Standing in front of his makeshift home in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in southern Somalia’s Luuq district, Ahmad Hassan Yarrow looks out towards what remains of the Juba River and shakes his head forlornly.
“Of all the droughts I have experienced in my 70 years, I have not seen anything as severe as this,” he says as he contemplates the scenery before him.
Mr. Yarow is one of hundreds of thousands of Somalis displaced by the country’s most recent and worsening drought, leaving their homes in the search for food, water and shelter.
The Luuq district, located in Jubaland’s Gedo region, is intersected by the Juba River. For more than three months now, the river’s waters have steadily dwindled, leaving only brown puddles.
As the waters evaporated, so did the hopes of local communities – made up mainly of farmers and pastoralists – which rely on the river for their livelihoods. Under a searing sun, their crops wilted, and their livestock died. Like many others around the country, they came a step closer to starvation.
“We lost everything in the drought,” says Salado Madeer Mursaal, a 28-year-old mother of one, who has also sought help at the IDP camp. “We need food, shelter, water and other basic human needs.”
