---
title: "UNICEF says child malnutrition in Somalia has jumped 32 percent as aid money dries up"
description: "Admissions of severely malnourished children rose by almost a third in the first half of this year, the UN children's agency says, while funding for treating acute malnutrition has fallen by more than 80 percent and over 200 health facilities have closed."
category: "World"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/world
author: "Sofia Russo"
published: 2026-08-22T07:43:21.000Z
updated: 2026-08-22T07:43:21.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/unicef-says-child-malnutrition-in-somalia-has-jumped-32-percent-as-aid-money-dri
tags: ["somalia", "unicef", "hunger", "humanitarian-aid", "drought"]
---
# UNICEF says child malnutrition in Somalia has jumped 32 percent as aid money dries up

Admissions of severely malnourished children rose by almost a third in the first half of this year, the UN children's agency says, while funding for treating acute malnutrition has fallen by more than 80 percent and over 200 health facilities have closed.

The number of children admitted to Somali health facilities with severe acute malnutrition rose 32 percent in the first six months of this year, UNICEF says, and the agency now projects that close to 1.9 million children will be malnourished in Somalia during 2026.

The reason it gives is not primarily the weather. It is money.

## What has been cut

Funding for the treatment of acute malnutrition in Somalia has fallen by more than 80 percent this year, [UNICEF said in remarks reported by Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/somalia-child-hunger-crisis-deepens-after-aid-cuts-unicef-says). More than 200 health and nutrition facilities have already been forced to close. Under what the agency calls severe funding scenarios, as many as 618 could close. Close to a million children under five, adolescent girls and women stand to lose access to nutrition services.

The cuts come from the United States and several other Western donors, which have reduced humanitarian spending sharply. Somalia was also left out of a $2 billion global humanitarian pledge, in a decision linked to allegations that aid there has been diverted. Those allegations are serious and are one reason donors give for pulling back; they also do not change the arithmetic facing a clinic that has closed.

James Elder, a UNICEF spokesman, framed the agency's case in a single line: "This is the wrong moment to retreat."

## Why the timing matters

Roughly a third of Somalia's population of 19 million is facing severe food shortages. Some 3.3 million people are already displaced, and a further 500,000 were displaced between January and April this year alone.

The country is also caught between two opposite hazards. A severe drought killed livestock, ruined harvests and destroyed the livelihoods that pastoral communities depend on; in rural and pastoral areas the price of water has quadrupled. At the same time a record El Nino has been forecast, which for Somalia means the risk of severe flooding on ground too hard and too bare to absorb it. Drought and flood are not alternatives here. They arrive in sequence, and each makes the next worse.

[Al Jazeera's account](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/somalia-child-hunger-crisis-deepens-after-aid-cuts-unicef-says) also notes that the cost of fuel and fertilizer has risen because of the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran, feeding into food prices in a country that imports much of what it eats.

## What closure looks like on the ground

Severe acute malnutrition is treatable, and cheaply, when it is caught. The standard response is a course of ready-to-use therapeutic food administered through an outpatient program: a child is weighed, measured, enrolled, and sent home with sachets. It works because the facility is close enough for a parent to walk to every week.

That is what makes a closed facility more consequential than the number suggests. When a clinic shuts, the children in its catchment do not transfer to the next one. They stop being counted, and the ones who reach care do so later and sicker, when treatment is inpatient, expensive and less likely to succeed. Doctors Without Borders is among the organizations still working in the country, according to the same report.

UNICEF's 32 percent figure is therefore a measure of the children who did still make it through a door. It is not a full picture of what is happening, and the agency's argument is that it will get worse before the funding position changes.

## Sources

- [Somalia child hunger crisis deepens after aid cuts, UNICEF says](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/somalia-child-hunger-crisis-deepens-after-aid-cuts-unicef-says)