Totally Fine Foundation · Issue 008 · Compound Emergency / Scarcity

Somalia / Al-Shabaab

Last reviewed · Totally Fine Foundation editorial desk · 10 min

One emergency, budgeted downward. OCHA counts 4.8 million people in need, then narrows the promise to 2.4 million targeted, 1.6 million prioritised, and 577,000 actually reached — while a drought and an insurgency drive the same families from home and no single number holds them all.

Metrics

A plan built for scarcity.

The plan that budgets itself downward

OCHA files Somalia's 2026 emergency as an act of triage. It counts 4.8 million people in need — and then, under an appeal 40 per cent thinner than the year before, narrows the promise to 2.4 million targeted, 1.6 million prioritised across just 21 of the country's 90 districts, and, by the end of April, 577,000 actually reached, about a quarter of the target. These are four different realities, and the plan is careful not to let them blur.

The smaller in-need figure, OCHA says, reflects a stricter definition of needs, not an improving crisis; the smaller budget reflects constrained resources, not diminished needs. By the end of May the appeal was 19.8 per cent funded. WFP put the gap in plainer terms: it can reach only one in ten people in need. The arithmetic of scarcity is the frame for everything under it.

Sources: UN OCHA — Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026; World Food Programme — Somalia emergency — WFP

Two engines, one map

Underneath the ledger sit two drivers that interact and must not be collapsed into one. The first is a drought — three failed rainy seasons, a southern cereal harvest 83 per cent below its thirty-year average, the lowest in a generation. It pushed more than 500,000 people from home in 2026 alone, on top of roughly 3.3 million already uprooted; OCHA and the authorities attribute over 90 per cent of that new movement to the dry, and IOM, tracking five of the hardest-hit districts, found drought behind three of every four new displacements.

The second engine is the war. Human Rights Watch, counting the same year, found over half of 300,000 newly displaced people had fled conflict and insecurity — not the whole, and not the drought's share. The lived reality is compound: OCHA records families displaced repeatedly by both, one woman fleeing five times, three from fighting and twice from the drought. Each figure belongs to the body that established it; neither driver alone explains the crisis.

Sources: UN OCHA — Somalia 2025–2026 Drought Emergency Situation Report No. 5; IOM — Displacement Tracking Matrix — IOM Somalia; Human Rights Watch — World Report 2026: Somalia

Hunger, counted in phases

The clearest reading of the damage comes from the IPC, which classifies hunger by severity rather than headline. Its September 2025 analysis put 3.4 million people in Crisis or worse for the July–September window, including 624,000 in Emergency, and classified nobody in Phase 5 — catastrophe — for that period. By the spring the projection had climbed: OCHA's May 2026 update carried an IPC figure of 6 million in high acute food insecurity for April–June, including 1.9 million in Emergency, with nearly 1.88 million children needing treatment for acute malnutrition.

The two are different vintages and must not be blended, and the Emergency count is a subset of the larger total, not an addition to it. The malnutrition caseload is a separate measure again, on its own calendar. What the phases show is a food crisis deepening while the money to answer it thins.

Sources: IPC / FSNAU-Somalia (FAO) — Acute Food Insecurity Analysis (IPC / FSNAU-Somalia); UN OCHA — Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026

The insurgency that came back

The war is not winding down. After its offensive of 20 February 2025, Al-Shabaab reversed most of the government's 2022–2023 gains, reclaimed ground it had not held since 2019, and advanced to within roughly 50 kilometres of Mogadishu. The Security Council's mid-2026 assessment is blunt: the group continues to retain the capacity to conduct asymmetric attacks, including through improvised explosive devices, ambushes and economic coercion, and it judges recaptured territory vulnerable to reversal.

That undercuts a specific claim. In 2022 the Federal Government declared total war and predicted eliminating Al-Shabaab within five months, later within a year; the timelines were not met and much of the ground was lost again. The group has also not taken and held the capital, and it controls something closer to a third of the country than the whole. One event that is easy to file wrong: the March 2026 federal takeover of Baidoa was a clash between federal and South-West state forces, not an Al-Shabaab operation.

Sources: United Nations Security Council — UN Security Council on Somalia; ACLED — Somalia / Horn of Africa political violence

A mission in transition, and harm in separate columns

The international presence around the war is being reconfigured, and the difference from a withdrawal matters. On 1 January 2025 the African Union's ATMIS gave way to AUSSOM, renewed in December to 31 December 2026 at an authorised ceiling of 11,826, with the UN political mission set to close on 31 October 2026 — a change of mission configuration, not a full exit, but one unfolding under an acknowledged UN liquidity crisis and a force stretched across 49 locations against the 23 its plan envisaged.

The record of civilian harm is real and belongs to more than one actor. ACLED documents an Al-Shabaab campaign in March 2026 that killed at least 47 people, and keeps soldiers, militants and civilians as separate categories, never merged. Human Rights Watch attributes the highest numbers of civilian casualties to Al-Shabaab — without a single total — while separately documenting government-force actions, including police detaining at least 22 journalists after the 18 March convoy bombing. Two lethal strikes on families in Puntland it reports only as unidentified; this dossier states no perpetrator as fact. Each account is attributed to the body that made it; none is set as equal to another by placement alone.

Sources: African Union — AUSSOM mission — African Union; ACLED — Somalia / Horn of Africa political violence; Human Rights Watch — World Report 2026: Somalia

Claims and evidence

Somalia's emergency is mainly a drought crisis rather than a conflict crisis.

Claimant: Common single-driver framing

Evidence status: confirmed

Counterclaim: OCHA attributes most 2026 displacement to drought while naming Al-Shabaab and inter-clan clashes as drivers of violence and access loss.

Independent assessment: Confirmed as a compound emergency: drought and conflict are inseparable for access and displacement even though measured differently; analysts note the two are increasingly intertwined. Neither alone explains it.

Sources: UN OCHA — Somalia 2025–2026 Drought Emergency Situation Report No. 5; IOM — Displacement Tracking Matrix — IOM Somalia

Al-Shabaab has been strategically defeated or is near elimination.

Claimant: 2022 Federal Government 'total war' framing

Evidence status: disputed

Counterclaim: After February 2025 the group reversed most 2022–23 gains and advanced within ~50 km of Mogadishu.

Independent assessment: Disputed: the Council says the group continues to retain the capacity to conduct asymmetric attacks, and the 2022 'defeat in five months' prediction did not materialise. Not supported.

Sources: United Nations Security Council — UN Security Council on Somalia; ACLED — Somalia / Horn of Africa political violence

The AU transition (ATMIS→AUSSOM) means international involvement is winding down.

Claimant: Common reading of the transition

Evidence status: likely

Counterclaim: Resolution 2809 renewed AUSSOM to 31 December 2026 and it continues, with UNSOS and bilateral deployments.

Independent assessment: Likely misread: a transition of mission, not a withdrawal — but under a UN liquidity crisis and unresolved funding, so durability is uncertain.

Sources: African Union — AUSSOM mission — African Union; United Nations Security Council — UN Security Council on Somalia

The Macawiisley clan militias are reliable pro-government partners against Al-Shabaab.

Claimant: Counterinsurgency framing

Evidence status: disputed

Counterclaim: Some Macawiisley reached non-aggression pacts with Al-Shabaab in 2025 after the state failed to hold recaptured areas.

Independent assessment: Disputed: central to the 2022–23 offensive, allegiance is contingent on local protection and time-dependent, so the claim overgeneralises.

Sources: United Nations Security Council — UN Security Council on Somalia

Timeline

  1. — FGS launches major anti-Shabaab offensive

    The Federal Government of Somalia, backed by clan militia and ATMIS, launched a major offensive against al-Shabaab across central and south-central Somalia, recapturing significant territory including parts of Middle Shabelle and Hirshabelle.

    Sources: ACLED — Somalia — ACLED Data

  2. — ATMIS accelerates drawdown; transition to Somali national security forces

    The African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) confirmed acceleration of its drawdown per the December 2024 AU Peace and Security Council decision. Final withdrawal is expected by end of 2026, raising concerns about the Somali security forces' capacity to hold recaptured territory.

    Sources: UNOCHA — Somalia Crisis — UNOCHA; ACLED — Somalia — ACLED Data

Open questions

  • How many of the 4.8 million people in need will be reached? 2.4 million are targeted, 1.6 million prioritised and 577,000 had been reached by April 2026.
  • How much of Somalia's displacement is driven by drought and how much by conflict?
  • Is Al-Shabaab near defeat, as the Federal Government said in 2022?
  • Does the transition from ATMIS to AUSSOM mean international involvement is winding down?
  • Who carried out the strikes in Puntland that Human Rights Watch reports as unidentified?

Source registry

  1. UN OCHA — Somalia Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026; humanitarian; 2026-01-26
  2. UN OCHA — Somalia 2025–2026 Drought Emergency Situation Report No. 5; humanitarian; 2026-04-06
  3. World Food Programme — Somalia emergency — WFP; humanitarian; 2026-06-07
  4. IPC / FSNAU-Somalia (FAO) — Acute Food Insecurity Analysis (IPC / FSNAU-Somalia); humanitarian; 2025-09-23
  5. United Nations Security Council — UN Security Council on Somalia; official_position; 2026-06-01
  6. African Union — AUSSOM mission — African Union; official_position; 2025-12-23
  7. ACLED — Somalia / Horn of Africa political violence; research; 2026-04-01
  8. Human Rights Watch — World Report 2026: Somalia; human_rights; 2026-01-16
  9. IOM — Displacement Tracking Matrix — IOM Somalia; humanitarian; 2026-04-24

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