Nearly 62,000 people have been displaced by drought across five districts in Somalia since the start of 2026, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) — and the situation is set to worsen.
Data from IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix shows that drought now accounts for three out of every four new displacements in Somalia, a 22% increase from the same period last year. The trend underscores how climate shocks have moved from periodic emergency to sustained driver of forced migration.
Even if the Gu rainy season (April–June) brings normal to above-normal rainfall, IOM projects that nearly 125,000 more people could be displaced by drought in the second quarter of 2026 alone.
“Drought is already forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes, and many more could be displaced in the months ahead,” said Manuel Pereira, IOM’s Chief of Mission for Somalia.
The visible markers of the crisis tell a stark story. The Gerbooda waterfall in Baidoa, Southwest State, has been reduced by drought to a muddy pool now shared by people and livestock — an image that has come to symbolise how climate change is eroding the ecological foundations of life across the Horn.
The Somalia situation sits within a wider regional emergency. Drought has continued to grip East Africa at the start of 2026, pushing nearly 26 million people into extreme hunger across Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, according to a recent Oxfam report.
Climate experts are increasingly framing the response not as crisis management but as a new normal that demands transformational adaptation: anticipatory water systems, drought-resilient agriculture, mobile pastoralist support, and locally grounded migration policy. The era of waiting for the “old normal” to return is over.
