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STORY: UN / SOMALIA HUNGER PRESSER
TRT: 4:41
SOURCE: UNIFEED / FILE
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT WFP FOOTAGE ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 25 FEBRUARY 2026, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1.Wide shot, exterior, United Nations Headquarters
25 FEBRUARY 2026, NEW YORK CITY
2.Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“The latest IPC report for Somalia was released, and it confirms the fears that we've had that the humanitarian situation has significantly worsened, with 6.5 million people - a third of the population - facing crisis levels of hunger through March this year. This is 1.7 million more than just since January. Of these, two million of the most vulnerable women and children are expected to face severe hunger.”
4. Wide shot, press briefing room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“So malnutrition is deepening, in 2026, we have over 1.8 million children under the age of five facing acute malnutrition, with half of these expected face severe malnutrition. And these are really alarming numbers for a country the size of Somalia.”
6. Wide shot, press briefing room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“Without urgent funding, the lifesaving emergency food and nutrition assistance that we provide, the support from other partners will be forced to be cut to the most vulnerable and eventually will come to an end post April. Due to these critical funding shortfalls, our assistance WFP assistance has decreased from 64 districts to 42, leaving entire areas without food assistance. And we're currently only assisting just over 600,000 of the 6.5 million people facing crisis levels of hunger. This is down from 2.2 million people that we supported this time last year.”
8. Wide shot, press briefing room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Ross Smith, Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, World Food Programme (WFP):
“Life saving nutrition services have also been slashed by more than half. From over 400,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under five receiving support to just about 100,000 in January of this year. Cash transfers have been significantly reduced, and this is critical to mention because there are many places where access is limited and where markets are still functioning and cash transfers are the only option for support in Somalia.”
10. Wide shot, press briefing room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Rein Paulsen, Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Behind the numbers that were shared with you already, we should understand that the drought is having a devastating effect on agriculture. Concretely, this means widespread crops and livestock losses in addition to large scale displacements of people. And when reference was made to two rainy seasons that were misses, just to put that in number terms, when it comes to food production, the last main cereal harvest was 83 per cent lower than the long term average, between 1995 and 2025.”
12. Wide shot, press briefing room
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Rein Paulsen, Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“What's unfolding in Somalia now needs to be and should be understood primarily as a rural crisis, not exclusively, but primarily. By that I mean that two thirds of the drought hotspots, 19 of the 30 hotspots identified in this IPC analysis are in rural areas.”
14. Wide shot, press briefing room
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Rein Paulsen, Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“For FAO activities, we need 85 million US dollars to support a million of the most vulnerable, high risk, underserved rural people at the moment. To date, we have just six million US dollars to respond, so we are really running on fumes.”
16. Wide shot, press briefing room
FILE – WFP - 10 FEBRUARY 2026, PUNTLAND, SOMALIA
17. Drone shot, Butunbuto village in Nugaal region which is heavily affected by drought.
18. Various shots, A woman taking her goats to graze
11 FEBRUARY 2026, PUNTLAND, SOMALIA
19. Various shots, a mother and her son take their goats to graze as they look for the nearest water pond - a structure used to collect rainwater during the rainy season, essential for mitigating severe drought conditions and supporting pastoralist communities during drought
20. Drone shot, a water pond in Mandhan with no water (NO SOUND)
FILE – WFP - 6 JANUARY 2026, KISMAYO, SOMALIA
21. Various shots, a woman fetching water for cooking at Istanbul camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs)
22. Various shots, children being tested for malnutrition at a WFP nutrition point in Istanbul IDP camp
UN agencies warned the humanitarian situation in Somalia has “significantly worsened”, citing the latest food security report, “with 6.5 million people - a third of the population - facing crisis levels of hunger through March this year.”
World Food Programme (WFP)’s Ross Smith and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Rein Paulsen briefed reporters today (25 Feb) on the recently released Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) for Somalia. They both briefed via video links from Rome. The report was released on Tuesday (24 Feb).
WFP’s Ross Smith said, “malnutrition is deepening, in 2026, we have over 1.8 million children under the age of five facing acute malnutrition, with half of these expected face severe malnutrition. And these are really alarming numbers for a country the size of Somalia.”
Smith also highlighted the urgent need for funding WFP’s activities in Somalia. He said, “the lifesaving emergency food and nutrition assistance that we provide, the support from other partners will be forced to be cut to the most vulnerable and eventually will come to an end post April.”
The WFP official continued, “Due to these critical funding shortfalls, our assistance WFP assistance has decreased from 64 districts to 42, leaving entire areas without food assistance. And we're currently only assisting just over 600,000 of the 6.5 million people facing crisis levels of hunger. This is down from 2.2 million people that we supported this time last year.”
Smith pointed out that life saving nutrition services have also been slashed by more than half. He said, “from over 400,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under five receiving support to just about 100,000 in January of this year.”
He added, “cash transfers have been significantly reduced, and this is critical to mention because there are many places where access is limited and where markets are still functioning and cash transfers are the only option for support in Somalia.”
For his part, FAO’s Rein Paulsen highlighted the drought in the country is having a “devastating” effect on agriculture.
He explained, “concretely, this means widespread crops and livestock losses in addition to large scale displacements of people. And when reference was made to two rainy seasons that were misses, just to put that in number terms, when it comes to food production, the last main cereal harvest was 83 per cent lower than the long term average, between 1995 and 2025.”
Paulsen also said, “what's unfolding in Somalia now needs to be and should be understood primarily as a rural crisis, not exclusively, but primarily.”
He explained that two thirds of the drought hotspots, 19 of the 30 hotspots identified in this IPC analysis are in rural areas in the country.
For FAO activities, it needs 85 million US dollars to support a million of the most vulnerable, high risk, underserved rural people at the moment, Paulsen said, adding “to date, we have just six million US dollars to respond, so we are really running on fumes.”
