Situation in East Africa

Situation in East Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Etritrea, Djibouti)

11 million Muslims are suffering in the Horn of Africa amidst the worst drought seen in 60 years.
Poverty has become extreme: children are dying of starvation, pregnancies are resulting in miscarriages and farmers’ livelihoods are being destroyed. Six out of 10,000 children are dying every day – one child dying is too much
Many mothers along with their children say they have walked for a month on bare and bloodied feet to refugee camps inKenya. Journeys of more than 300 miles are common. In their search for food and water, they have slept for weeks on burning sand under open skies, they are looking for help in the refugee camps – not everyone survives the journey. Those who do, are faced with the sound of crying, disease and death around them in the camps,
One third of the children are malnourished – their skin is shrinking on their bodies, infants are crying all day, babies too weak to lift their hands
Water is now so scarce that the governor of the Middle Shabelle region, Abdullahi Moalim Hussain, recently said: ‘Water is so expensive in the area that people are being buried without being washed, which is compulsory in Islam.
In the strict sense a famine means people are starving on a massive scale, aid organizations do not use it lightly to describe a humanitarian crisis. It is usually up to governments to declare a famine. But in the case of Somalia, the UN stepped in because of the lack of central government.