Paddy Ashdown writes today at Comment is Free on the urgent need to help famine-stricken Somalia – a situation which has been overshadowed in the news by more sensational events.

The problem when a child is dying from starvation is that they can’t wait. They can’t put their hunger on pause until the glare of the media decides to turn its spotlight on them and help spread the word that children are dying. Instead, they will slowly starve to death.

This is exactly what is happening to nearly 2 million children in Somalia right now. Nearly half of these children are already on the critical list, inching further away from life as every hour slips by. By the time you read this, it may already be too late for some.

In today’s newspapers – from front to back – I was hoping to see the media use their power and influence to tell this story. I hoped to see headlines shouting that millions of women and children in Somalia, and across the entire Horn of Africa, are struggling for survival and need the British public to help.

But I didn’t. Instead, my eyes were blurred with articles of shaving foam and hacking scandals, as talk about the dire need for nutritional supplies for children who need their lives saved slipped into the footnotes.

And now, the situation has reached crisis point. This morning the UN officially declared that famine exists in Somalia and that the lives of nearly half of the Somali population – 3.7 million people – are now in crisis.

Paddy goes on to describe the severity of the disaster and the role of the media in responding to it.

Read the full article at Comment is Free.

To donate to the Disasters Emergency Committee East Africa appeal, text the word AFRICA to 70000.

To donate online, visit the DEC website.