Giving Compass' Take:

• Devex reports on the growing humanitarian crisis in Somalia, Kenya and other East African nations, where food security is low, droughts are constant and diseases plague the population.

• Aid organizations are having a tough time keeping up with each crisis, which is why funding and a more coordinated and focused humanitarian relief effort is needed.

• Meanwhile, refugees fleeing the Horn of Africa are finding more peril in Yemen.

The weather is out of whack in the Horn of Africa. The rains don’t come when they should, and when they do, they pour. Some farming knowledge passed down from generation to generation has become obsolete. Farmers don’t know when to plant because the seasons have shifted. It’s a different climate, and there are new rules.

The ground was parched for more than a year as a drought crippled the region, causing massive human displacement. In 2017, more than 1.3 million people were displaced in the region by weather-related disasters. Then, finally, the rains came. But they were heavy, and with the parched earth unable to absorb the water, turned into floods that broke dams and washed away homes. This month, the biggest storm to hit the region in years, Cyclone Sagar, brought strong winds and torrential rains.

“The problems we have in the Horn of Africa circle around water. Either we have too much of it, or too little of it,” said Davies Okoko, regional emergency response manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council. “We are always playing ball with the two extremes.”

People struggle to recover from one calamity, only to face another. This has left the humanitarian sector scrambling to respond to crisis after crisis, with no end in sight. And this could well be the region’s new normal.

Read the full article about crises in the Horn of Africa by Sara Jerving at Devex International Development.