Country: Somalia
Committee: World Health Organization
Topic: Nutrition and Food Security
I. Historically, Somalia has been a country that has suffered from malnutrition and food insecurity, problems primarily caused by drought. Every year of millions of Somalis experience chronic hunger and malnutrition. In July of 2011, the UN declared famine in southern Somalia which lasted until January 2012. Another drought occurred in 2017, however, with the aid of the UN’s joint efforts with the Somali government following the 2011 crisis, famine was avoided. Since the recovery from the famine of 2011, consecutive seasons of poor rainfall and low river water levels led to total crop failure, reduced rural employment, shortages of water and pasture, and livestock deaths. Food prices have been rising dramatically and food access is once again decreasing. Globally, world hunger has been on the rise for the past consecutive three years, after a decade of decreasing. Between 2016 and 2017 the number of people threatened by chronic food deprivation has risen from 804 million to 821 million, returning to pre-2008 levels. It was found that the percentage of undernourished people globally reached as high as 10.9% in 2017. Currently, one in nine people are malnourished across the world, 1 in four children have stunted growth due to malnutrition, and 66 million primary school-aged children go hungry in developing countries every day. Malnutrition is also a major cause of death in children under the age of five, killing 3.1 million children a year. Majority of the world population exists in developing countries, where over 12% of all people are undernourished or malnourished.
II. As of May 2018, 2.7 million Somalis are not meeting their daily food requirements and require immediate aid. Within this group over half a million are on the brink of famine and 300,000 children who under the age of five who are malnourished, including another 48,000 children who are severely malnourished and have very high chances of developing a disease or dying. 5.7 million others are currently food insecure. In the country of 12.3 million people, nearly half face food insecurity. This year, in addition to the 2.6 million people affected by drought and conflict, another 230,000 faced food insecurity as a result of being displaced by flooding and conflict in some areas of Somalia. The diseases spread by the rain were deadly for many of the malnourished children, and outbreaks of measles have occurred. The flooding has also damaged water sources, sanitation facilities, and other vital infrastructure, forcing 22 nutrition centers serving 6,000 malnourished children displaced by the flood to shut down. Nearly 14% of the suffers from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), a figure is expected to rise due to less than average rainfall in 2017.
III. There are thousands of problems driving malnutrition and food insecurity, but there are a few main contributors. Therefore, Somalia proposes the PERIL plan: Peace, elimination of food waste, reform of food distribution, improvement in productivity of land and water use, and land and water environmental protection, to address these issues. Conflict displaces millions of people a year, robbing them of their homes and livelihoods, leaving people with no place to produce or sell food. Internationally the “Peace dividend,” the amount of money saved due to reduced arms spending since 1987, is at nearly a trillion dollars, yet spending on international development and stabilization aid has been falling. Across the world, 30-50% of all food produced is wasted due to poor preparation and storage, and 1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost or wasted annually- enough to feed over two billion people. If the food waste produced by the US alone every year was distributed across the world it could feed 870 million people every year, enough to feed the 821 million undernourished people with millions of tons food to spare. In addition, much of the farmland across the world is only producing half of what it could be. If this farmland was producing at maximum yield, it would produce enough food to feed an additional 850 million people. With more effective use of fertilizer, water resources, and appropriate agriculture this could be accomplished. Finally, land and resources must be protected. Deforestation, soil erosion, and depletion and pollution of water resources create millions of environmental refugees annually.