Children at Forefront of Hunger Crisis Gripping Horn of Africa
- Over 1.7 million children need malnutrition treatment: Unicef
- Crisis sparked by devastating drought, worsened by Ukraine war
Internally displaced children collect water from a tank in the village of Afdera, Ethiopia, on Feb. 15.
Photographer: Eduardo Soteras/AFP/Getty ImagesA hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa region is intensifying, with the lives of hundreds of thousands of children increasingly at risk, the United Nations, aid agencies and government officials have warned.
More than 1.7 million children in parts of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya urgently need treatment for acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF. In Somalia alone, about 7.1 million people -- almost half the population -- will confront crisis-level food insecurity or worse until at least September and 213,000 of them face catastrophic hunger and starvation, according to the Famine Early Warning Network and the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.