We walked for 16 days with our 8 kids to find food and water...

Irish charity's appeal for help over famine threat 

- SHAUNA CORR

SOMALIA will endure a full-blown famine unless its people get the help they need, a leading Irish charity official has warned. 

Trocaire country director Paul Healy accompanied the Irish Mirror in the Horn of Africa this week to see first-hand the suffering the climate crisis has wrought on a country among those least responsible for it.

In Somalia, changing weather patterns caused by carbon dioxide have dealt five consecutive seasons where not a drop of water has fallen from the sky – with a sixth predicted.

Children are dying at an alarming rate, while animals like donkeys and goats lie rotting where they fall, leaving the stench of death in the air.

Across the country, 1.4 million people have been driven from their homes since 2021. Rivers have dried up, forcing families to walk distances of up to 100km to seek sustenance and refuge in places where water still flows. Many don’t make it, but no one here is gathering those figures.

Luuq, in the Somali region of Gedo, has become a haven for many.

Nestled by the Jubba river, the island-like town has seen its population grow from 75,000 to 126,000, with 51,000 of them in 12 camps for ‘internally displaced people’.

It was at one of these camps – Boyle IDP Camp – we met the Mahat family, whose 16-day “long walk” across 65km of barren land left their twin girls, Zelinib and Isnino, on the brink of death.