WUNRN
Human Rights Watch Report:
Kenya’s Forgotten Somali Refugee Crisis
Women & Children
Direct Link to Photos:
Direct Link to Full Report:
Human Rights Watch Press Release
Excerpt:
Dadaab's
camps are in the midst of an appalling sanitation crisis; the camps faced a
cholera outbreak in February and have had others in previous years. The refugee
agency estimates that more than 36,000 latrines and washing facilities are
needed to reach minimum standards. A recent Oxfam report found that thousands
of refugees have no access at all to the camps' poorly maintained latrines and
that most women and children - half the camps' population - are rarely able to
use them because they are not segregated by sex and because of overcrowding.
____________________________________________________________
Website Links:
From
Horror to Hopelessness
Kenya’s
Forgotten Somali Refugee Crisis
March 30, 2009
This 58-page report documents the extortion, detention, violence, and
deportation at the hands of the Kenyan police faced by a record number of
Somalis entering
View the slide show, Kenya: Abuse and Neglect of Somali Refugees
_____________________________________________________________________
March 9, 2009
OneWorld US, OneWorld UK, Human
Rights Watch, IRIN
An estimated 9,000 internally displaced people in Merka,
Somalia are facing a food and water crisis. © Abdullahi Salat/IRIN
"What little food we had is gone; we have had no
help in almost three months," said Zeinab Sheikh Hassan, a Somali refugee
and mother of eight interviewed by the humanitarian news agency IRIN
· Over the last few years, Somalia has become an
increasingly hostile environment for humanitarian aid workers, who provide
crucial assistance to those affected by the country's protracted conflict.
"Aid workers, who had managed to assist Somali communities even during the
most lawless periods before 2006, have been the targets of dozens of killings
and kidnappings in 2008 and now watch helplessly from neighboring Kenya as the
situation spirals out of control," wrote Human
Rights Watch (HRW) in December. Some groups, including the UN World Food
Program, have been forced to suspend operations in certain parts of the
country. __________________________________________________________________
http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSLQ389547
SOMALI REFUGEES IN KENYA FACE HUMANITARIAN
EMERGENCY
March 26, 2009
*
Somali refugees in Kenya face humanitarian disaster
* Charity expects 100,000 new arrivals this year
* Fears of cholera, women and children most at risk
By Richard Lough
NAIROBI, March 27 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees holed up
in northern Kenya face a "humanitarian emergency" this year as
disease starts spreading through overcrowded camps, Oxfam warned on Friday.
More than 250,000 people live in Dadaab's three sprawling camps and Oxfam said
100,000 more are expected to arrive before the end of the year as al Shabaab, a
pro-al Qaeda Islamist insurgent group, battles Somalia's fragile new
government.
The aid agency said an assessment of the camp had uncovered "a serious
public health crisis caused by a lack of basic services, severe overcrowding
and a chronic lack of funding".
It said illnesses including cholera would run rampant through the settlements
unless urgent steps were taken.
"Conditions in Dadaab are dire and need immediate attention. People are
not getting the aid they are entitled to," said Philippa Crosland-Taylor,
head of Oxfam GB in Kenya.
Dadaab's refugees live in shacks made from branches and plastic sheeting in one
of the world's largest refugee camps.
Oxfam said half the people there have inadequate access to water and
sanitation. More than 20 recent cases of cholera have been confirmed at the
camps in arid eastern Kenya.
Aid workers say the humanitarian situation in Somalia is the worst in the
world. Fighting has killed more than 17,000 civilians since the start of 2007,
one million more have been driven from their homes and about a third of the
population -- more than 3 million people -- need emergency food aid.
Oxfam said more land needed to be set aside for Somali refugees who fled over
the border into Kenya, and more money devoted to improve their living
conditions once they got there.
Kenya closed its long, porous desert border with the failed Horn of Africa
state after the U.S.-backed defeat of an Islamic Courts group in Jan. 2007.
But Oxfam said the closure had failed to stem a rising tide of people trying to
escape the bloodshed as al Shabaab tightens its grip on large swathes of
central and southern Somalia.
The move has actually increased health risks, the charity warned, because
frontier clinics were shut down and now refugees no longer get any check-up
before arriving at the camps.
"The Kenyan government must address this humanitarian crisis, rather than
ignoring it," Crosland-Taylor said.
Al Shabaab is the main stumbling block for Somalia's new president, Sheikh
Sharif Ahmed, who is trying to restore peace and stability after 18 years of
civil war.
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