Somalia is one of the most dangerous and devastated places on earth.
There's conflict...
What was that?
..and climate change.
This is the worst drought Somalia ever experienced.
More than 7 million people affected by the drought.
There is also a terrorist threat.
This has forced a staggering number of people from their homes
and put parts of the country on the brink of famine.
All while most of the world is focused on the war in Ukraine.
When the world turns its back on Somalia, bad things happen.
Mass migration.
And when people are in the move,
there is nothing that is going to stop them.
Somalia has a reputation for being a hellscape
and many parts of it are,
but there is so much more to this country and its people.
Amid this record-breaking drought is an immense amount
of resilience and determination.
WOMAN: I'll give this mother some credit.
They are strong, that's what I can say.
You can see she's still holding onto hope
that tomorrow will be better.
MAN: I see the challenge, but I see the opportunity
and I'm very much really hopeful that we have more, brighter future
for this country.
Somalia sits on the Horn of Africa.
It has the longest coastline on the continent, but is beset
by drought and terrorism.
We're flying to Dolow, a town that's under government control,
but danger isn't far away.
Down there is Al Shabaab territory.
In this part of Somalia, we have to travel in armoured cars,
with armed security everywhere we go.
People from neighbouring areas,
especially areas under Al Shabaab control,
have been fleeing to Dolow on the expectation
that they will get some humanitarian relief.
I see the camps swelling more and more.
The influx is just unprecedented.
Two years ago, this camp on the outskirts of town didn't exist.
Now it's home to 30,000 people.
Work's beginning on a home for this family, who got here yesterday.
As we're filming, a caravan of new arrivals
appears on the horizon.
They're exhausted and have barely any possessions.
This group behind me just walked in.
They've been walking for 10 nights, with no food and very little water.
There's at least one child that's malnourished.
They're currently getting registered.
They'll be given a plot of land to set up a tent,
and then this'll be their home for who knows how long.
And the thing that the camera can't show you is just how hot
and unforgiving it is here.
Dust storms blow through the barren camp,
blanketing everything and everyone.
Aisha Sugal has arrived with her two children,
1-year-old Hamdo and 2-year-old Mohamed.
The boy is malnourished.
She's walked 30 kilometres a day for 10 days,
and she's seven months pregnant.
She was desperate to escape from Al Shabaab's control.
There was no room on the donkey cart
to bring her 3- and 4-year-old daughters.
She left them behind with her husband.
While the first group is being registered,
hundreds more new arrivals walk in - all needing shelter and food.
The World Food Program is feeding more people in Somalia
than ever before.
Suddenly, the mood goes from tense to panicked.
MAN: We need to get moving. Kind of now.
Come on, let's go, let's go.
Keep walking to the car. Come on. Now!
We've just been bundled into the car by our security team
because they found a man on a phone telling someone about our position
and because we know that Al Shabaab are not far from here,
we have to go.
A couple of kilometres from the camp, the Dolow hospital
is where you find the most devastating consequences
of this drought and conflict.
Nutrition coordinator for the NGO Trocaire,
Pamela Wasonga has been working in Somalia
since the last famine in 2011.
It's really getting worse, when you look at the data.
Most of the children that are coming in,
they are in a very bad situation.
Hello! How many admissions today?
Eight, eight admissions. Eight admissions?
Pamela goes to check on 2-year-old Kalson,
whose came in with her mum, Hafey, five days ago.
She weighs just 6.9 kilograms,
half of what a healthy toddler her age should be.
Despite how sick she looks,
Kalson's prognosis in the short term is good.
The prognosis is actually very good.
Most of the time, if we lose children here,
they pass on the same day as admission.
If a child survives the first 48 hours, really, there is no reason
why we should lose a child.
The UN believes at least 40,000 Somalis may have already died
because of this hunger crisis - half being children under five.
It will likely get worse.
85% of Somalia's wheat imports used to come from Russia and Ukraine.
Consequently, the price of the food across the entire Horn of Africa
has increased by 49%.
The traditional donors more or less wash their hands from Somalia.
And if that continues, we will see a huge catastrophe
in this country this year.
What about this one?
The newest arrivals to the clinic
are Habiba Ibrahim Nuh and her four children.
The youngest, the one who is really very severely malnourished.
They are all severely malnourished
but she is in a very, very bad situation, if I may say.
Yeah, but I am hopeful.
With the care that we are giving, I am hopeful.
A single mother, surviving on a dollar or two a day,
if she's lucky.
She does what it takes to try to keep her hungry children happy.
Habiba's 9-year-old daughter, Safiya, stands by her mum's side.
When Habiba goes to town to find work washing clothes,
Safiya looks after the other kids at the camp.
If you look at her, to me, I think she's strong.
She's hanging in there and having hope that since she is here,
she will get the help that she needs.
The women are very resilient.
They are strong. That's what I can say.
Because if you look at the conditions they have passed through
or they're in, you can see that she's still holding onto hope
that tomorrow will be better.
These mothers and their kids are in many ways the lucky ones.
They've been able to escape Al-Shabaab territory
in order to get help.
We know that there are people
that are completely cut off from services.
Because for them to get to where the services are,
they would probably need to pass one of the areas
that are controlled by them.
Then it means that they can't come, or likewise, we can't go to them.
The terrorist group Al Shabaab holds large swathes of territory
across Somalia, and has operatives in the capital, Mogadishu.
This is Mogadishu's airport,
and you can see all the UN planes and helicopters behind me.
It's one of the most heavily fortified and secure places
in the entire country.
But even here isn't safe.
Just a few days before we arrived, Al Shabaab terrorists launched
a mortar attack that landed inside the compound.
MAN: It's very scary and very challenging.
Myself, I survived so many times the terrorist attack,
including my home, including while I was travelling on the road,
I survived a suicide road bomb.
So you are dealing with that daily challenge and threats.
I remember one of my colleagues in the cabinet,
he was killed by his niece.
She killed him.
So when you live that reality, you don't know who you trust.
Inside the airport compound, I am meeting Abdirahman Abdishakur,
the Somali president's special envoy for drought.
When you are living in rural communities in Somalia
and facing a drought and Al-Shabaab impose you heavy taxes,
or if you cannot pay, ask you to recruit one of your loved ones,
they put you in difficult situations.
And that has created an uprising against Al Shabaab.
After more than a decade of deadly terrorist attacks,
authorities are fed up.
And last year, the government launched an all-out war
against the insurgents.
They have the backing of the United States,
Somalia's neighbours and, most importantly, Somalis themselves.
When the community comes against you
and you are insurgency living among the public,
I think your time is over.
It's like fish in the water.
If the water rejects the fish, I don't see the fish can survive.
Al Shabaab are now rejected by Somali public
and Somalia people are now uprising against them,
and government are providing leadership to fight against them.
The UN's Humanitarian Coordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula,
first worked here more than 20 years ago
and says success isn't guaranteed.
The government continues to move from one operation theatre
to the next,
so its holding capabilities are very limited.
They recover an area, they move to the next,
and in some cases, Al Shabaab comes back
and takes over the territory again.
But the government is resolute.
In my opinion, in my calculation, in my understanding,
this is the beginning of the end of Al-Shabaab.
To see what a peaceful Somalia could look like,
we're going to the country's north, to a place called Somaliland.
This region declared itself independent from Somalia in 1991,
but it hasn't been recognised internationally.
Al Shabaab hasn't been able to gain a foothold here,
and the sense of freedom in the capital, Hargeisa,
is a total contrast to Mogadishu.
Somaliland, and especially Hargeisa, is a testament
to what peace could bring.
You see a bustling city in par with any other major city in Africa.
The leaders did not create all of this.
The leaders provided stability and peace,
and the people did the rest.
And what happened in Hargeisa could happen in any part of Somalia,
if the leaders bring about peace.
MAN: This is our downtown Hargeisa.
This is where all the markets of the business come.
And people come here to buy their fruit, clothes.
So this is the market where, you know,
everybody comes to also greet each other.
It will take us about two hours to get to the tea shop at this rate.
Walking through Hargeisa with Abdirashid Duale
is like being with a rock star.
He's the CEO of the biggest money transfer company
in the Horn of Africa, Dahabshiil,
and is one of the wealthiest people in the region.
He says this part of the world is often misrepresented.
People read just one bomb went off in Mogadishu
and they think entire Somali people
are either killing each other or fighting.
It's not true. You can see how relaxed it is,
how calm it is, how people are doing business together.
Peace like this across Somalia could pave the way for the country
to focus on its bigger fight - against climate change.
Nomadic people, by culture, we are independent people.
They were people who do their best.
They are not expecting aid.
You know, they were by nature a self-reliant people.
But climate change is beyond their control.
About 100 kilometres from the city of Hargeisa
are the bone-dry plains of Togdheer.
Goat herder Saleban Farah scours the landscape for signs of life.
Everything around him is dying, but he needs to feed his goats.
(WHISTLES)
Droughts are not new to the Horn of Africa,
but there hasn't been one quite like this.
People say that this is the worst drought in 40 years,
but that's wrong.
This is the worst drought in Somalia's history, period.
Saleban's neighbour's animals
hear the sound of leaves falling from branches,
but this little nourishment is too hard won to share.
If we go back to the 2011, 2012 famine,
it was the result of three failed rainy seasons.
We have already surpassed five.
And the sixth is on the horizon.
So it is catastrophic by all accounts.
Climate change is accelerating and intensifying.
Livestock is Somalia's biggest export industry
and a vital commodity for families.
These animals provide milk, meat, and an asset to sell
when they need cash.
Two years into this drought, the toll on Saleban's family
has been immense.
He's had to bury his wife and two children.
Once a week, Saleban and his brother have to walk for hours
to take their animals to water.
(CALLS AND WHISTLES)
This is the well on the edge of a village called Hara Sheekh,
where families have dug holes inside a dry dam bed to reach water.
(MEN CONVERSE)
(MEN CONTINUE CONVERSING)
These pastoralists are just hanging on
to their lives and their livelihoods.
Over the past two years, they've watched their animals die
by the hundreds.
The main rainy season is supposed to start right now.
And if it fails, like the last five, they could lose everything.
Here in Hara Sheekh, away from the rest of the family,
lives Saleban's 15-year-old daughter, Hinda.
When she gets home from school, she puts her books aside,
gets changed and starts work in her grandma's shop.
Nearly 2 million children in Somalia have dropped out of school
because of the drought.
Hinda fears she may be forced to join them.
Saleban wonders what their future may hold if he loses his animals.
When I was here in Somalia over 20 years ago,
66% of the Somali territory was covered in vegetation.
Today, that percentage is 17%.
This is in the span of two decades.
Is it accurate to keep referring to Somalia
as an agropastoralist country?
I don't think that description is accurate now.
With the help of international aid,
Hinda is determined to complete her education.
Her education is a source of pride
and an insurance policy against the devastating effects
of climate change.
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation