support
“Somalia is a country with one of the highest rates of reported violations against children. Yet funding cuts mean at least 65 child protection service points and facilities have closed, whilst other services – case management, psychological support, family tracing, and reintegration – are all under threat from funding cuts
“Take Abdullah, who I met yesterday. He’s a teenager. He wanted to be a mechanic, and was always tinkering with machinery in his village. Non-state armed groups noticed this and offered him work and training as a mechanic. Without any opportunity where he was, and desperate to be able to support his widowed mum, he took it. But it was a lie. Abdullah was thrown into the battlefield
“After a failed escape attempt, Abdullah was eventually wounded in battle, and captured by Government forces. Now, if we go back to late 2024 and early 2025, UNICEF supported the training of more than 160 children who had been associated with armed groups and were enrolled in training centres. At the end of their training – in electrics, or mechanics, or cooking – they got starter kits to help them start their own business. Many of them then launched small businesses or found jobs. But funding cuts mean there will be no starter kit – no kick start – for Abdullah.
“That training, those kits represents a pathway to a more stable future: helping to ensure children are not re-recruited, and helping them to contribute to their families; their communities
“In an interconnected world, aid cuts anywhere threaten security and economic prosperity everywhere. This is as true in Somalia as anywhere in the world. And so the question is not whether Somalia needs less aid because the world has become more difficult. The question is whether the world can afford to make Somalia more fragile while those difficulties are multiplying. The answer should be no
“Amid these challenges, Somali people and institutions continue to adapt. The Government is strengthening policies, regulation and national systems, while humanitarian actors endlessly seek more efficient, local, and sustainable ways of working
“However, Somalia should not have to choose between drought response and development, between treating sick children and preventing malnutrition, or between emergency water and sustainable water systems
“And the world should not behave as though crises stop at borders. A world of interconnected economies, climate shocks, child recruitment into conflicts that spread across borders, and displacement cannot afford to dismantle the systems that protect the people most exposed to them
“Protecting children is not a discretionary expense. Preventing suffering is not an inefficiency. And dismantling effective aid at the moment of greatest need is not a saving: it is a decision to pay more later, in money, in security, in lost development and, for some children, in lives.”
UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, works to protect the rights of every child, everywhere, especially the most disadvantaged children and in the toughest places to reach. Across more than 190 countries and territories, we do whatever it takes to help children survive, thrive, and fulfil their potential
