No relief in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp
August 30 (Al Jazeera) – As Muslims around the world mark the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, many Somali Muslims will not be able to participate due to the ongoing famine in the Horn of Africa. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis, threatened by drought and civil war, have wound up at Dadaab – the world’s largest refugee camp. Situated on the Kenyan-Somali border, the Dadaab complex comprises three refugee camps – Dagaheley, Ifo and Hagadera. Spanning an area of 50km, the camps are designed to host a total of 90,000 people. However, with a population of 440,000 hungry refugees, Dabaab houses nearly five times more people than its infrastructure is supposed to handle. And with drought threatening 12 million people throughout the Horn of Africa, the numbers are growing. Al Jazeera’s Azad Essa, reporting from Dadaab, said that despite aid agencies claiming that the number of new arrivals had reduced to around 800 per day from a high of 1500-1800 arrivals per day in July, little on the ground has changed. “A few thousand have moved to the new Ifo camp, but thousands still remain on the outskirts, living in squalor conditions. “Agencies have now begun operating in the Somali border town Dobley, and this has reduced the number of refugees entering Kenya. But the fact that hundreds still continue to arrive every day suggests that firstly, the agencies in Dobley are overburdened and secondly, those fleeing might still think they are safer off in Dadaab. “The danger of course is to think that since the story and focus has now moved on to Somalia, the epicentre of the crisis, that conditions here in Dadaab might have improved … because they have not.” East Africa’s worst drought in 60 years has wreaked havoc on war-torn Somalia and parts of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. The situation has deteriorated so badly that the UN has declared a famine in five regions of Somalia. UN officials say the drought has killed tens of thousands of people over the past few months, forcing desperate survivors to walk for weeks in search of food and water. Many famine victims travel between Somalia and Kenya seeking food and shelter – walking along a road that French Minister Bruno Le Maire has described as “a road of hope, but also a road of death”. Aid agencies estimate that up to 800 children, braving rapists and thieves, flee Somalia for Kenya’s camps every day. Many arrive unaccompanied. UN refugee agency chief Antonion Guterres has called the plight of the refugees “the worst humanitarian tragedy” in the world today. […]
