Update on the Somaliland Drought
Prolonged drought in Somaliland has killed between 65 and 80 percent of the semi-autonomous region's livestock, creating conditions that are "the worst time in our lives" and could threaten regional security, says the region's environment minister.
With 70 percent of Somaliland's economy built around livestock, "you can imagine the desperation of the people, the desperation of the government," said Shukri Ismail Bandare, the minister of rural development and environment.
"Pastoralists say this is the worst we have seen, a kind of nightmare," she said. "They have 400 or 500 goats and then just 20 left. They have lost practically everything. I don't know how they are still sane."
Previous droughts have hit one area of Somaliland, but "now it's five regions of the country. We've never seen it before", she said in a telephone interview from Hargeisa, the capital, with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Oxfam East Africa