By Ahmed Khalif, Somalia Country Director for Action Against Hunger
At our stabilization center in Mogadishu, I met Maryan, a mother who had walked for days to save her son. By the time she arrived, he was severely malnourished, swollen with oedema, feverish, and too weak to eat. His family had fled a drought that killed their livestock and wiped out their only income. They had survived on little more than tea and milk powder before it ran out entirely.
He lived because treatment was available. That is the difference timely support makes. In Somalia today, survival often depends not on the severity of illness but on whether help reaches a child in time.
Maryan with Seyfullah two weeks into treatment.
As Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Somalia, I see the same pattern repeatedly. Drought, conflict, and economic fragility are not abstract drivers — they are forces that dismantle livelihoods, displace families, and push children into acute malnutrition. Yet I also see something else: how quickly a child can recover when treatment, therapeutic nutrition, and basic financial support are delivered together and sustained.
The scale of the crisis is stark. By the end of 2025, 7.5 million people, around 39 per cent of the population, required humanitarian assistance. Four consecutive failed rainy seasons in northern regions, combined with nationwide poor rains, have left rainfall around 60 per cent below average; the driest conditions recorded since 1981. With roughly 80 per cent of Somalis dependent on pastoralism and agriculture, this is not merely a climate shock, it is an economic collapse at household level.
Emaciated cows in Bakool, Somalia, where drought has impacted availability of pastures and water.
The consequences fall most heavily on children. An estimated 1.85 million children under five are projected to suffer acute malnutrition between 2025 and 2026, including over 421,000 severely malnourished. Admissions for severe acute malnutrition treatment have surged alongside supply shortages, while disease outbreaks such as measles, cholera and malaria compound the risk of death for already weakened children.
Behind those figures are families like Ruqiyo’s in the Bay Region. When the rains failed and crops withered, hunger did not arrive gradually — it struck decisively. Her youngest child became lethargic, feverish, and dangerously underweight. The drought had taken their farm and income, and displacement pushed them into camps where clean water and sufficient food were scarce.
He survived because an integrated response was in place, such as stabilization care for medical complications, specialized therapeutic food to restore weight, and hygiene support to prevent disease relapse. His mother also received nutritional guidance to protect her other children.
Today he is healthy and active again — a visible reminder that severe malnutrition, when treated early, is highly recoverableThis is why Ramadan matters so profoundly in a context like Somalia’s. Zakat is not simply charitable giving. It is a structured obligation designed to protect the most vulnerable during hardship. The Qur’an explicitly elevates feeding those in severe hunger as a righteous act of faith, particularly in times of widespread deprivation.
In operational terms, that translates directly into lifesaving interventions. Zakat funding enables stabilization center treatment for children with medical complications, outpatient therapeutic feeding programs, safe water provision, hygiene kits, and increasingly, targeted cash assistance that prevents families from sliding back into crisis after treatment ends.
Health and nutrition programs support families impacted by the drought in Somalia.
Maryan’s story illustrates this clearly. After her son received inpatient care and transitioned to outpatient treatment, she was enrolled in three cycles of unconditional cash assistance. She could finally purchase rice, sorghum and vegetables, ensuring her children ate at least two meals a day instead of surviving on tea.
This is not incidental support. It is a cost-effective stabilization mechanism. Medical treatment alone saves a child in the short term. Combining it with cash assistance and nutrition education reduces the risk of relapse and restores household resilience. For donors, including those fulfilling Zakat, this represents a measurable impact.
The timing is critical. Somalia’s pastoral lean season peaks between February and March, followed by the agropastoral lean season through mid-year. Food insecurity is projected to deteriorate during this period, with Emergency (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Phase 4) outcomes expected in several regions. Delayed funding in this window translates into delayed treatment, and in malnutrition crises, delay is often fatal.
Ramadan, therefore, coincides with the peak of humanitarian need. For many families, it is the harshest point of the year, as they face depleted food stocks, failed rains, high temperatures accelerating water loss, and limited income opportunities. When Zakat is mobilized during this period, it functions as a rapid-response financing mechanism aligned with seasonal risk rather than symbolic charity.
There is also a dignity dimension that is often overlooked in public discourse. Cash assistance, delivered alongside medical care, allows parents to make their own decisions about food, hygiene and basic needs. As Maryan put it, the support did not only save her son, it restored her ability to be a mother again.
Maryan buys food with emergency cash.
Somalia’s crisis is not a distant anomaly but a predictable convergence of climate volatility, fragile livelihoods and declining humanitarian resources. Yet it is also a crisis where interventions are proven, scalable, and relatively low-cost compared to the long-term economic and social costs of untreated malnutrition.
Zakat, when directed to evidence-based programs, delivers immediate and measurable protection for children facing severe acute malnutrition. It funds therapeutic nutrition commodities, stabilization care, WASH support, and targeted cash transfers. The exact package that transforms a critically ill child into a healthy, thriving one within weeks.
This Ramadan, the question is not whether severe malnutrition can be treated. It can, and we do so every day. The real question is whether funding arrives fast enough to reach the next child before it is too late.
For families like Maryan’s, Zakat is not an abstract act of generosity. It is the difference between deterioration and recovery, between a silent crisis and a second chance, and ultimately, between life and death.
