Aid Crisis As Somalis Flock to Refugee Camp

28 June 2011

Nairobi — An estimated 1,300 Somali refugees are swarming the Dadaab refugee camp daily, a humanitarian agency has said.

Save the Children has warned that Kenya’s biggest refugee camp at Dadaab was overwhelmed by refugees, some of whom had trekked for hundreds of miles to reach aid.

Around 20,000 have arrived at the Dadaab camp in the last two weeks, many having walked for more than a month across Somalia, Ethiopia and eastern and northern Kenya.

The organisation reported that every day, about 1,300 people — at least 800 of them children — arrive at the Dadaab refugee camp.

The monthly number of new arrivals has more than doubled in a year, it says. Aid workers at the camp say the children are exhausted, malnourished and severely dehydrated.

The conflict in Somalia forces many to head for the Kenyan border, but a severe drought and the unaffordable cost of food has made the situation worse.

Although made up of three settlements, Dadaab is the largest refugee camp in the world. It is home to well over 350,000 people.

“We are seeing around 1,300 people arriving in Dadaab every day, some in incredibly dire situations,” said the director of Save the Children’s Kenya programme, Catherine Fitzgibbon.

“Children have made long journeys in terrifying conditions, often losing their families on the way and arriving at the camps in desperate need of security, health care and a normal life,” Ms Fitzgibbon said.

North Eastern PC James ole Seriani told the Nation on phone that the situation is “severe”, but added that the Kenyan authorities were assisting the refugees on humanitarian grounds.

“The drought is very harsh in Somalia, but we also have the problem of insecurity, which makes the situation severe,” Mr ole Seriani said.

He said the government was also fast-racking the registration of the Somali refugees.

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