AID AGENCIES in Kenya are struggling to cope with a massive influx of refugees from Somalia, as the worst drought in East Africa since 1950 causes thousands to flee in search of food.
Some 1,300 people are arriving in Dadaab refugee camp every day, swelling the population of a site designed to accommodate 90,000 people to over 350,000.
“The number has tripled since June,” said Antoine Foridevaux, a field co-ordinator with Médecins Sans Frontières. “A few months ago they were coming with luggage, kitchen utensils and suitcases. Now they are arriving in just their bare feet.” The situation has reached crisis point, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as rising food prices and Somalia’s protracted conflict force thousands to flee. About 30,000 people arrived in June compared with 6,000 this time last year. Severe overcrowding means many are being forced onto informal settlements on the camp boundaries, with no sanitation facilities and an overburdened food distribution system.
“It’s getting worse” says Idriss Farah, a field associate with the refugee agency. “The camp is really squeezed. It was never meant to accommodate this many people.”
Her naked feet caked in dried mud, Mana Shuib (40) packs another clump of wet clay into the sides of her igloo-shaped home. She arrived with her four children on Sunday after a 20-day trek across roads riddled with bandits, and has begun making her own home in the absence of immediate attention from overstretched aid agencies. “My house in Somalia was much better. It was a permanent structure with bricks and an iron roof. The difference is that I was hungry there. Here there is food,” she says.
All her livestock, 30 goats and 10 cows have died, she says, her last possessions now crammed into her new 10ft by 10ft home. She has yet to receive official refugee status, meaning that she is not entitled to the 15-day ration of 3.15kg of flour and maize, as well as beans and vegetable oil.
The refugee agency has changed its distribution system in recent days to deal with the huge influx, but many are still borrowing money to buy food as the official recognition process for refugees can last several weeks. Until recently, people were required to wear an official badge from the UN agency to receive regular rations, although all new arrivals are now supposed to receive food.
Tom Arnold, chief executive of Concern Worldwide, said parts of the Somalia-Kenya-Ethiopia region had not had rainfall for three to four years and that the worst food problem for 20 years was emerging.
“It’s being brought about by a whole combination of factors. Drought – parts of this region have not seen rain for three or four years. That has given rise to big falls in crop sales. There have been massive losses of livestock.” And the price of grain has risen “dramatically, by 100 and 200 per cent in some cases”.
“In the early 1990s,” Mr Arnold said, “one-quarter of a million people died from starvation. And we don’t want that to happen again.”