Supermodel fears for ‘forgotten’ Somalia
Somali-born fashion model and entrepreneur Iman says the much of the world has ‘given up on Somalia’.
Since she left Somalia as a teenager, fashion icon Iman has been back to her homeland many times during the country’s crises.
“I was there in 1992 with a BBC crew making a dcocumentary, and I don’t want to take anything away from that famine, but this is much, much worse,” Iman told Al Jazeera in a live interview from New York.
The UN’s World Food Programme said on Friday it was still unable to reach 2.2 million hungry people living in areas of southern Somalia controlled by al-Shabaab, a rebel group whose bloody campaign to topple the government has cost more than 20,000 lives.
These problems and a lack of aid from the international community has Iman worried that the current drought and famine “will wipe out a whole generation of [Somali] children”.
Al Jazeera spoke to Somali-American model, entrepreneur and activist Iman about what she calls the “humanitarian crisis” in her native land.