Mr. Feargal O'Connell:

I am delighted to be here today.

I am joined by my colleague Conor O'Loughlin, who is the operational humanitarian manager from Trócaire. We are here very much in the spirit of partnership. We are representing Dóchas, the association of non-governmental development organisations. We are here in a spirit of partnership with this committee, the Government and Irish Aid. Dóchas members are currently programming €2.5 million worth of funds in Somalia to try to avert what, at the moment, seems to be developing into a famine. The scale of the problem demands partnership at national and international level.

Famines are a matter of choice, they do not necessarily fall out of the sky onto our lap. We can see them coming and we have early-warning date and have a choice as to how to respond to that. In my lifetime we have eradicated smallpox, mapped the human genome, put the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets and landed a rover on Mars. However, in that same 38-year period we have now have had 12 famines and we have the prospect of the 13th, 14th and 15th, which is simply unacceptable given that we have the technology and know-how to prevent these things. In many cases we are lacking funding. Last year the global humanitarian budget was only 54% funded. This year the humanitarian appeal for Somalia is currently 44% funded at a time when we know there is a real risk of famine on the horizon and 6 million, more than half of the country's population, are in need of humanitarian assistance. It is not inevitable. There are things that are outside our control such as the gu rains which fall in April and May. If the gu rains fail, we will really face an uphill battle.

If funding is mobilised now, it will make a huge difference. Access is obviously a huge constraint, but we have islands of access throughout the country where we can operate securely. We are seeing huge displacement into those islands of access because large parts of the country are inaccessible and we do not have the ability to work there. There are very striking similarities with what we saw in 2011 which was the last famine the world faced. It is important to remember that that famine brought about the death of 260,000 people in Somalia. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

There are, of course, people and stories behind these astronomical figures. Yasmine is a five-year-old girl who presented to a Concern nutrition centre two weeks ago. She and her family had to walk for over a week to get there. They had to leave their village because they were bereft of further options. One of her siblings died along the way. When she was weighed on arrival, she was 12.5 kg. As I am not a person who recalls figures off the top of my head, I looked up the standard weight-for-age charts, but I could not find her weight on the chart. She was not even in the first percentile. I had to look at the chart for children aged between one and two to find her weight - and Jasmine is five years old.

People are forced to endure extraordinary and despicable levels of hardship. We are hearing stories of people digging in riverbeds. The Shebelle river and the Jubba river, which are usually flowing at this time, are dry. People are digging into the riverbeds but are unable to get our one bucket of water. We heard a story of a herder, called Yusuf, who had to leave his family, bring his two eldest sons with his herd to try to find some forage and some fresh water for them. His herd died along the way. One of his sons had to be admitted into a nutrition centre. He heard word that his family back home were also in a desperate situation and his children's lives were on the line.

We often talk about funding levels. The numbers in need of assistance are in the millions, but there are real people behind them and we have to do everything we can to help them. They are completely blameless, caught up in a terrible and complex crisis in Somalia. We congratulate the Irish Government on all it is doing to help in Somalia. We applaud the recent allocation of €11 million which was provided for UN pool funding and UN agencies. We believe, however, that additional funding is warranted at this stage because the crisis is so grave. Most importantly, it needs to be leveraged at EU and international level with more countries stepping up and shouldering their responsibility in the same way the Irish Government has done time and again.

We want to see child protection as a key focus of Irish Government responses in Somalia and elsewhere. Children are the first to bear the brunt of famine, food security problems and conflict. It is important that our efforts be very much focused on them.

It is very clear that climate change and conflict are the twin root causes of what is going on in Somalia. There have been three significant climactic events one after the other and there is also conflict. Ireland has the moral authority to lead on these issues. It is a country that has come out of conflict and famine and is now a generous humanitarian aid donor. We need to leverage this moral authority at international level. We need to put Somalia back on the international agenda. It has dropped off it and not enough people are talking about it. More needs to be done to address the root causes of the crisis. Once it abates eventually, it is very important that long-term resilience funding be mobilised in Somalia. Dóchas members are seeing how this type of programming and funding can have an impact. In villages where we have invested for many years that smart money for smart programming is having an impact. These villages are the most resilient. People are displacing into them because they have higher levels of resources and are the last from which people displace.

Most importantly, as humanitarian organisations, we must ensure the safety and security of our staff. If we cannot ensure our teams can go into these areas day in and day out with a guarantee of safety, we cannot do anything and will not be able to avert the crisis. We call on the committee and the Irish Government to continually press for all parties to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and guarantee the safety and security of aid workers.