According to just released information sourced from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the FSNAU between October 2015 and April 2016, a period of only six months, upwards of 400,000 Somali’s, two thirds of whom were children, died of starvation.
And the famine, if anything, has gotten worse since then. Here the world is now, 18 months later and possibly a million more deaths, bringing the number of children who have died from starvation in the past 2 years in Somalia up to a million.
A million Somali children have starved to death in the past 24 months and this crime goes unnoticed in the international media? There are a lot of crimes being committed in the world today but can anyone say a million and a half dead Somalis shouldn’t be at the head of the list?
In the L.Shabelle region alone over 100,000 children under the age of 5 died of starvation from Oct. 2015 to April 2016 with the total numbers of Somalis who expired from starvation there running up to 150,000.
In this time period 17.6% of the population of the L. Shabelle region perished from hunger. That’s right, almost a fifth of the Somali people in this region expired in only six months and the world stands by in silence.
In the Banadir region up to 70,000 children starved to death with another 32,000 over the age of 5 dying as well for a total of 16.6% of the regions population lost to famine in 6 months alone.
In the M.Shabelle region 25,000 under 5 starved to death with the region losing 9.7% of its people to famine in six months. And the list goes on and on, hundreds and hundreds of thousands, with everyday another 2,000 Somalis dead from starvation and famine, a famine that is continuing as I write.
What is it going to take for the international media to catch on to this most insidious of crimes, for the world had the food to prevent all these deaths, something the UN is supposed to be on top of.
But then one of the top dogs at the UN is the executive director of UNICEF, supposedly the number one (N)o (G)ood (O)utfit with the responsibility to prevent this crime, headed by former national security advisor to Pres. Clinton and later failed nominee to head the CIA , Anthony Lake, whose appointment was a favor returned by Pres. Obama. Loyalty to empire can have its rewards in the form of being overlord of a multi-billion dollar a year aid empire internationally, UNICEF, and the ability to carry out “long term solutions” as in genocide by starvation of the Somali people.
Tony Lake has a dark history of overseeing mass murder by violence or starvation in Africa going back to the Rwanda Genocide in 1994 when he “regretted not doing anything” to stop the mass killings. It was just a few years ago the UN admitted that 250,000 Somalis, again, two-thirds under 5, had died in what they then were calling the “Great Horn of African Drought,” all under Tony Lake’s watchful eye.
Hey, there is a “Somali Problem,” terrorism and Al Shabab, and so who will care if a million Somali children are allowed to die of starvation, the less Somalis the better, right?
That’s why it’s called genocide by starvation, 2,000 a day as I write, with the silence of the media lambs all to deafening. Shouldn’t the silence about this preeminent crime cause those who claim the mantel of human rights in their corner offices in NYC and London to expose and incite journalistic flagellation by those presstitutes writing for failing newspapers or braying on the airways?
A million dead Somali kids? Who is really going to give a damn anyway, this is old news, it has always been this way, right?
Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. See thomascmountain on Facebook or best contact him at thomascmountain at g mail dot com.
