The face of hungry and afraid a little boy in SOMALIA.

A little boy, hungry and afraid, at a feeding centre in the Horn of Africa: The face of famine

 A little boy from Somalia, where a terrible famine is unfolding.

As the launches a special appeal for the victims of the famine, he tells Osman’s story – the story of millions of children born into this unequal struggle.

 Dear Osman,

I helped to bury you last Saturday.

You were seven months old. You starved to death in a place called Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee camp. Dadaab means hope.

A twig on a mound of earth marks your place among the scores of other children buried beside you.

We finished, some children played a game of chase through the graves. Life goes on. Ten children a day are being buried in places like the Carcass Dump, so take some comfort that you are not alone.

You don’t know me Osman, I’m the journalist who stood over your discolouring corpse, and interviewed your mother while she waited to bury you. Your twin sister, Kadida, was in your mother’s arms staring down at you with a confused and scared look in her eyes.

You were lying on a mud floor in a tiny hut built by your mother from tree branches and covered with bits of plastic for a roof. 

I’m sorry for getting emotional in the hut. As a journalist trying to tell the story of how children are dying here every day, I should have been professional.

After all, some 1,500 journalists from all over the world have been through Dadaab in the past two weeks and here we — myself and photographer Leon Farrell— were in a tent with an infant’s corpse.

 There are already more than 400,000 Somali emigrants in Dadaab’s three camps, even though they were only built to house 90,000 each in 1991, when your country had a civil war.

Farewell: Osman is laid to rest in Bula Bakti among scores of other children

The UN officially declared famine in southern Somalia

UN declares famine in southern Somalia

The displaced Somali mother attends her malnourished child at southern Mogadishu's' Banadir hospital on Tuesday where medics have said most of the displaced children are ill and have been treated for severe malnutrition. Mortality rate in June reached 7.4 deaths per 10,000 a day, triggering an outcry from international community for help.

 

UN's definition of famine:

--Acute malnutrition of more than 30 percent of children

--Two deaths per 10,000 people a day

--Access to less than four litres of water and 2,100 kilocalories a day

--Complete loss of assets or income

--Large-scale displacement of people and civil strife

The UN officially declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia yesterday as the world slowly mobilised to save the 12 million people battling hunger in the region's worst drought in 60 years.

"If we are not able to intervene immediately, tens of thousands more Somalis may die," the UN added.

Somalia, which has been affected by almost uninterrupted conflict for 20 years and become a by-word for "failed state", is the worst affected nation but parts of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti are also hit.