Aid cuts leave millions of Somali children facing hunger

Somalia has long been on the frontline of the climate crisis. Years of insufficient rainfall have led to water shortages, crop failure and a loss of livestock.

Decades of civil war have displaced millions, compounding the humanitarian crisis.

Now global funding cuts and rising prices due to the US-Iran war have left some 6 million people facing crisis levels of hunger - about a third of the population.

Almost 2 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition.

At the Baidoa camp for displaced people in south-west Somalia, half of all children are malnourished and many are also suffering from infectious diseases, according to the international NGO Doctors Without Borders.

Cuts to humanitarian aid have already forced more than 200 health and nutrition facilities to close, the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF said last week, warning that the number could jump to more than 600.

Dismantling aid is a decision to pay more later, the agency said, in security, lost development and in children's lives, as aid cuts push water, education and protection further out of reach for Somalia's children.