Women and children collect water from a water truck provided by Takuulo Somaliland Community, with UNICEF support, in a displacement camp in Ainabo, in the Sool region of Somaliland.

Women, children and people with disabilities remain highly vulnerable, with gender-based violence and child recruitment continuing to undermine well-being in 2019.

An estimated 5.2 million people, including 2.6 million displaced persons and 3.2 million children, will require humanitarian assistance in 2020.

support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services.

UNICEF is supporting the Government of Angola’s response through child-centered ‘safe havens,’ including 'safe haven schools', which will focus on ensuring the most vulnerable communities can access integrated health, nutrition, water, sanitation and protection services. UNICEF is also leading the nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene component of interventions funded by the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), with an estimated 341,565 children to be assisted in nutrition. So far, 58,217 have been screened, with 4,384 admitted into treatment with severe acute malnutrition.

“Water is the world’s boss,”

Fourteen-year-old Naime Cekupe is one of the young people  whose education has been disrupted by the drought. She wants to be a teacher one day. But right now, her chores mean she is regularly forced to miss school.

“I have students who have to get up at 1 a.m. to take animals somewhere for water, and they don’t get back home until 5 a.m.”

Of Cunene province’s 887 primary schools, 614 have been affected by the drought in some way, seriously disrupting the education of around 70 per cent of the province’s 214,000 students.

An estimated 2.3 million people are affected by the ongoing drought in southern Angola’s Namibe, Huila, Bie and Cunene provinces, nearly half a million of whom are children under 5 years old.