By Abdirashid Nur - Freelance Journalist and Communication Strategist
Opening:
“We did not choose to live in a plastic tent,” says 67-year-old Maryan Ali, recalling how drought, hunger, and armed violence forced her family to flee their rural home. Her story opens a wider examination of how climate change and conflict have become intertwined drivers of displacement across Somalia.
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The harsh midday sun bearing down, unrelenting, on the arid, volcanic wasteland, Maryan Ali, 67, is sitting outside her home, in Camp Mogadishu. Her home is merely a fragile collection of bush, assembled from dry twigs, rags of old clothing, and plastic shopping bags. As the matriarch of the family, Maryan spends her days salvaging her husband’s and her children’s lives. Maryan Ali’s farming family used to live a peaceful, self-sufficient life in the rural sections of Somalia; those days are now just melancholy memories buried in the dust of time.
“We did not choose to live in a plastic tent,” Maryan says with a defiant voice that betrays her anger. “First the rain went away, then the sky got sunny. Our livestock started to die. Then men with weapons came to our village to take our food. We had to go to the dark forests to escape with our children.”
Like all displaced rural Somalis, Maryan’s family is not alone in this. Maryan’s family represents millions of Somalis trapped in the multiple emergencies of climate collapse and violent instability. The Climate-Conflict-Nexus describes these situations.
Blood and Water in the Central Rangelands#
Displacement in Somalia is the result of several bad climatic conditions, erratic violent episodes of armed behavior, and unrelenting global warming. First is the economic collapse of rural farming and pastoralism due to climate change. A chronic pattern of extreme drought followed by violent flooding breaks the already failed attempts at rural farming and pastoralism. As the cows and crops withered, people become desperate. Desperation deteriorates into localized violent conflicts and clashes among pastoralist clans over communal resources, especially water. This situation has become particularly violent in the central parts of Somalia, where several conflicts over the reduction of grazing lands have already led to deaths.
Yusuf Qansaar, a traditional nomadic herdsman from Galgaduud, is quite familiar with the consequences of such an ecological conflict.
“During droughts, there is no law, only water searching,” explains Qansaar, whose eyes betray the sadness he has witnessed over the years. “But when the rain comes back and new naqa start to grow, the risks are not over yet. The clans fight over grazing rights on this new land. I have been forced to bury members of my family and longtime neighbors because a minor quarrel over a water point and a piece of land became a shooting war. The weather robs us of our livestock and the conflicts rob us of our people.”
Militia organizations like Al-Shabaab are well aware of how to exploit such desperation for their gain. In places where the environment has been destroyed, these groups use food and water scarcity as weapons. They manipulate the food and water distribution systems to force communities to submit to them, or they provide a little food to those who are hungry and unemployed to attract young herders. For families like Maryan’s, the only option was to either slowly die of starvation or lose their sons to the militia groups.
Frontline Organizations’ Numbers on the Crisis#
The misery that occurs in these dust-blown camps is also supported by hefty statistics from frontline monitoring organizations. Climate disasters and prolonged droughts are some of the major causes of displacement. Seventy-five percent of new cases of displacement in southern and central Somalia can be attributed to climate disasters and prolonged droughts. According to data from ReliefWeb, 64% of internally displaced people were displaced because of climate disasters. The other 36% were displaced due to armed conflicts and the imposition of taxes by armed groups.
The combination of these events has forced a total of 3.3 million people to move into unplanned mega-settlements located on the outskirts of the cities of Mogadishu, Baidoa, and Kismayo. This has caused a breakdown of water and sanitation systems. The recent drought in the Mudug region caused 21,000 people to be displaced into Galkayo in just four days.
Migrating to the outskirts of Mogadishu, the IDP settlements continue to expand.
Worsening the problem is the lack of international aid. The Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for Somalia of 2026 is grossly underfunded, causing relief organizations to cut down on vital food, water, and medical assistance in the camps. According to nutritional analysis, around 1.84 million children under the age of five remain at risk of acute malnutrition. Overcrowded camps are also experiencing recurrent outbreaks of Acute Watery Diarrhea and cholera.
The Quest for Dignity#
From living the life of a proud, independent villager to becoming a refugee in a congested displacement camp brings severe physical and structural vulnerability. People live in fear all the time. As mentioned in UNFPA Somalia reports, women, girls, and elderly people in these makeshift camps are increasingly experiencing security problems owing to the steep decline in international humanitarian aid. Besides, displaced communities are threatened with eviction by private landowners on a regular basis.
To break the vicious cycle of displacement requires moving beyond humanitarian relief and assisting displaced persons in achieving permanent solutions. Local authorities are slowly realizing that temporary teendho xeryo will never solve the problem.
“Our vision for durable solutions goes beyond responding to displacement—it is about restoring dignity, livelihoods, and opportunity,” said Zahra Abdi, Director General of the National Center for Rural Development and Durable Solutions.
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“Many displaced Somalis are pastoralists and rural communities who have been forced from their homes by drought, conflict, and environmental degradation. Lasting solutions therefore require us to strengthen rural resilience by investing in livelihoods, natural resource management, basic services, and climate adaptation in the areas people come from and return to. By linking displacement with rural development, we are creating the conditions for voluntary, safe, and dignified reintegration, where every Somali can fully exercise their rights, including access to land, education, healthcare, and sustainable livelihoods.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change is trying to rehabilitate rural areas to prevent mass migration into urban centers.
Turning Obstacles into Opportunities#
The path to finding proper solutions to the problem of displaced herders is fraught with difficulties. The biggest obstacle is financing. While the international community pours millions of dollars into food aid whenever a crisis erupts, little effort is invested in securing permanent water supplies. Furthermore, complicated land policies and inadequate protection in cities continue to expose displaced families to eviction.
Solutions require a fundamental rethink.
The Real Resource Re-alignment: Donors and the government need to shift from reactive humanitarian responses to proactive investments by constructing water reservoirs in rural areas, distributing drought-resistant seeds, and establishing weather early-warning systems that enable communities to survive droughts without migrating to cities.
Institutionalized Land Reform: Municipal authorities should provide displaced families with legal land ownership rights for the land they occupy, allowing permanent neighborhoods free from the constant threat of eviction.
Decentralization of Security and Governance: The government must protect rural communities and grazing lands so development can take root while denying militant groups the opportunity to exploit resource scarcity.
Regional Cross-Border Frameworks: Since climate impacts and pastoralist migration do not respect international borders, Somalia should work through IGAD to establish regional frameworks for cross-border resource sharing and pastoral mobility across the Horn of Africa.
Hope Amidst the Dust#
Despite the difficult conditions in the camps, the resilience of displaced communities remains strong. Women have established savings groups and community security networks, demonstrating that communities can become self-reliant if provided with basic support.
“We lost our soil and our animals, but we did not lose our hands and our minds,” says Maryan Ali while watching her children play in the dust around their tent. “All we need from the government is safety and a tiny plot of land that will belong to us. My children will finally attend school and farm this land.”
The situation in Somalia may appear bleak, but there is hope for change. By supporting the resilience of people like Maryan and Yusuf, implementing the Kampala Convention, and strengthening regional cooperation through IGAD, Somalia has an opportunity to transform an era of displacement and survival into one of peace, resilience, and sustainable development.
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Abdirashid Nur, is a freelance Journalist and Communication Strategist.
*The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dawan Africa.