Severe child malnutrition spikes in Somalia as international aid cuts force clinic closures

Life-threatening malnutrition among children is spiking in Somalia as more than 200 health and nutrition facilities were forced to shutter following cuts to international aid, the United Nations has warned.

The East African country has seen a 32 percent jump in the number of children admitted to facilities with severe acute malnutrition and complications in the first six months of 2026, UNICEF said on Friday.

Nearly 1.9 million children are projected to be malnourished this year.

“In Somalia today, aid cuts are closing doors to healthcare, shutting down nutrition services, and pushing water, education and protection further out of reach,” UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva, speaking via video from Nairobi.

As many as 618 health facilities could close nationwide under “severe funding scenarios”, Elder said. “This is the wrong moment to retreat.”

Somalia faces a severe drought that has killed livestock, ruined harvests and destroyed livelihoods. Aid groups estimate that drought displaced about 500,000 people between January and April, adding to roughly 3.3 million Somalis already uprooted.

One-third of Somalia’s population of 19 million people is facing severe food shortages.

Yet funding for addressing acute malnutrition in parts of Somalia has dropped by more than 80 percent this year, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said earlier this month, with the United States and several other Western countries slashing aid.

Somalia was also excluded from the $2bn global humanitarian aid pledge announced by the US for this year due to allegations of aid diversion and corruption.

The cuts have compounded the effects of the current drought, curtailing access to water even as prices in rural and pastoral areas have quadrupled, according to UNICEF.

At the same time, fuel and fertiliser costs have risen because of the US-Israel war on Iran, while a record-strength El Nino climate pattern is forecast to worsen the humanitarian crisis with severe flooding, Elder said.

Nearly a million children below five, adolescent girls and women risk losing access to nutrition services.