The climate emergencies including droughts, floods and wildfires that have escalated in the Horn of Africa region are to blame for the forced migration of civilians, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a specialized UN agency said Wednesday…
Over two million people have been internally displaced in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia amid a prolonged dry spell, IOM said in a statement issued in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, citing statistics from humanitarian agencies.
Justin McDermott, IOM’s Deputy Regional Director for the East and Horn of Africa, said that tackling the climate crisis will aid efforts to stabilize human mobility, peace and green growth.
According to McDermott, a cross-border response was imperative in order to arrest the growing crisis of forced migration and ethnic tensions fueled by climate-induced calamities like droughts in the region.
More than 20 million people are grappling with acute food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia amid the worst drought that has hit the Horn of Africa region in the last four decades, according to relief agencies.
The Horn of Africa region is often described as a climate hotspot, with regular occurrences of droughts, floods, landslides and wildfires triggering large-scale displacement of civilians including nomads and subsistence farmers.
