Famine Fears Loom Over Somalia

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at the threat of famine in Somalia, Iran’s crackdown in Mahsa Amini’s hometown, and Beijing’s transnational repression in the Netherlands.

If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.

Somalia could soon face a disastrous famine, the United Nations has warned, as the impacts of four consecutive failed rainy seasons and price shocks converge and fuel widespread food insecurity. 

As the region suffers under its most acute drought in four decades, as many as 6.7 million people—or 40 percent of Somalia’s population—will require food assistance to stave off hunger over the next few months, according to the United Nations. 

The current situation is so dire that UNICEF estimates that one child has been sent to a hospital over malnutrition every minute since August. Hunger has already killed thousands of people, and more than 1 million have been displaced as the drought kills livestock and decimates crops.

“Things are bad, and every sign indicates that they are going to get worse,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told reporters. “Without greater action and investment, we are facing the death of children on a scale not seen in half a century.”

The last time famine struck the country was in 2011, when three consecutive failed rainy seasons fueled a devastating drought that killed an estimated 260,000 people—half of whom were children under the age of 5. 

But aid agencies warn that the ongoing combination of consecutive failed rainy seasons, climate change—which intensifies the impacts of drought—and a sharp surge in global food and fuel prices could create a situation that has even more catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

Nearly 1 million people who have been impacted by the drought—and are likely food-insecure—also live in regions held by the militant group al-Shabab, making humanitarian access more challenging. 

“The predictions are this would be worse than the 2011 famine, where a quarter of a million people died,” Abby Maxman, the president and CEO of Oxfam America, told Foreign Policy. “So it is huge, and the suffering is preventable.”

Somalia’s experiences fit into a broader picture across East Africa, with Kenya and Ethiopia also confronting high levels of food insecurity. According to Oxfam, as many as 10.7 million people in the region are currently confronting acute hunger. 

Protesters mourn Mahsa Amini. Iranian forces reportedly cracked down on thousands of protesters who gathered in Saghez, Iran—the hometown of Mahsa Amini—on Wednesday. Wednesday represented a day of mourning for Amini, whose death 40 days ago while in the custody of Tehran’s morality police ignited the country’s sweeping demonstrations. 

The government’s violent response only appeared to fuel the public’s fury; later Wednesday night, Iranians continued to protest across the country and chanted, “Freedom! Freedom!” and “We will fight and take Iran back.”

Beijing’s transnational repression. Dutch authorities have launched an investigation into media reports that Beijing has used “service stations”—officially meant to help Chinese nationals renew official documents and perform other tasks—to actually monitor and stifle critics living in the Netherlands. Beijing has denied the reports. 

“We are now investigating as a ministry what is going on with the centers,” said Maxime Hovenkamp, a spokesperson for the Dutch foreign ministry. “What is correct is that the Chinese government never informed us about the centers through diplomatic channels, so that makes them illegal to begin with.” 

Have questions about the Brazilian election campaign, runoff results, or the future of Brazil generally? Join Rio de Janeiro-based journalist and author of Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief, Catherine Osborn, for a special live chat on Monday, Oct. 31, at 1 p.m. EDT. Foreign Policy subscribers can submit their questions ahead of time here.

Global climate commitments. If nations fail to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions, the world will continue down a path to heat up by at least 2.5 degrees Celsius—a degree higher than the crucial 1.5 degree threshold established by the Paris Agreement, the United Nations said. With even half a degree more of warming, scientists warn that tens of millions of people could experience disastrous climate events that upend lives.

Russia’s nuclear drills. Russian forces test-launched a ballistic missile as a part of annual nuclear exercises that began Wednesday. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the drills were supposed to mimic a retaliatory “massive nuclear strike” against others in the event that Moscow came under nuclear attack. 

• Russia’s Ukraine Disaster Exposes China’s Military Weakness by Tai Ming Cheung

• What the Hell Just Happened to Hu Jintao? by James Palmer

• The Hu Jintao Drama Reveals Beijing’s Fundamental Flaw by Howard W. French

Paleontologists have long been stumped by one baffling question: Why did Tyrannosaurus rex, with their towering and gargantuan builds, have such disproportionately little arms? 

One theory has proposed that the burly dinosaurs relied on their stubby arms to lift themselves up, while another has suggested that they used them to fight—although not everyone is convinced, the BBC reported. “Now I personally think the arms are just too ridiculously short for that to make sense,” Scott Persons, the head curator of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History in Charleston, South Carolina, told the BBC. 

It’s also plausible that they didn’t serve any purpose, just like tailbones. In that case, the colossal creatures might have one day evolved to be armless—had an asteroid not crashed into Earth and obliterated them, of course.