I think now, we in the international community are belatedly wanting to show our solidarity with the Somali peoples and also do our best to help them move to better times.

I have been working, as emergency relief coordinator, on an international scale, very hard to build a wider alliance of partners in assistance efforts.

In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.

Increasingly gang violence and organized crime, together with climate change-driven natural disasters, are displacing more people as wars are fewer on the continent and political violence has decreased considerably, the NRC has decided to treat this as a humanitarian crisis.

It's a cruel reality. But after a week, very few people survive.

I think now, we in the international community are belatedly wanting to show our solidarity with the Somali peoples and also do our best to help them move to better times.

We need better coordination on the international side, just as they need better and more effective efforts on the Somali side. We have too many reconstruction and development assistance plans.