Friday May 16, 2025

Mogadishu (HOL) – At least 55,000 children in Somalia will lose access to lifesaving nutrition services by June as international aid cuts force Save the Children to shut down more than a quarter of its health and nutrition facilities across the country.

The child-focused aid agency, the largest non-governmental provider of health and nutrition services for children in Somalia, said it would be forced to close 121 nutrition centres, including all of its centres in the southern city of Baidoa, one of the country’s most vulnerable regions. The closures come as global funding for humanitarian aid continues to decline, placing Somalia’s already fragile food security situation under even greater strain.

“It’s frightening to imagine what the impact of these aid cuts will be on Somalia just a few months along the road, in a country where communities know all too well what extreme hunger – and even famine – feels like,” said Mohamud Mohamed Hassan, Save the Children’s Country Director for Somalia.

The looming shutdown of services comes at a time when 1.8 million children in Somalia are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition this year, according to the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit. Of those, an estimated 479,000 children will suffer from severe acute malnutrition—a condition that can be fatal if untreated.

In Baidoa, where over 800,000 people are internally displaced due to conflict and repeated droughts, families are bracing for the worst. Fatima, a 25-year-old mother living in a displacement camp, said Save the Children’s nutrition programme saved her one-year-old daughter Fardowso, who was diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition and treated with high-nutrient food and medicine.

“If we were not able to get medicines and nutrition support here, we would have no other option but to see our children dying in front of us. There is no other service here so we would only see our children get progressively worse,” she said.

Dr. Mustafa Mohammed works at a Save the Children-supported stabilisation centre in Baidoa where children with severe acute malnutrition are given hydration drips and milk fortified with vitamins and a protein-rich peanut paste. Over 95% of children admitted to the centre recover after treatment, and the centre has already seen an increase in families seeking treatment as facilities elsewhere have been forced to shut.

“If our centre closes, children such as these will be put into grave danger. There is nowhere else for these children to go,” said Dr Mohammed. 

The aid agency says clinics are already overwhelmed, and by the end of the current rainy season in June—when hunger and malnutrition typically rise—conditions are expected to worsen. Projections show that 11% more children are likely to become severely malnourished this year compared to 2024, even as fewer services are available to treat them.

Save the Children called the funding gap a “political choice” with potentially deadly consequences. “Unless funding is found, I fear that we will see deadly consequences for children,” Hassan warned.

Somalia has long struggled with hunger crises fueled by climate shocks, conflict, and chronic underfunding. Despite increasing needs, the country’s humanitarian response remains severely under-resourced. Save the Children, which has operated in Somalia since 1951, reached 3.2 million people in 2024, including 1.9 million children.