The cycle of poverty in Somalia has become an exceedingly difficult situation to escape and continues to affect future generations. Children make up nearly half of its entire population and 73% of children under 14 live in poverty. This becomes even harder to escape because of the lack of resources for children, such as education, sanitation, clean water, nutrition and even shelter.

Internally Displaced Persons Camps

Many children are forced to live in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps, where poverty in Somalia is the most extreme. Nearly 80% of children in these areas are forced to live deprived of at least one necessary resource, such as education, sanitation or water. According to UNICEF, “water and sanitation conditions can also have a deep impact on health and productivity, and thus in income generation opportunities and future poverty status.” In these camps, less than half of the children can’t even drink water from pipes and must rely on finding other sources of water, which they are unlikely to treat before consuming. 

Shelter is also an issue in IDP camps, where half of the population lives with tin roofs, wood or dirt floors and walls made of plastic sheets. Multidimensional poverty in Somalia affects nearly 90% of these citizens, where the extreme need for education and access to water, sanitation and electricity hinders growth or progress. 

This area is also highly susceptible to natural disasters, including droughts, which decimate crops, livestock and water sources. People must leave their homes in search of lifesaving resources but are being pushed into famine by the widespread food scarcity. Droughts between 2015 and 2017 left 20% of the population vulnerable to food insecurity. According to a 2019 Somalia Poverty and Vulnerability Assessment, the poverty level hovered at 69% and 74% in areas of displaced citizens. 

Improvements

Solutions toward ending poverty in Somalia exist and are being implemented by the Somalian government. The first solution is reallocating resource budgets to increase health and education funding. With support from UNICEF, the government is putting social protection systems in place to address inaccessibility. Social sectors that benefit children received 8% of Somalia’s budget in 2019 and increased the education budget from 2 to 5%. They also doubled the health budget from 1 to 2%. While this is far below the national average, UNICEF and international finance institutions are working to increase Somalia’s ability to spend money on these essential social sectors that provide a necessary future for its citizens.

Another solution is the Social Protection Program, which was enacted in 2019. According to the World Bank, “social protection can address poverty and inequality across the country by providing poor and vulnerable households with support and access to socioeconomic opportunities.” Putting in place national social safety nets provides critical assistance to those who need it most. This Social Protection Program spurned a government-led safety net called Baxnaano, which allows the government to protect human capital and support fulfilling basic needs. Two-hundred thousand poor households, about 1.2 million people, have benefitted from nutrient-linked cash transfers, which allow them to supplement their diets with foods that have not been affected by extreme climate conditions. 

Finally, the “Education Cannot Wait” program is a crucial solution to helping Somalia escape the cycle of poverty. This program sees quality education for children and adults as the key to improving life for future generations. Almost half of the children in Somalia do not attend school due to having to help work at home, lack of teachers, illnesses and general lack of resources. With this program, however, families are given school supplies in addition to supplementary foods and safe drinking water. Partners in this program also provide incentives for teachers to give children a more significant opportunity for enrollment and rehabilitate classrooms. Eighteen thousand children have had access to education since 2019.

Looking Forward

Education is one key opportunity for enhancing accessibility to other necessary resources, but it is not the only way poverty in Somalia can be lessened. Assistance from organizations like UNICEF is helping Somalia take charge of the cycle of poverty by allowing citizens to receive essential, lifesaving resources as simple as clean water to help elevate them and educate them about how to better their futures. Future generations do not have to be swept up in this cycle as long as people are being educated and passing the information along to their children, as they control the future of their country.

– Jennifer Arias
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