June 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A drought unparalleled in recent decades, devastating floods and the jihadist violence that has plagued Somalia for years is close to causing a health and human catastrophe in the already saturated Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, the human settlement of these characteristics, the largest on the planet.
The five enclaves that make up the Dadaab refugee camp host more than 300,000 people, most of them from neighboring Somalia. The facilities have been overwhelmed, causing severe overcrowding, which affects sanitation and the supply of drinking water.
The already precarious conditions in the Dadaab camp have been unable to cope with this increase in population. Daily activities related to the use of water –consumption, sanitation, waste management– have been limited, causing an outbreak of cholera that already affects some 2,800 people, according to estimates by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF). in a last report.
“We have already seen the worst cholera outbreak in five years, and the risk of other epidemics breaking out is high. If this happens, it would overwhelm medical capacity in the camps, with potentially catastrophic consequences,” warned the director of MSF in Kenya, Hassan Maiyaki.
Currently, the Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera camps host more than 245,000 registered people, many of whom have lived in the camps for more than three decades. The camps are also home to more than 124,000 unregistered refugees.
This saturation has caused a deficit of essential services and a saturation of cleaning and sanitation services. This means that almost half of the population of these three camps do not have access to latrines. “It is a matter of time before we see other epidemics break out in the fields, such as hepatitis E,” warns the MSF coordinator in Kenya, Dr. Nitya Udayraj.
The Government of Kenya, in addition to the vaccination campaigns against cholera, has announced the opening of a new field –Ifo 2–, in an attempt to alleviate the oversaturation of the other three.
Although the measure has been applauded, Maiyaki has warned that all efforts in this regard must take into account a “significant” investment in water, sanitation and hygiene services to guarantee a minimum of habitable conditions for people refugees.
In addition to refugees, the Horn of Africa country has more than a million internally displaced people who have been forced from their homes in just half a year by this deadly combination of extreme weather and violence. In January and May 2023, some 408,000 people fled the floods, while 312,000 did so because of the drought, according to figures from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
ETHIOPIA, ANOTHER RECEPTION CENTER WITHOUT RESOURCES
However, Kenya is not the only country in the region facing the flight of Somali citizens. Ethiopia, also immersed in its own internal conflicts, has also become a center of refuge for thousands of these people, with the added difficulty of the growing lack of financing and the ravages that a severe drought has also left behind.
UNHCR estimates that some 100,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, fleeing the violence, of which more than 20,000 have been relocated together with the Ethiopian government and the UN agency in a new settlement in Mirqaan, some 50 kilometers from the border, while the rest, and despite the scarce local resources, have been welcomed by the surrounding communities.
The lack of resources continues to be the main problem faced by international organizations when it comes to being able to help all these people. UNHCR has regretted that only 2 percent of a total of 116 million dollars has been requested from the international community to be able to face this crisis. “The resources are simply insufficient,” said a representative of this UN office in Ethiopia, Mamadou Dian Balde.
And insists. “We are on the verge of a crisis with more human suffering if we fail to provide the support that is so badly needed (…) We cannot forget about them and the generous communities that have opened their doors,” Balde claimed.
