Drought and floods drove them from their homes. But hunger and poverty have followed them to a Mogadishu camp

More than 6.5 million Somalis have been pushed to the brink of severe hunger as the climate crisis, fighting and cuts in aid leave a trail of despair

For three years, Zeynab Ibrahim watched as her little town shrivelled up and died. The rains never came, the reservoirs were depleted and the farms gradually turned to dust. Hunger and sickness swept through the village, claiming the lives of many, including four of Ibrahim’s 10 children.

“We tried every means to survive – selling dried grass and digging up water from the barren earth. Unfortunately, there was nothing left, so we had no choice but to escape to save our children,” she says, sitting in front of her shelter in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in the Kahda district of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.