NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- UN agencies are warning that more than 3 million Somalis, about half the country’s population, will be totally dependent of food aid and emergency assistance over the next 12 months.

The UN Food Program and UN children’s fund (UNICEF) said in a news release that up to 70 percent of the rural population in the south is threatened by food shortages, and some 36 percent of children in Somalia are underweight, with one in six is suffering from acute malnutrition.
“We have never been in a situation so severe. Never, ever before,” said UNICEF representative in Somalia Christian Balslev-Olesen, according to a UN news release received here on Saturday.
UNICEF and its partners are providing life-saving emergency aid to 5,200 severely malnourished children in camps every month.
“We do not, for the sake of security, have journalists reporting from Somalia. So you don’t see the pictures, you don’t see the reality,” said Balslev-Olesen.
“You don’t have the impact with the politicians, with public opinion, and therefore, it is a forgotten crisis.”
WFP said it has handed out 34,000 tons of food to 1.7 million people this past month, and some 54,000 displaced children under the age of five received supplementary rations from UNICEF.
“The current situation is unprecedented as nearly the whole country is in crisis,” said a spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Marie Okabe.
The combined effects of drought and decreased cereal production, coupled with general insecurity, the rising cost of living, including escalating food prices, and the devaluation of the Somali currency, have caused this humanitarian crisis.