Human Appeal, a humanitarian aid charity based in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, is one of the leading UK charities helping fight the hunger that has stuck in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia. The humanitarian emergency has left 16 million people on the brink of starvation and in urgent need of food, water and medicine.

Human Appeal are appealing for donations from the people of Greater Manchester to help them deliver emergency food parcels to 10,000 people in Somalia and are improving access to clean water, appropriate hygiene and sanitation for a further 12,000 people.

Human Appeal’s CEO Othman Moqbel says: “Failed or below average rainfall together with El Nino-induced weather extremes are wreaking havoc on livelihoods, food and water systems across East Africa. Somalia which has already experienced two consecutive years of drought, and meteorologists expect crops to fail again this year. This resulting drought and large scale food insecurity is compounding the humanitarian situation and almost three million people in Somalia face food insecurity. A full blown famine is now highly likely.

“As well as extreme weather conditions, conflict in particular has exasperated the suffering in Somalia. We can reveal today that we conducted a poll and found that only 54% of the UK population knew that Somalia was even facing conflict, despite it ravaging the country since 2009.

The number of people in need of assistance in Somalia has increased from five million in September 2015 to over 6.2 million in February 2017 - more than half of the country’s population. This includes a drastic increase in the number of people in “crisis” and “emergency” from 1.1 million six months ago to a projected 3 million between February and June this year. The situation for children is especially grave. Some 363,000 acutely malnourished children are in need of critical nutrition support, including life-saving treatment for more than 71,000 severely malnourished children.

“Using World Food Program’s (WFP) support we will improve access to food through the SCOPE approach. This project will target the most vulnerable IDPs passing or staying in the targeted locations. The project will register beneficiaries from the IDP camps as well the vulnerable households in the host community and will be provide them with family/household ration equivalent to the ones provided by WFP and recommended by the Somalia food security cluster (the ration will include 25kgs of rice, 25kgs of sugar, 5 litres of cooking oil, 2kgs of tea leaves and 5kgs of powdered milk).

“Continuing displaced and new arrivals in camps and within host communities have created huge demands for safe water, sanitation, food and other essential lifesaving items. Competition over limited resources/ services is causing tension and new conflicts among the host community and IDPs. In recent months, access to water has decreased from an average of 14 l/p/d to 11.7 l/p/d since the level of the river drastically decreased while the water yield in the boreholes and shallows have also been affected. Sanitation facilities are greatly required.”