Water Trucking in Baled Hawo Gedo Somalia

• Following the extensive pre-famine conditions across Somalia in 2017, initial FSNAU predictions that prevailing food security outcomes and humanitarian needs would carry on into 2018 have been revised. Current FEWSNET seasonal monitors report that the Gu season has seen some of the heaviest rainfall on the 1981-2017 record (130 to over 200 percent of average). This has led to loss of life, heavy flooding, destruction and massive displacement. IGAD’s Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC) reports heavy flooding and destruction in northern Somalia due to tropical storm Sagar in May. • In International Medical Corps areas of operation in Gedo region, priority needs for safe water and adequate sanitation infrastructure, have escalated. In Gedo region, pastoralist communities are almost entirely dependent on rain fed and often unprotected shallow wells with very few strategic permanent water sources (boreholes). In 2017, International Medical Corps found that 20% of the women and children in Baled Hawo district make more than 1 hour round trip to fetch water which is often not necessarily from a safe water source. International Medical Corps further observed that 60% of individual households lacked water containers for water storage and collection. • The WASH situation remains worrying particularly due to the high rates of displacement into overcrowded IDP settlements observed in 2017. In Gedo districts, living conditions of IDPs are characterized by poor access to clean and safe drinking water. Restrictions include distance, access to and/or privatization of water sources that has raised costs beyond what households are willing or able to spend. Elderly and disabled individuals are some of the worst affected due to their inability to even travel to access water points. • At IDP camps in Gedo Regions and in peripheral villages in Baled Hawo, beneficiaries frequently report sanitation and hygiene as two of their biggest humanitarian needs. Low latrine coverage in these IDP camps and poor waste management means that open defecation is commonly practiced.