With their es­cape route to the United States en­dan­gered by the or­ders of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, the peo­ple of So­ma­lia now face a new threat: a loom­ing famine that could bring star­va­tion to mil­lions.

Just six years af­ter a famine that killed a quar­ter of a mil­lion So­ma­lis, the United Na­tions is warn­ing that the war-rav­aged coun­try could face an­other cat­a­stro­phe this year, un­less there is a “mas­sive and ur­gent” in­crease is hu­man­i­tar­ian aid.

So­mali refugees are al­ready suf­fer­ing two other crises. A crack­down by Kenya and the United States has jeop­ar­dized their hopes of find­ing haven abroad. And a con­tin­u­ing in­sur­gency by Is­lamist mil­i­tants has made it dan­ger­ous to re­turn home.

Af­ter two con­sec­u­tive sea­sons of failed rains and widen­ing drought in So­ma­lia, hunger and mal­nu­tri­tion are spread­ing. Even as the coun­try is still re­cov­er­ing from the last famine, more than half of its en­tire pop­u­la­tion needs hu­man­i­tar­ian aid to­day, the UN says.

Since Sep­tem­ber, the num­ber of So­ma­lis need­ing hu­man­i­tar­ian as­sis­tance has in­creased from five mil­lion to 6.2 mil­lion, the UN says.

Re­lief agen­cies say the warn­ing signs in So­ma­lia to­day are sim­i­lar to those in the months be­fore the 2011 dis­as­ter – the worst famine of the 21st cen­tury. The world paid lit­tle at­ten­tion to the re­peated warn­ings is­sued by re­lief agen­cies at that time, un­til the famine struck. Only then did large-scale aid be­gin to flow. This time, agen­cies are plead­ing for donors to take ac­tion be­fore famine hits.

Chil­dren are again suf­fer­ing the worst ef­fects. About 363,000 acutely mal­nour­ished chil­dren are in des­per­ate need of “crit­i­cal nu­tri­tion sup­port,” ac­cord­ing to Pe­ter de Clercq, the UN’s hu­man­i­tar­ian co­or­di­na­tor for So­ma­lia.

This in­cludes more than 71,000 se­verely mal­nour­ished chil­dren who need life-sav­ing treat­ment, he said.

“The sit­u­a­tion we are start­ing to see in many rural ar­eas to­day … is start­ing to look wor­ry­ingly like the run-up to famine in 2010-2011,” said Richard Tren­chard, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive in So­ma­lia of the UN’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

“Most strik­ing is the pace, scale and ge­og­ra­phy of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, and the po­ten­tial for the sit­u­a­tion to be­come much, much worse,” he said in a state­ment.

“Labour prices are col­laps­ing, lo­cal food prices are ris­ing, food avail­abil­ity is be­com­ing patchy, an­i­mal deaths are in­creas­ing, and mal­nu­tri­tion rates are ris­ing, es­pe­cially among chil­dren. To­gether, these are all signs that we are en­ter­ing a phase that can lead to cat­a­stro­phe.”

Hunger, drought and war have al­ready pushed two mil­lion So­ma­lis to be­come refugees. So­ma­lia is to­day the world’s third-biggest source of refugees, be­hind only Syria and Afghanistan.

Yet their safe havens are rapidly dwin­dling. Tra­di­tion­ally they took shel­ter at the huge Dadaab camp in north­ern Kenya, one of the world’s biggest refugee camps. From there, they could seek re­set­tle­ment in the United States, Canada and other coun­tries. But now Kenya is try­ing to shut the Dadaab camp, and the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion is seek­ing to im­pose se­vere lim­its on the flow of refugees from So­ma­lia and six other Mus­lim-ma­jor­ity coun­tries.

Last month, Mr. Trump or­dered a 90-day halt in all travel to the United States by peo­ple from the seven coun­tries. A judge has over­turned the travel ban, but the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is fight­ing a le­gal bat­tle to im­pose the ban again.

Nearly 15,000 So­mali refugees at the Dadaab camp, who had planned to re­set­tle in the United States, have been stranded at the refugee camp as a re­sult of the Trump or­der. Oth­ers who were in tran­sit in Nairobi, head­ing to the United States, have been sent back to the camp.

The threat of famine could force even more So­ma­lis to flee their homes. One hu­man­i­tar­ian agency, Save the Chil­dren, is warn­ing that mil­lions of So­mali chil­dren are at risk of star­va­tion and even death un­less ur­gent aid is pro­vided by June.

Af­ter the back-to-back failed rains, So­ma­lia has been hit with se­vere wa­ter short­ages, and many fam­i­lies are forced to buy wa­ter from trucks. Some re­gions of the coun­try have en­dured the dri­est year in three decades. The price of a 200-litre bar­rel of wa­ter has tripled, while ce­real pro­duc­tion has dropped by 75 per cent and three-quar­ters of So­ma­li­a’s live­stock has died, ac­cord­ing to a re­port by Save the Chil­dren.

“With the spring rains ex­pected to be much lower than av­er­age, we have a small win­dow to stop what hap­pened in 2011 from hap­pen­ing again – but that win­dow is quickly shut­ting,” said a state­ment by Has­san Saadi Noor, the agen­cy’s coun­try di­rec­tor in So­ma­lia.

To avert an­other famine, the UN is urg­ing the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity to raise $300-mil­lion (U.S.) in emer­gency funds for So­ma­lia by April.