After two-and-a-half decades of conflict, persistent drought and failed rains for the past four years, Somalia has some of the worst development indicators in the world.
Six million people (half of the country’s population) are in need of humanitarian assistance, including almost three million people who are at risk of famine.
In the last two years, three quarters of the country’s livestock have perished.
More than one million people have fled the country and 1.5 million who have fled their homes are now living as ‘internally displaced persons’, 400,000 in Mogadishu alone.
Islamic Relief began working in Somalia in 2006, providing Ramadan food parcels and Qurbani meat to poor families in the Puntland region.
Since then, we have expanded our programmes to cover education, health, water and sanitation, livelihoods and child welfare, with a focus on orphans.
Currently we are carrying out emergency and development projects in the South Central region – home to huge numbers of displaced people – and drought-affected Somaliland and Puntland regions. We have a country office in Mogadishu and field offices in Garowe and Hargeisa.
One of our key programmes over the past five years is a $5 million project to drill 36 boreholes (18 in Puntland and 18 in Somaliland), some as deep as 400 metres.
The project is ongoing and the boreholes that have already been drilled are now saving the lives of people and livestock in areas where the rainfall has been critical and there are acute water shortages.
