Somalia, EU provides EUR 63 million in humanitarian aid

The drop in funding, accentuated by the global axe on the sector, has 'forced' the agency to reduce the number of beneficiaries of its food assistance programmes from 2.2 million to 600 thousand Somalis. This 'means that WFP supports only one in seven people seeking assistance', reads an agency report, while the beneficiaries of its assistance programmes have shrunk from the 400 thousand counted in October 2025 to the 90 thousand recorded in December. Without an injection of USD 95 million between March and June, the agency writes, the Wfp will be 'forced to suspend humanitarian assistance in April'.

It is unclear what the immediate impact of the EU 'relief line' might be, compared to the scale of the crisis and the size of the financial gap in aid to the country. UN sources were already projecting at least 4.6 million Somalis under the 'acute food insecurity' threshold in spring 2025, the condition that is triggered when the absence of food threatens physical survival.

Within a year, the proportion rose to 6.5 million citizens in acute hunger in March 2026, 'thanks' to a combination of 'prolonged drought, water shortages, insecurity, conflict and historically low levels of humanitarian assistance due to humanitarian aid cuts'.

*This article is part of the European collaborative journalism project Pulse and was written in collaboration with Hvg-Eurologos