Here the pasture has been turned into desert

HARGEISA SOMALILAND, MAY 2017

Nothing compares with this.
We ask old people, worn and hunched survivors in two of the world’s most vulnerable areas. They have battled through war and hunger for decades, and every interview ends the same way.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
Eventually, we know what the answer will be.
“No, never.”
Year after year after year of famine.

Global heat records have been beaten for the past three years, and land that could previously be farmed or used as pasture has been transformed into desert. At the same time, hunger has become an effective weapon in bloody civil wars.
In large parts of South Sudan and Somalia, it is impossible for aid organisations to get their food trucks through.
The risks are huge.

The UN’s World Food Programme drops essentials from giant aircraft, but this distribution is both expensive and ineffective.
Aamina Rooble and her husband Abdilahi are refugees in their own country.
From central Somalia, they made their way on foot to the more peaceful parts in the north. Now they live in a camp outside the city of Hargeisa.
“We had 120 goats, all of them died and we spent the last of our money on escaping.”
Six children have survived thanks to emergency provisions from aid organisations. Their parents cannot give them anything.
“The future?”
“We don’t think about it.”