Climate change is turbo-charging Somalia’s problems – but there’s still hope

The entwined impacts of climate and conflict have created a huge reservoir of potential recruits for the country’s many conflicts.

Those in the camps are desperate for money, and the easiest work to come by – according to the people I spoke to – is as a paid fighter with one of the many rival armies.

One woman told me of her fears for her husband and four of her five sons after they became fighters with a local militia.

“They are rural people with no skills, so the only work they could get was in the army,” Halima Ibrahim Ali Mohamud said as we sat on carpets laid over the dirt floor of her hut.

“They were desperate, and when you are without food long enough, and your children are looking at you, you will do anything.”

As we went from shack to shack, mothers told us similar stories of husbands and sons who had left to become fighters, some of whom had been killed.