Climate & Resources
Climate resilience, water, agriculture, energy and environmental challenges.
Aragtiyo La Xiriira
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.
El Niño rains have affected more than 175,000 people across Somalia in October, according to a UN OCHA update, and IOM and the Danish Refugee Council now project up to 874,319 people could be displaced nationwide by the end of December, with Beletweyne and Gaalkacyo facing the heaviest exposure. Somalia's Disaster Management Agency had already warned the rainy season could expose 2.5 to 3.5 million people. The floods are compounding, not replacing, an existing hunger emergency: a 23 September IPC analysis found a conditional Risk of Famine among roughly 26,000 displaced people in Baidoa, where fighting broke out the following week, and WFP says Somalia's humanitarian appeal was only 31% funded as of early September, a shortfall that has already closed hundreds of nutrition and health sites.
4 November 2026