Flooding has disrupted the education of millions of children in south-west Somalia
As world leaders, UN experts, and climate specialists discuss mitigating the effects of climate change in the world, they continue to wreak havoc on millions of lives around the globe, especially in Africa and other third-world countries.
IN MY RECENT visit to schools supported by FCA Somalia in the hard-to-reach areas of Elberde, Hudur, and Baidoa in late November 2023, I witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of the El Niño rains.
These heavy rains have triggered widespread flooding, resulting in the loss of life, the displacement of thousands of families, and significant damage to critical school infrastructure.
Schools supported by FCA Somalia have been severely affected, with walls, windows, roofs, latrines, and even temporary learning spaces that were previously constructed by FCA, being destroyed or rendered unusable. This poses serious safety risks for students, as broken windows and walls exposed them to potential hazards.
Flooded classrooms pose a risk to students
Furthermore, the heavy flooding has left most schools waterlogged, rendering routes impassable for both students and teachers. This disruption in transportation has severely hampered teaching and learning activities, even in areas where the rains have temporarily subsided.
Increased drop-outs
Consequently, many learners have been forced to remain in their settlements or homes, leading to increased dropout rates. Additionally, the situation has put young girls at a higher risk of early marriage as their families seek alternative means of survival amidst these challenging circumstances. It is disheartening to note that many of these individuals were either recently or previously displaced due to drought or conflict before the onset of the rains, exacerbating their suffering.
The flooding also leads to the outbreak of waterborne diseases
Moreover, the waterlogged conditions have resulted in the outbreak of waterborne diseases such as dysentery and cholera, affecting both students and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the surrounding areas of the schools, and many learners have been admitted to local clinics with the support of FCA school-based child protection focal points and school community leaders.
It is crucial to highlight that numerous schools have also suffered significant damage and lost desks and other essential teaching and learning materials, including books, as a result of the floods, and the few schools that have survived the flooding are being utilised as shelters for the affected IDPs.
Prolonged effects of flooding
Considering this disaster, the government, specifically the Ministry of Education, had taken the necessary step of temporarily closing schools for a period of two weeks. This decision was made to prioritise the safety of learners. However, by the time of my visit, the government had reopened the schools, allowing students to resume their education. Nevertheless, the effects of the flooding are still visible in many schools, as they have suffered significant damage due to the heavy devastation caused by the Elinino-induced rains.
Even though schools have reopened, many bear significant damage
On our part as FCA Somalia, we actively responded to the floodings by working and coordinating alongside our partners and other key actors, such as education cluster partners, in the areas of assessment and support. We also supported the most affected schools by distributing learning materials to a few affected learners whose materials were destroyed by the flooding.
In the future, we will conduct community advocacy to raise awareness about the importance of building a protective learning environment for children. To achieve this, we will provide training sessions on appropriate climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR) to teachers, child club members, the school community, and the administration.
We aim to empower the school community, teachers, and learners and enhance their participation in creating a safer and more resilient educational environment. By equipping teachers, child club members, and school administrators with the necessary knowledge and skills, we believe that we can better prepare them to handle future challenges related to climate change and natural disasters.
The writer of this blog is FCA Somalia’s Senior Education and Quality Advisor in Somalia
FCA Nepal has joined an ambitious new programme promoting climate resilient agriculture in Nepal with a whole-society approach.
AGRICULTURE IS a big part of Nepal. Children like me, who grew up in the eighties and nineties were familiar with the phrase in our textbooks that we are a ‘nation of agriculture’.
Agriculture is still the lifeblood of the nation, but it is affected by two major trends; one is the phenomenon of male Nepalis going abroad to earn better wages and the other is climate change, by which we see uneven rain patterns and unpredictable and more extreme weather.
Both trends have the effect that often women are left bearing the burden for farming, on top of family responsibilities.
Nepal is extremely vulnerable to climate-related damage, such as soil erosion. Photo: Monika Deupala/FCA
Nepal’s climate vulnerability
According to the World Bank, Nepal is susceptible to geological and climate-related disasters, due to its geography and social vulnerability. Increases in soil erosion, landslides, flash floods and droughts – all which climate change drives – especially effect its agricultural sector. Poor rural people, who rely on farming for survival have the most to lose.
FCA Nepal has joined an ambitious new project in partnership with GiZ amongst others, and with funding from the EU and Finnish and German governments, to promote Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA). Briefly explained, CRA is the ability of any agricultural system to anticipate and prepare for extreme weather and climate change, as well as adapt to, absorb and recover from it. This can be through new techniques and innovations, but also as simple as ancient arts like crop rotation.
The GRAPE programme
The project, known as the Green Resilient Agricultural Productive Ecosystems (GRAPE) programme, helps farmers, cooperations and small business build their climate resiliency in a sustainable way – both environmentally and financially.
While that means training on agricultural practices, it also means supporting municipalities in integrating climate change into their planning and assisting with information roll-out to the entire region.
Climate Resilient Agriculture is not a common term in Nepal, and we knew that our first step needed to be that of connecting with people, not immediately implementing change. Too many climate response initiatives fail, because they rely too heavily on specialised technology, often brought from outside. We recognised that to change the habits of generations of farmers, we needed a whole society approach.
Participants in our media training course on Climate Resilient Agriculture conduct a group session.
Spreading the message
That’s why we started a media training programme targeting journalists in Sudurpaschim and Karnali provinces. While reporters may seem a strange first audience for our project, most of them are closely intertwined with the agricultural community and their stories and already regularly report on the effects of climate change in their areas.
Belumaya Mahatara is a journalist from the remote Humla district. She participated in FCA Nepal’s Climate Resilient Agriculture media training course.
With low literacy levels in the regions, many farmers rely on radio news for their information, so the ability of broadcasters to understand, explain and be excited about the project was key. 32 journalists from various media platforms joined the training with 14 of them receiving an FCA fellowship to continue their support and training on Climate Resilient Agriculture.
Additionally, seven stories both national and local were published about Climate Resilient Agriculture during the training and three more were published later thanks in part to our training.
Engaging civil society
Our next stop was to bring together the widest and most inclusive group of people to form a community of practice, a group that could engage deeply on the topic, raise concerns, share best practices, and find important common ground in moving forward.
We brought together more than 50 civil society organisations including Heifer International Nepal, Plan International Nepal, Save the Children Nepal, World Vision International, Oxfam, Welthungerhilfe and Helen Keller International, amongst others, as well as local NGOs LI-BIRD, CEAPRED and ANSAB.
These organisations meet every two months on the most pressing issues when it comes to climate-resilient and climate-related agriculture, including matters of governance and resourcing.
The first of its kind in Nepal, the group now acts like a think tank, steering the direction of the conversation and maintaining the dialogue on how we achieve climate resiliency in our country.
It’s important to us, because true resilience to climate change doesn’t just encompass agricultural dimensions, but also sociological ones. We’re determined that our project takes in the viewpoints of all affected members of society.
An expert from Action Aid presenting about the crop management during the first half day event of our community of practice for Climate Resilient Agriculture.
Next steps
While continuing to support the ongoing discussion and training, we will also be acting on the lessons we learn putting together gender and disability responsive Climate Field Schools. These initiatives will support value chain producers from marginalised groups, while assisting agriculture and livestock technicians to reach out to these groups with real and practical help.
We’ll also be supporting the production of easily understandable information materials, like infographics and radio shows, so that a wide as possible audience can benefit from proven techniques to make even the smallest of farms climate resistant.
In this way, I hope that Nepalese textbooks continue to reflect our long history of agriculture in the future and its evolution, as it adapts and grows into a new climate reality.
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Anish Shrestha is a Communication Specialist at FCA Nepal, focusing on the GRAPE programme and Climate Resilient Agriculture.
The GRAPE project is jointly funded by the European Union, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Finn Church Aid (FCA) is Finland’s largest international organisation working for development and humanitarian assistance. FCA specialises in the world’s most fragile contexts and works with the most vulnerable people, within their priority areas.
Tired feet tell a story of hunger and despair in drought-affected Somalia
The Baidoa internally displaced people’s camp in the South-Central of Somalia is over-crowded. Due to drought and conflict the population is expected to grow even faster in the coming months.
THOSE FEET. Those now muddy, and no doubt tired, feet haunt me even days after visiting the Baidoa internally displaced people’s (IDP) camp in the South-Central Somalia. Some of the people I met early November have travelled up to 120 kilometers by foot to escape drought and conflict affected areas to seek safety and simply find food. Somalia is on the brink of famine with half of the population facing extreme and even life-threatening food shortage.
The aim of my visit was to understand the current situation in Somalia’s IDP camps and the impact of drought on their lives, as well as to be able to compare the situation now to how the situation was in June during my last visit to Baidoa.
Frankly, it’s worse, and it is getting worse each week. It is now November, and it should be the rainy season. There have been some rains since Spring 2020, but that doesn’t mean the situation improves. On the contrary, limited rain can worsen conditions in IDP camps due to the potential contamination of water sources and the spread of disease like malaria. The situation has been unbearable for months now. However, the international funding has a major gap when it comes to humanitarian assistance to drought-affected Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa. There simply isn’t enough international will for funding now.
Additionally, the price of aid is rising as global inflation affects markets together with cuts to grain imports affected by the war in Ukraine. Somalia has been dependent on the Black Sea grain imports of about 90 per cent of grain used in the country. Prices have increased as much as 50 per cent in Baidoa. A lady running a small shop in the camp told me that now 500 g pasta is USD 0,60, 3 litres of cooking oil USD 7, a biscuit USD 0,10, potatoes one dollar per kilo. Transportation cost to town USD 2. We are all worried about inflation, even in Finland. The prices might not sound that bad, but we need to keep in mind: nearly 7 of 10 Somalis live in poverty, making Somalia one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
So, the looming famine is a sum of many crises. People are fleeing to IDP camps like the one in Baidoa due to the conflict and drought. The group of ladies that I spoke with told me they do not expect to go back to their homes due to their livelihood as pastoralists disappearing, due to lack of rain and often their land being taken over by terrorist groups. It would be impossible to go back right now even if a proper rain was received.
The Baidoa camp is overcrowded, too. The influx of IDPs into Baidoa camp is about 30 000–40 000 people a month. Due to drought and conflict the population is expected to grow even faster in the coming months. Officials are worried about both security and health related issues. With so many people living in the overcrowded camp with a lack of proper hygiene, epidemics like cholera, chickenpox and measles are prone to spread uncontrollably.
Finally, the drought is dramatically affecting children. Children are in the most vulnerable position when it comes to acute malnutrition. It is children who are most likely to die during – and even now, before – the famine. A malnourished child is more likely to die because of cholera, malaria, diarrhoea – even a common cold – than a healthy, well fed child. I had an opportunity to observe ongoing treatments, including vaccinations, health assessment of children, and counselling, in the camp health center. I was told that malnutrition is an increasing problem and the clinic provides weekly observation and nutritional supplements. The clinic has already 500 patients per day (the population in the camp being 200 000).
The current crisis is not only one of immediate effect. It’s a crisis affecting the future, too. According to the Somalia education cluster, 70 per cent of the children in Somalia are currently out of school because of the drought. 250 schools are closed, and 720 000 school-aged children (45 per cent of them girls) are at risk of dropping out of school for good. Half of children in the IDP camps have no access to education. The schools inside IDP camps are overcrowded, too. My home country Finland is world famous for its education system, but how would a school in Finland survive if suddenly a school built for 400 students had an influx of 200 students on top of the 1000 students it had yesterday?
It’s not yet too late. We can still help. FCA has already been able, as one of the few NGOs in the Baidoa camp, to aid 700 households with emergency cash distributions. In the coming months we are helping 900 more, since we start also implementing our project in the drought affected region in Somaliland.
