Failing rains, severe malnourishment, enduring conflict and poor sanitation have left Somalia facing a humanitarian crisis, with 50,000 children "at death's door" and 2.9 million Somalis at risk of hunger, a coalition of aid agencies has warned.
Twenty-three charities – including World Vision, Oxfam, Save the Children, Care International and the Norwegian Refugee Council – have united to highlight the perilous state of the country and make an urgent appeal for the $822m (£485m) shortfall in humanitarian funding. Somalia has received only 12% of the money it needs this year.
According to a report they have compiled, pastoralists have been slaughtering livestock because of water and food shortages, while the UN-backed Amisom force's offensive against al-Shabaab in southern Somalia has swelled the ranks of the 1.1 million internally displaced people.
Women in the country have the second-highest risk of maternal death in the world, one in seven children is acutely malnourished, and less than one in four people has access to adequate sanitation facilities. Moreover, polio has returned, with 193 cases recorded in the past year.
"Fifty thousand children are severely malnourished and at death's door," said the agencies. "As we learned in 2011, not heeding the warning signs of crisis in already fragile communities can lead to tragedy."
Andrew Lanyon, head of the Somalia Resilience Programme, called on donors and stakeholders to take immediate action to stave off disaster, adding that a quick reaction would prove far cheaper than waiting for the situation to deteriorate.
"What we have is an early warning that has ingredients of a perfect storm," he said. "While we should be working to reach and maintain minimum standards globally, giving adequate attention to all crises at all times, Somalia's situation is such that immediate response to avert disaster will result in spending as little as a third of the cost of responding when [the crisis] peaks."
His calls were echoed by Ed Pomfret, Oxfam's regional campaigns and policy manager for the Horn, east and central Africa. "These statistics would be arresting in almost any other situation in the world," he told AFP. "The problem with Somalia is that it has been a crisis for over 20 years … people more or less roll their eyes and think: 'Pirates, terrorists, hunger and death, what can I do about that?' If we don't act now, we risk the current crisis becoming a catastrophe."
Information gathered by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet) shows that intensified conflict and erratic rainfall between April and June is likely to affect food security and prices in southern Somalia, creating a food insecurity crisis level in Lower and Middle Shabelle and nearby areas.
"Given very limited humanitarian access in [the region], traditional in-kind aid deliveries are unlikely," says Fewsnet. "Creative response mechanisms should be developed and implemented to address rising needs."
More than a quarter of a million people are estimated to have died during the famine and food crisis in Somalia in 2010-12. Half of those who perished were under five, making it the worst famine of the past 25 years.
A 2013 study, commissioned and funded by the Food and Agriculture Organisation's food security and nutrition analysis unit for Somalia and Fewsnet, estimated that 258,000 people died in southern and central parts of Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012, including 133,000 under-fives. Famine was declared in parts of the country in July 2011.
The figure is significantly higher than the death toll from the country's 1992 famine, during which an estimated 220,000 people died over 12 months, although this famine was considered more severe because a higher proportion of the population died.