And extremists take advantage causing more problems.

All these situations wouldn't happen if the UN did its job. Get back to work UN. You are a good organization but not doing enough lately.

In every unlucky country that gets heaps of food sent for a crisis, it inevitably gets guarded and often distributed by guys with gun, military or otherwise. And there's always a 'take' in it. UN troops are helpful when they're there, but that's not commonly the case.

If you know someone who has worked a 3rd world distribution outlet, ask them about it.
Drivers, guards and the guys on the back of the truck and their families and contacts....

I'd better stop here. Talk to friends who've volunteered.

I mean that non-facetiously. The UN looks at diplomatic solutions to international problems, and then will look at solutions in cases of humanitarian crisis in failed states. The problem is that Somalia is the latter, and the way that you fix a failed state is likely by sending people in to fix it, and in order to fix it, you need to enforce your fix. That means that you send in guys with guns, and... wait... it feels like we've been here before...

I'm not offering a solution, but "it's the UN's problem" isn't either.

And if we send food to Somalia, they'll have even more.

But I always wonder why, in a country that's had repeated famines due to drought and is now suffering from a nearly 25-year-long civil war, we set the stop watch for last year in evaluating circumstances. And then, as soon as the problem's over, we turn off the stop watch and pretend all's fine.

When I was born the population of Somalia was under 3 million. Now it's pushing 11 million. In other words, there's far, far more food available in Somalia now than was necessary to avoid the "food insecurity" called famine in 1992. If they merely had "enough" food for 1992, there'd be mass starvations and pictures of hundreds of kids in each refugee camp suffering from kwashiorkor because of the population increase since then.

It's had famines every 10-20 years since time immemorial. Yet even during war, and as soon as the 1992 famine was over, the population skyrocketed. As though there'd never be another famine and countries where the cost of having a child is too high continue to outsource, in effect, their funding of a significant population increase. Aid continues to subsidize more population with little done to say, "Look, every 10-20 years you run out of food. Perhaps more than tripling your population in 65 years was a damned foolish, selfish, and lethal decision to make, and if you want to continue to get our help you first have to stop sticking that stick called 'increasing population' in both your eye and ours."

Oh, wait. It's because calling for zero population increase on those so utterly dependent on others' help for survivor would be called "genocide," no doubt.

They do have one of the highest birth rates in the world: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2054rank.html

But people with barely enough food cannot afford contraception either. And having sex is a basic human behaviour; they're not going to give that up (one of the few pleasures left to them, too).

Some women would not want the contraception, but many would jump at the chance of not having another baby when things are tough. But Dubya fucked things up in international aid:

Africa is probably the most overly exploited continents in the world and still suffer due to poverty and lack of infrastructure and natural resources. To learn more about the living of the African humanitarian trips like voyage humanitaire are organized to improve literacy by educating them, help to protect the wildlife and gain unparalleled insight into the local community by living with them.