Somali refugees get UAE aid supplies

UAE Red Crescent Authority and Khalifa Foundation distribute
food supplies of rice, maize, cookin oil, and dates to refugees at
a camp in Mogadishu

Mogadishu: The UAE aid and rescue team has started handing out emergency humanitarian aid to refugees in Somalia.

Thousands of people affected by drought and famine in the Horn of Africa were given food supplies.

The team, which includes the Red Crescent Authority, and the Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Humanitarian Foundation, launched the first phase of the plan to ward off the shadow of famine in Somalia.

The plan targets refugees in camps around Mogadishu which house tens of thousands of refugees who have fled their drought-stricken regions and arrived at the camps in bad condition as a result of hunger and thirst.

The UAE food aid convoy delivered relief supplies to the refugee camp six kilometres away from the capital Mogadishu. The supplies included rice, maize, cooking oil and dates.

The team members met with the refugees who talked about their additional needs. Fresh aid convoys will aim to cover those in need as well as other refugee camps in Somalia.

Mohammad Ahmad Nour Trsen, Mogadishu's governor who accompanied the UAE aid convoy, said there were 350,000 refugees distributed in 55 camps all over the capital.

The UAE team also found that the refugee camps lacked basic health and hygiene facilities due to overcrowding. Most children suffered from acute malnutrition.

MSF demands an end to delays and restrictions for Somalis needing aid and refuge

In light of the worsening nutritional crisis in Somalia, the international medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) urges all parties inside Somalia, neighbouring countries and the international community to significantly improve assistance to the Somali population in the region and remove all the hurdles that are currently preventing the expansion of independent aid inside Somalia.

The current crisis is mostly affecting Somalis. To assess the full needs of the population in Somalia, and to expand the emergency response in this complex environment, independent and immediate access inside Somalia is essential.

With limited assistance available in Somalia, thousands of Somalis are arriving each week at camps in the border areas of neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia. MSF teams report extremely high malnutrition rates amongst new arrivals, with one child out of three suffering from acute malnutrition. Together with their families, they face long delays in receiving aid because of an official ‘closed border’ policy, and because of administrative hurdles at reception sites in the camps, before having to compete for the limited aid available in overstretched, chaotic and overpopulated refugee camps such as Dadaab in Kenya and Dolo Ado in Ethiopia.

Throughout the affected region, MSF is treating over 10,000 severely malnourished children in its feeding centres and clinics. “Every affected person should receive aid, inside Somalia or when fleeing to neighbouring countries,” says Jean Clément Cabrol, MSF’s Director of Operations. “Kenya and Ethiopia host the vast majority of Somali refugees and should prioritise the opening of new camps and improve the existing ones. But the international community has a shared responsibility to help Somalis seeking refuge by ensuring efficient registration, adequate food rations and shelter in existing and new camps. The current bureaucratic restrictions and obstacles are causing unnecessary delays and all measures should be taken to respond to the emergency.”

Weakened by 20 years of armed conflict, the condition of the Somali population is aggravated by failed harvests due to drought, by dying livestock and by high food prices. Ongoing restrictions on the movement of international aid workers and on the supply lines of their organisations have further delayed and limited the aid available to the population. “Our feeding centres are operating beyond their original capacity and, compared to last year, are receiving weekly up to seven times more patients in certain locations,” says Arjan Hehenkamp, MSF’s General Director. “We are currently treating more than 3,000 malnourished children inside Somalia: some 600 children under the age of five in intensive therapeutic feeding centres, and more than 2,500 children in ambulatory feeding centres. We urgently need to get more resources in to help all those new arrivals and increase our response in all affected regions.” In various locations, such as in the Lower Juba Valley, spontaneous camps are emerging, populated by up to 5,000 people at a time who have fled their villages and rural areas in search of food and help.

“Fighting in Somalia, restrictions on supply flights and international support staff, and administrative hurdles have all contributed to the current hardship faced by the Somali population today,” says Unni Karunakara, MSF’s International President. “It is essential that both restrictions and obstacles to humanitarian aid are removed as the situation continues to worsen.”

MSF has worked continuously in Somalia since 1991 and currently provides free medical care in eight regions of southern Somalia. Over 1,400 Somali staff, supported by approximately 100 staff in Nairobi, provide free primary healthcare, malnutrition treatment, healthcare and support to displaced people, surgery, and distributions of water and relief supplies in nine locations in South Central Somalia.

MSF does not accept any government funding for its projects in Somalia; all of its funding comes from private donors.

For interview requests, please contact MSF UK Press Officer, Heather Whelan, on heather.whelan@london.msf.org or +44 7770 235 740.

Somali women tend to their children, who are being treated for severe malnutrition, at a hospital operated by the International Rescue Committee, in Hagadera Camp, Kenya.

17 July 2011, Sunday / KATY MIGIRO, WAJI

One-year-old Siad Abdikadir was so weak that he could not support his own head, resting it on his mother’s heavily pregnant stomach.

He squirmed occasionally, trying to remove the feeding tube from his nose. But mostly he was quiet, motionless and exhausted. The malnourished children filling northern Kenya’s Wajir District Hospital represent a fraction of the millions of nomads across the region struggling to maintain their traditional lifestyles in the face of recurring, severe droughts. “I saw he was deteriorating. He had diarrhea, vomiting, fever, mouth ulcers and a cough,” said his mother, 28-year-old Habiba Ibrahim. “But I had six other children at home and no one to take care of them.” Siad’s family are what are known locally as ‘dropouts’ from the pastoralist ethnic Somali community that lives in Wajir, 600 km (373 miles) from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. His father is a casual laborer, earning 400 Kenya shillings ($4.50) a day when he can find work. “Life became very hard,” said Ibrahim, swatting a fly away from her baby’s eye. “Work was reliable before but casual workers became too many.” Destitutes beg for food Ten million people across the Horn of Africa are going hungry as the livestock upon which they depend die off because of severe drought, according to the United Nations. In northern Kenya, towns have mushroomed as destitute families camp on the outskirts, hoping that well-wishers will give them food and water. They are mostly women, children and the elderly. The young men have migrated to Somalia and neighboring districts with their few surviving animals, although the situation is little better there. “This is the only meal the family is eating today,” said Fatuma Ahmed, cooking pancakes for her seven children as the sun rose. “If I get a meal from well-wishers, I cook for the children. If I don’t, we sleep hungry,” the 38-year-old widow said, crouched inside her dome-shaped stick shelter. Somalis’ culture and Islamic faith oblige them to share the little that they have. “When you go home, you meet people waiting  to share your lunch,” said Mohamed Dahiye, a nurse in Wajir hospital. “You don’t even know them, but you have to respond.” MPs ‘blind to the dying’ With recurrent droughts and growing populations, pastoralism is becoming untenable without massive investment to support it. Columns of dust spin over the barren landscape, littered with carcasses and abandoned villages. Roads are just sandy tracks snaking between grey thorn bushes. There is no mobile phone network outside the major towns. The region has been neglected since the colonial era. “MPs are blind to people dying,” said Osman Salat, a Nairobi businessman who came to give some money to his relatives, referring to the region’s lawmakers. The soil is fertile and irrigation could make farming viable. But development is expensive. Simply installing a borehole costs 5 million shillings ($56,000). Budgets are consumed by the current crisis. The charity World Vision has been trucking life-saving water to 24 communities in Habaswein District since December, at a cost of 250,000 shillings a day, according to project manager Jacob Alemu. Dahiye, the nurse, said people needed to consider the future. “Instead of looking for the root cause, we are mostly being fed with relief food,” she said. “This will not take us forward. We should sit and look for long term solutions.” Some pastoralists are starting to send their children to school, hoping that education will offer them choices that their parents never had. “The time of moving around with animals is fading,” said 49-year-old Dekow Farah, who settled in Fini village nine months ago. Farah had spent his entire life traversing Kenya with his livestock, looking for pasture and water, with the family’s possessions strapped to their camels’ backs. Now, two of his nine children, Zakaria, nine, and Abdi, six, are attending the local government school, a simple hut made of sticks in the middle of the village. “Because of droughts like this one, it’s good to settle down and take the children to school so they can learn how to cope with the modern world,” he said. “I don’t see a future in the nomadic way of life.” In the last year, he lost 450 sheep and goats, six cattle and two camels to the drought. He had 50 sheep and goats and two camels left. “I settled here so that I can get aid from the government or non-governmental organizations and I might get casual work,” he said, chewing on a stick. He hadn’t found either yet but he was philosophical: “Everything has a time limit and one day we are going to get out of this problem, God willing.” Reuters Millions at risk of cholera in Ethiopia, WHO warns  Five million people are at risk of cholera in drought-hit Ethiopia, where acute watery diarrhoea has broken out in crowded, unsanitary conditions, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. Cholera, an acute intestinal infection, causes watery diarrhoea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly given, according to the United Nations agency. “Overall, 8.8 million people are at risk of malaria and 5 million of cholera (in Ethiopia),” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in a note sent to journalists. Ethiopian health officials have confirmed cases of acute watery diarrhoea in the Somali, Afar and Oromiya regions of Ethiopia, he told Reuters. “It is not confined to the refugees.” Drought across the Horn of Africa, now affecting more than 11 million people in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia, has increased the risk of the spread of infectious diseases, especially polio, cholera and measles, the WHO says. Somalis fleeing severe drought and intensified fighting have been arriving at the rate of more than 1,700 a day in Ethiopia, where 4.5 million people now need assistance, nearly a 50 percent rise since April, he said. Two million children in Ethiopia are at risk of catching measles, a disease that can be deadly in children, he said. Ethiopian officials reported 17,584 measles cases and 114 deaths during the first half of the year, UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said. The majority of cases were in children. Measles has also broken out in the sprawling Kenyan Dadaab camps, with 462 cases confirmed including 11 deaths, Jasarevic said. Dadaab, an overcrowded complex of three camps, now holds some 440,000 refugees, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.Geneva Reuters Soucre: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-250673-starving-kenyan-children-trapped-between-two-worlds.html

Rising death toll feared as drought spreads

NAIROBI, 11 July 2011 (IRIN) - Civil society groups are rallying together to help the vulnerable as the drought ravaging Somalia spreads to hitherto unaffected areas, amid concerns that hunger-related deaths are dramatically increasing. 

"We are knocking on every door to collect help; nothing is too small," Asha Sha'ur Ugas, a member of a civil society drought committee, told IRIN. "Many people have already died and many more will die if help does not arrive soon - and by soon I mean right now." She said they were already getting reports of people who died on the way and "ones who died after they reached Mogadishu [the capital]", adding, "most of the deaths were children and very weak adults, such as the elderly, pregnant and lactating mothers". She said civil society officials were appealing to Somalis at home and abroad to help. Ugas said in Mogadishu, school-children, market women and businesses had been donating whatever they could. She said civil society groups were prepared to deliver relief aid to any region or area "no matter who was in control. We are prepared to go anywhere in the country if that would help the needy." She urged agencies willing to help to use whatever means to access those in need. "I am well aware that it is not easy accessing some of the most vulnerable areas but agencies should not shy away from using unorthodox methods to get to them," she said. "We can help, elders can help and women in those areas can also help. "We have not seen anything like this in decades; in the past, we had droughts but those affected only some regions, this is affecting more regions than ever before." She added that the current drought was worse than that of 1992, better known as "Caga Barar" (swollen feet), because of its scope. "Caga Barar was mainly confined to the Bay and Bakol areas [southern Somalia]," she said. "This one has much greater reach."

Al-Shabab about-turn 

Most of southern and central Somalia, where the drought is worst, is under the control of the Islamist Al-Shabab group. In the past, it banned aid agencies in areas under its control but recently announced that "both Muslim and non-Muslim agencies are welcome to help". Warning that thousands of people could die in the absence of immediate humanitarian assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that 80 percent of the 476,000 malnourished children in Somalia – up from 376,000 at the start of 2011 – live in areas controlled by Al-Shabab. One aid worker in Mogadishu said few had faith in the group's announcement. "On the one hand they are saying agencies are welcome and on the other hand they are trying to stop desperate people leaving areas under their control, to look for help," the aid worker said. A civil society source, who requested anonymity, said times were desperate and "we need to take them at their word if we are going to save lives. We have nothing to lose by calling their bluff... If they are genuine, then it is a win-win situation." Ibrahim Isak Yarrow, the acting Minister of Interior of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and a member of a ministerial drought committee, said the situation was extremely bad and "will probably get worse". Noting that more and more people displaced by the drought were coming to Mogadishu, Yarrow said: "Our estimates are [that] in the last few days, between 5,500 and 6,000 families [33,000 and 36,000 people] have arrived." He said the number of new arrivals was expected to reach 10,000 families [60,000 people] by month-end. The government has appealed for assistance. "We are working on an appeal document right now." A local journalist in the north of Mogadishu told IRIN most of the earlier drought-displaced were from southern Somalia, "but we are seeing a new influx from the central regions". Many of the new arrivals were in a terrible state. "Every family seems to have lost a loved on the trek to the city or immediately upon arrival." He said the drought-displaced was settling in abandoned buildings across the city while others were building temporary shelters in open fields. The trouble, he said, was that the new arrivals were settling sometimes in contested areas of the city, "making it difficult to reach them". 

ah/mw