Somalia's Disaster Agency Warned 3.5 Million People Could Face El Niño Flooding This Year. The UN Now Projects Close to 900,000 Displaced by December, Stacked on Top of a Famine Warning for Baidoa Still Awaiting Its October Verdict.

Abstract: Two numbers define Somalia's current trajectory, and neither is a ceasefire or an election date. The first is 175,000, the number of people a UN OCHA update says were already affected by El Niño-driven rains and flash flooding in October, concentrated in Gaalkacyo, Abudwaq and Baidoa, according to Horn Observer's reporting; the floods destroyed an estimated 1,515 shelters outright and damaged a further 4,498. The second is 874,319, the number of people the International Organization for Migration and the Danish Refugee Council now project could be displaced nationwide between October and December, with flooding alone accounting for roughly 92% of that projected movement and Beletweyne and Gaalkacyo again named as the two highest-exposure locations, at an estimated 229,000 and 82,000 people respectively. Both figures sit inside a still larger warning Somalia's own Disaster Management Agency, SoDMA, issued before the rains began: that 2.5 to 3.5 million people could be exposed to flooding this rainy season, with up to 1.2 million potentially displaced across roughly 30 districts, including Banadir, the region containing Mogadishu. None of this is occurring in a vacuum. An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, IPC, analysis published 23 September had already identified a conditional Risk of Famine among approximately 26,000 displaced people sheltering in Baidoa under a plausible worst-case scenario for October through December, a risk assessment Somalia's federal government and IPC partners had scheduled a follow-up review to update this same month using fresh evidence; five days later, on 28 September, federal forces and fighters loyal to the ousted South West State administration clashed inside Baidoa itself, with UNICEF reporting children killed and a health facility damaged. The World Food Programme, meanwhile, says it needs $162 million to sustain assistance through March 2027 and that Somalia's humanitarian response plan was only 31% funded as of 8 September, a shortfall that has already closed 233 nutrition sites and 380 health facilities nationwide, before the floods that are now displacing people into the same underfunded system had even arrived in force.

175,000 affected before the worst of the rain

Somalia entered its October-to-December rainy season already identified as a high-risk El Niño year, and the early returns have borne that out. A UN OCHA update reported by Horn Observer put the number of people affected by October's rains and flash floods at more than 175,000, with Gaalkacyo in the semi-autonomous Puntland-Galmudug border area, Abudwaq in Galmudug, and Baidoa in South West State identified as the hardest-hit locations. The same update recorded 1,515 shelters destroyed outright and a further 4,498 damaged, figures that describe housing loss on a scale that, in a country already hosting one of the world's largest internally displaced populations, compounds rather than creates a crisis. The ftlsomalia.com outlet, citing the same underlying OCHA figures on 1 November, separately reported that up to 3.4 million people remained at risk of further flooding as the rains continued, a number consistent with SoDMA's own pre-season projection rather than a new estimate.

The UN's own December forecast: close to 900,000 displaced

Where the October figures describe impact already recorded, a joint projection from the International Organization for Migration and the Danish Refugee Council, reported by Dawan Africa on 23 October and by DevelopmentAid two days earlier, describes what is still to come. IOM and DRC estimated that 874,319 people could be displaced across Somalia between October and December 2026, with flooding responsible for roughly 92% of that projected movement and the remainder driven by conflict and drought. The agencies identified Beletweyne, in Hiiraan region, and Gaalkacyo as the two locations facing the greatest exposure, at approximately 229,000 and 82,000 people at risk of displacement respectively, a concentration that matters because Beletweyne sits on the Shabelle river and has a documented history of catastrophic riverine flooding, while Gaalkacyo already appears in the October OCHA figures as one of the areas hardest hit by the rains that have already fallen. The warning explicitly frames the risk as arriving on top of, not instead of, Somalia's broader El Niño exposure: the agencies noted the rainy season itself was forecast to bring above-normal rainfall under strengthening El Niño conditions, the same climate signal SoDMA had been warning about since at least August.

A disaster agency that named its own danger list months in advance

Somalia's Disaster Management Agency did not arrive at this season unprepared, at least in terms of public warning. SoDMA chairman Mahmoud Moallim Abdulle told the Somalia Humanitarian Forum in September, according to East African Herald, that early action was essential and pointed to the 1997-98 and 2003 El Niño floods as the scale of event the agency was preparing against; the agency had separately identified Mogadishu, Baidoa, Burao, Balcad, Jowhar, Kismayo, Beledweyne, Galkayo, Bosaso, Hargeisa and Qardho as major population centres facing elevated flood risk. By the time the rains intensified in October, SoDMA had placed 29 districts across 14 regions, including Doolow, Luuq, Baardheere, Beledweyne, Jowhar, Mogadishu, Baidoa and Kismayo, on high alert for riverine and flash flooding, according to reporting carried by ftlsomalia.com. A UN humanitarian coordinator met SoDMA's leadership directly as Somalia braced for the severe flooding the agency's own data was projecting, and the Somali government, per Dawan Africa's 23 October report on the South West State's appeal, had begun actively seeking foreign support in anticipation of the 2.5-to-3.5-million-person exposure figure well before the current displacement projections from IOM and DRC confirmed the scale of the threat.

Baidoa: a famine-risk verdict the floods arrived ahead of

The place where flood exposure, conflict and hunger now overlap most directly is Baidoa, the capital of South West State and, independently of the current rains, the subject of an active famine-risk assessment. The IPC's 23 September analysis identified a conditional Risk of Famine among the displaced population sheltering in and around Baidoa under a plausible worst-case scenario for October through December, while its most-likely projection placed approximately 26,000 of those displaced people in Catastrophe, IPC Phase 5, the classification immediately below a declared famine, according to reporting by Watchers News on 3 November. Crucially, the IPC's own analysis relied on outcome data collected in April 2026, and the Federal Government of Somalia and its IPC partners had scheduled a follow-up assessment for October specifically to gather fresh evidence and reassess the risk level, meaning the verdict that matters most for Baidoa's displaced camps has not yet been delivered as of this writing. That assessment is now due in a city that, five days after the original IPC warning, saw renewed violence: South West State authorities said more than 70 fighters were killed in fighting inside Baidoa on 28 September, UNICEF reported that children were among those killed and injured and that a health facility had been damaged, and the agency called on all parties to protect schools, clinics and humanitarian access, according to Dawan Africa and UN News. Baidoa already hosts hundreds of thousands of people displaced by earlier rounds of conflict and drought elsewhere in the country, according to Arab News, which means the city's camps are simultaneously the subject of a pending famine-risk verdict, a site of active fighting, and, per IOM and DRC's broader displacement modelling, inside a region at continued risk of further flood-driven arrivals.

A hunger system that was underfunded before the rain

The floods and Baidoa's famine risk are landing on an aid system that was already contracting for lack of money. The World Food Programme says it urgently needs $162 million to sustain life-saving assistance for Somalia's most vulnerable people through March 2027, and that the broader national humanitarian response plan for 2026 was only 31% funded as of 8 September, a figure cited in the IPC's own September analysis. That shortfall is not an abstraction: funding gaps have already forced the closure of 233 nutrition sites and 380 health facilities nationwide, according to the same IPC-linked reporting, removing exactly the kind of frontline services that treat malnutrition and respond to disease outbreaks in displacement settings before they become fatal. Nationally, the IPC projected that roughly 5.4 million people, or 28% of the population it analysed, would face Crisis-level food insecurity or worse during the same October-to-December window the current floods are now unfolding in, a figure UNICEF's own September reporting linked explicitly to the combined, compounding effect of drought, conflict, displacement, high food prices and the El Niño flooding forecast that has since materialised. CARE's analysis of the same risk period warned, in similarly direct terms, that flooding could push communities already weakened by years of drought toward famine rather than relief, inverting the assumption that rain, after a dry period, is straightforwardly good news.

What to watch

Three signals will indicate how this season actually resolves. First, whether the Federal Government of Somalia and its IPC partners publish the promised October follow-up assessment for Baidoa, and whether it confirms, worsens or moderates the 23 September Risk of Famine finding for the roughly 26,000 people the most-likely scenario already placed in Catastrophe; a delayed or unpublished assessment would itself be a signal that the government lacks the access or resources to verify conditions on the ground. Second, whether actual displacement in Beletweyne and Gaalkacyo approaches the 229,000 and 82,000-person exposure estimates IOM and DRC modelled, or whether early warning and evacuation blunt the realised toll, a gap that would test whether SoDMA's months of advance warning translated into protective action rather than only public messaging. Third, whether WFP's $162 million appeal attracts new funding before March 2027 or whether more nutrition and health sites close on top of the 233 and 380 already shut, since a system closing facilities while displacement is actively rising is the clearest available indicator of whether this remains a flood-response crisis or becomes a mortality crisis.

Policy implications

For Somalia's federal government, having issued detailed, months-ahead flood warnings through SoDMA is a documented institutional capability, but that early-warning success will be judged against whether the promised October reassessment of Baidoa's famine risk is actually delivered, and against whether the roughly 30 high-alert districts it named received resources commensurate with the risk rather than only advisories. For South West State and the federal government alike, allowing armed confrontation inside Baidoa in the same week international agencies were warning of a conditional famine risk for the city's displaced population converts a climate and funding crisis into a protection crisis UNICEF has already flagged publicly, and further fighting in or around the city during the live IPC reassessment window would make any resulting famine classification, if it comes, substantially harder to disentangle from the violence itself. For international donors, a $162 million gap against a backdrop of 233 shuttered nutrition sites and 380 shuttered health facilities is a concrete, costed figure rather than a general appeal, and the gap between Somalia's 31%-funded response plan and the scale of displacement IOM and DRC now project between October and December is the clearest available measure of how far current pledges fall short of the crisis as currently modelled. For the wider Horn of Africa donor community, a famine-risk warning for a displaced population reaching its scheduled reassessment at the same moment floods are displacing hundreds of thousands more people into the same aid system is a test of whether funding commitments move as fast as the hazard data that is meant to trigger them.