Wed | May 20, 2026

Slow response blamed for 2011 famine death toll

Published:Tuesday | April 30, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Pause
Somali mothers and their babies wait in line for the babies to receive a five-in-one vaccine against several potentially fatal childhood diseases, at the Medina Maternal Child Health Center in Mogadishu, Somalia Wednesday, April 24, on the eve of the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi and coinciding with World Immunization Week. AP photos
In this file photo, a woman sits with her child at a local hospital to receive treatment for malnutrition at the border town of Dadaab, Kenya. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two United States government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine.
1
2

NAIROBI, (AP):

The 2011 Somali famine killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of them age five and under, according to a new report to be published this week that more than doubles previous death toll estimates, officials told The Associated Press (AP).

The aid community believes that tens of thousands of people died needlessly because the international community was slow to respond to early signs of approaching hunger in East Africa in late 2010 and early 2011.

The toll was also exacerbated by extremist militants from al-Shabab who banned food aid deliveries to the areas of south-central Somalia that they controlled. Those same militants have also made the task of figuring out an accurate death toll extremely difficult.

A Western official briefed on the new report, the most authoritative to date, told AP that it says 260,000 people died, and that half the victims were five and under. Two other international officials briefed on the report confirmed that the toll was in the quarter-million range. All three insisted they not be identified because they were not authorised to share the report's contents before it is officially released.

The report will be made public on Thursday by FEWSNET, a famine early warning system funded by the United States (US) government's aid arm USAID, and by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit - Somalia, which is funded by the US and Britain.

A previous estimate by the United Kingdom government said between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in the famine.