El Niño 2026–27 in the East and Horn of Africa: A predictable displacement crisis, and how to prevent it

Executive summary

El Niño is underway and strengthening over the Pacific, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) emerging, raising concern over a return of the exceptionally wet conditions seen in late 2023, when El Niño and a positive IOD brought catastrophic flooding to the Horn of Africa after years of drought. El Niño's effects are not uniform: drier-than-normal conditions are already affecting Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda and parts of Kenya, while the October-December season is expected to bring heavier rainfall and flood risk across equatorial East Africa, including southern Somalia, southern Ethiopia and much of Kenya. DRC’s El Niño Through a Displacement Lens analysis finds that current forecasts point to one of the strongest events on record through the remainder of 2026 and into early 2027. As in 2023, the humanitarian consequences will not be determined by rainfall alone: they will depend on who is exposed, how vulnerable they already are, and how much time responders have before the rains peak. For populations that are already displaced, El Niño rarely introduces an isolated new hazard. It compounds vulnerabilities that already exist, and it can trigger cascading effects across several sectors at once.