The region has been hit by the most severe drought in 60 years, wiping out cattle and crops.
Farmers unable to meet their basic food costs are abandoning their herds. High cereal and fuel prices had already forced them to sell many animals before the drought and their smaller herds are now unprofitable or dying.
This has left at least 10 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and the newly formed Republic of South Sudan in desperate need of food, water and emergency healthcare.
Weather conditions over the Pacific means the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to return until September. Food shortages are affecting up to 12 million people. Although it has not technically been declared a famine it is a catastrophe with large areas of the region are now officially classified as in crisis or emergency.
Some 6.7 million people in Kenya and Ethiopia are existing on food rations, and 2.6 million people in Somalia need help.
3,000 Somalis arrive on the neighbouring Kenyan and Ethiopian borders every day, leaving behind many who have died on the way.
Since the beginning of 2011, around 15,000 Somalis a month have fled into the refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food and water. The refugee camp at Dadaab, in Kenya, has been overwhelmed by 370,000 people, while the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is building a number of camps to house a further 120,000 people.
The Saudi-based Organisation for Islamic Co-operation started distributing aid in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, but also sent some of its people further afield after al Qaida affiliate al-Shabab lifted its own 2009 ban on aid workers entering the parts of southern and central Somalia under its control.
Although it prefers Islamic groups it has said it will allow all aid agencies in. That followed a direct appeal from the UNHCR’s Antonio Guterres to aid agencies to go into Somalia if their workers were not at risk from armed groups. Several aid workers have been kidnapped since the government collapsed in 1991 and most organisations withdrew in 2009.
