Key figures: Mark Bowden (UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia), Philippe Lazzarini (UN Humanitarian Coordinator, post-crisis review), José Graziano da Silva (FAO Director-General), Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary-General)
Summary
In 2011, a severe drought gripped the Horn of Africa — described by the United Nations as the region’s worst in sixty years — causing a humanitarian catastrophe that stretched across Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti and affected an estimated 13 million people across the wider region. On July 20, 2011, the United Nations formally declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, marking the first officially declared famine of the twenty-first century. The crisis was compounded by the presence of the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab, which controlled much of southern Somalia and had expelled or banned numerous humanitarian organizations, severely restricting aid delivery to the most affected populations. A 2013 study commissioned by the FAO and FEWS NET estimated that approximately 258,000 people died as a result of the famine and severe food insecurity between October 2010 and April 2012, of whom approximately 133,000 — just over half — were children under the age of five.
Background and Causes
The drought resulted from consecutive failures of the long rains and short rains seasonal cycles in 2010 and early 2011 across the Horn of Africa, linked to La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean. FEWS NET (the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network) had begun issuing alerts about deteriorating conditions as early as August 2010, but the international humanitarian system did not mobilize at scale until the crisis had already deepened into acute famine in mid-2011. The drought was the most severe across the region since the 1950s and was intensified by structural factors including conflict, displacement, poverty, and the absence of functioning government institutions in much of Somalia.
The Somali context was distinctive in its severity. Decades of civil war following the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991 had destroyed rural livelihoods, disrupted markets, and left the country without the state infrastructure necessary to mount an effective domestic response. Southern Somalia — the region that would be declared in famine — was under the control of al-Shabaab, which had been waging an insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government and African Union peacekeeping forces.
Geographic Scope
The 2011 drought affected:
- Somalia — most severely, particularly the southern and central regions. By late 2011, the UN estimated that four million Somalis — approximately half the national population — were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
- Kenya — particularly the arid northeastern regions bordering Somalia. Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex, designed to accommodate 90,000 people, had swelled to over 440,000 registered refugees by mid-2011, making it the largest refugee camp complex in the world at the time.
- Ethiopia — the Somali, Oromia, and Afar regions faced severe food insecurity, with millions requiring emergency food aid.
- Djibouti — already among the least food-secure countries in the region, Djibouti experienced acute shortfalls affecting a significant share of its rural population.
The UN Famine Declaration
On July 20, 2011, the United Nations officially declared famine — classified as IPC Phase 5, the most severe category of food insecurity — in two regions of southern Somalia: Lower Shabelle and Bakool. It was the first formal famine declaration anywhere in the world since the 1984–1985 Ethiopian famine. Famine declaration under the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) system requires that at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortfalls, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent, and mortality rates exceed two deaths per 10,000 people per day. All three thresholds were exceeded in the declared regions.
On August 3, 2011, the UN extended the famine declaration to three additional southern Somali regions, and by September 2011 six regions of southern and central Somalia had been declared to be in famine. The declaration was withdrawn in February 2012 following large-scale international humanitarian response, though acute food insecurity persisted across the country.
Al-Shabaab and Humanitarian Access
Al-Shabaab’s control of much of southern Somalia was a defining complication of the 2011 famine response. The group had progressively expelled or banned the largest international humanitarian organizations from areas under its control beginning in 2009 and 2010. Among those banned or forced to suspend operations were the World Food Programme, CARE, Médecins Sans Frontières (in some areas), and FEWS NET itself. By the time famine was declared, a significant portion of the most severely affected population — estimated at approximately one million people — was effectively inaccessible to international aid agencies.
Al-Shabaab announced in July 2011 that it was lifting restrictions on humanitarian agencies, citing changed conditions, but maintained selective bans on certain organizations and imposed requirements on aid programming that many agencies found untenable. The simultaneous application of U.S. counter-terrorism sanctions — which restricted American organizations from providing material support to groups in al-Shabaab-controlled areas — further complicated the response by creating legal uncertainty for U.S.-funded NGOs attempting to operate in the region.
Dadaab Refugee Crisis
The Dadaab refugee complex in northeastern Kenya became a focal point of the regional crisis. Operated by UNHCR, Dadaab had been designed for 90,000 residents but by July 2011 housed over 440,000 registered refugees, the majority of them Somali. Arrivals were reaching 1,300 to 1,500 per day at the peak of the crisis, with many refugees having walked for weeks across the Somali interior before reaching the camps. Mortality rates at Dadaab in mid-2011 reached 7.4 deaths per 10,000 people per day — more than seven times the emergency threshold. Infant mortality tripled; rates of acute malnutrition and gender-based violence rose sharply. UNHCR and its partners worked to expand registration and services, but the physical infrastructure of the camps was overwhelmed.
Death Toll
The full scale of mortality from the 2011 famine was not known until a retrospective study was published in 2013. Commissioned by the FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU) and FEWS NET, and conducted over several years using mortality survey data, the study estimated that approximately 258,000 people died from famine and severe food insecurity in Somalia between October 2010 and April 2012 — a period centered on the 2011 peak. Of those deaths, approximately 133,000 were children under five years of age, representing roughly 10 percent of all children under five in the affected regions of southern and central Somalia. Mortality peaked between May and August 2011, when an estimated 30,000 excess deaths occurred per month. The study’s authors noted that the crisis had been forecast months in advance and that earlier international action could have substantially reduced the death toll.
International Humanitarian Response
The UN’s formal famine declaration catalyzed a major international fundraising and response effort. The UN launched emergency appeals, and by the end of 2011 more than $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance had been pledged or delivered for the Horn of Africa crisis from governmental, intergovernmental, and private sources. Major contributors included the United Kingdom ($100 million+), the United States (through USAID and the State Department), Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China, as well as private donors responding to appeals from organizations such as UNICEF, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and numerous NGOs. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) in the United Kingdom raised over £70 million from public donations.
Despite the scale of the response, the 2011 Somalia famine was subsequently cited in reviews by FEWS NET, the UN, and academic analysts as a systemic failure of early warning and early action: the crisis had been accurately forecast well in advance, but the international humanitarian architecture failed to mobilize sufficient resources and access until after preventable deaths had already occurred at mass scale.
Significance
The 2011 East Africa drought and Somalia famine was the most severe humanitarian crisis of 2011 and one of the largest famines in the world in the post-Cold War period. The formal UN famine declaration — the first of the twenty-first century — represented a significant threshold in international humanitarian governance, applying the newly adopted IPC classification system at the highest severity level for the first time at scale. The estimated 258,000 deaths, with disproportionate mortality among young children, made the 2011 Somalia famine among the deadliest since the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s.
The crisis reinforced the critical importance of early warning systems such as FEWS NET, exposed the constraints that counter-terrorism law placed on humanitarian action in conflict zones, and spurred subsequent reforms in humanitarian financing and early action mechanisms. The famine also brought renewed international attention to the role of armed non-state actors in restricting humanitarian access — a debate that continues to shape international humanitarian law and operational policy.
Sources
- 2011 East Africa drought — Wikipedia
- Somalia famine killed nearly 260,000 people, half of them children — UN News (May 2013)
- Study suggests 258,000 Somalis died due to severe food insecurity and famine — FAO Somalia
- Severe Drought Causes Famine in East Africa — NASA Earth Observatory
- Technical Release: Study suggests 258,000 Somalis died — FSNAU/FEWS NET
- East Africa Crisis Appeal 2011 — Disasters Emergency Committee