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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Malnutrition ravaging Somali refugees in Ethiopia
by Staff Writers
Dolo Ado, Ethiopia (AFP) Aug 13, 2011

Relief groups boost Mogadishu aid delivery
Mogadishu (AFP) Aug 13, 2011 - UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Saturday relief groups were ramping up aid delivery to tens of thousands of people affected by famine and drought in Somalia's war-riven capital Mogadishu.

More than 100,000 people have fled to Mogadishu from other drought-struck Somalia regions in search of food and water, but insecurity in one of the world's most dangerous cities is hampering aid flows.

"We are scaling up efforts in Mogadishu. The (UN refugee agency) UNHCR has brought in three planes of supplies including plastic sheeting and non-food items," Amos told AFP after a visit to Mogadishu.

UN relief agencies recently began airlifting emergency supplies to Somalia and the capital, where the displaced have been declared by the United Nations as facing famine.

"We felt we would not see famine again, but there it is. Children don't need to die needlessly. We absolutely need to work on long-term strategies," said Amos, the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

Some 12 million people in parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda and Somalia are in danger of starvation in the wake of the region's worst drought in decades.

War-wracked Somalia is the country hardest hit by the Horn of Africa's drought, with five areas declared to be experiencing famine.

Much of the territory struck by famine is under the control of the Islamist Shebab militia, who have been blamed for exacerbating the humanitarian crisis by restricting aid to their regions.

Last weekend, the Al-Qaeda-inspired rebels made a surprise withdrawal from Mogadishu. Aid groups are now assessing how to expand relief distribution as the African Union forces protecting the Somali government try to secure the city.

"People were saying to me things have felt a little easier over the past few days. They are still worried about suicide attacks but want to seize any opportunity they can," Amos said.

"I was distressed in the hospital by the children," said Amos. "The mothers are devastated. To see children who are three or four years old look like babies brings home the challenge we are facing."

Somalia currently faces the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world and the worst food security crisis in Africa since its 1991-92 famine, according to the UN.

Political fallout from the toppling of then president Siad Barre from power spiralled Somalia into the bloody conflict that has engulfed it ever since and led to a famine which killed at least 300,000, according to UN estimates.

The United Nations estimates that $2.4 billion (1.7 billion euros) is required to address the current crisis.

Mohamed Ibrahim fled to Ethiopia to seek relief from a harsh drought devastating his country Somalia, but misery stalked him in refuge where malnutrition recently killed his one-year-old son.

The desperate exodus by tens of thousands of Somalis to find assistance across borders has taken them to refugee settlements, where spartan living conditions, congestion and threat of disease are making survival difficult.

"I thought that if I came here I would get a better life than in Somalia," said Ibrahim, sitting outside his tent in the southern Ethiopia Kobe camp.

"I am sad because my baby died," added Ibrahim, initially turned away from a government-run hospital in the camp due to lack of drugs for his child.

Aid agencies say malnutrition and mortality rates in the Ethiopian refugee camps remain high, with more that 30 percent of children under five suffering malnutrition and about six deaths per 10,000 people, according to UN estimates.

Opportunistic diseases like pneumonia and measles have also erupted among the already weakened population.

"The malnutrition and mortality rates are above the emergency threshold. Its a big concern for us," said Allen Maina, a UN public health officer.

Aid workers voiced concern that overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of proper health care is worsening the misery of the refugees.

The Ethiopian Dolo Ado refugee complex hosts 118,400 Somali refugees, including 78,000 who arrived this year, according to the UN refugee agency.

"The conditions in the camp are very poor in terms of water and sanitation and that causes diarrhoea, which causes malnutrition. Its a vicious cycle," said Carolina Nanclares, a doctor with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

"For me, its the worst I have ever seen," Nanclares said.

A prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa region has hit war-wracked Somalia hardest, sending hundreds of thousands of its citizens to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia.

Around 12 million people are in danger of starvation due to the region's worst drought in decades.

Many Somalis face the difficult choice of whether to flee with severely malnourished children or care for them at home.

Farah Mohamed Malim, 46, brought his four-year-old son to an MSF clinic in the camps. Although his child has improved, his sick ten-month-old infant had to stay at home with the mother, who is also sick and too weak to travel.

"Im worried hes at risk of dying," Malim said, sitting in the MSF ward where stick-thin children occupy most of the centres 120 beds.

"We want a life the way others live. We want medicine. We want food like others. We want rice and spaghetti," said Malim.

MSF medical coordinator Vannessa Cramond said aid groups should address the dilemma faced by many family heads who must decide whether to bring the sickest children to hospital or stay at home to take care of the whole family.

"There are some impossible decisions that people have to make," she said. "Thats a gap that as an international community we must close."

Cramond said that adolescents are also suffering malnutrition, noting that a third of those admitted at a newly-opened camp are above five years.

"It suggests a wider scale emergency that affects the whole household," she said, explaining that it will take several months before nutrition rates increase and mortality comes down.

Dawey Ibrahim has seen malnutrition spread in her family. Her eight-year-old and 15-year-old children are severely malnourished and another, who is 18, suffers from regular fainting spells.

"We left Somalia because we didnt have anything. Now we are dying from hunger," said Ibrahim, her 15-year-old crouching by her side under the scorching sun, too weak to stand on his own.

However the UN public health official Maina said he was hopeful the situation will improve as relief organisations boost support for the drought-struck Somali refugees.

"In a few weeks we are going to see the numbers go down," he said. "This is a catch-up campaign."




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Ruined cathedral offers refuge for drought-hit Somalis
Mogadishu (AFP) Aug 12, 2011 - Beneath the soaring arches of the bombed out ruins of Mogadishu's Roman Catholic cathedral, desperate families fleeing extreme drought and famine put up huts of rag and plastic for shelter.

Over 100,000 people have fled into Somalia's famine-hit and war-torn capital in the past two months in search of food, water and medicine.

But with makeshift camps already overcrowded, hundreds have sought refuge in the crumbling shell of the cathedral, built by Italian colonial authorities in the 1920s but destroyed in years of bloody civil war.

"We had to leave our land, because all the animals died," said Numur Moalim, who fled the drought-hit Bay region of southern Somalia, taking 15 days to trek into the dangerous capital with his wife and five children.

Huts are built on almost every space inside the cathedral, squeezed between giant chunks of masonry blasted from the still dramatic white stone building, while more huts are packed tight in the overgrown graveyard outside.

"I didn't come because it was a church, but because I needed protection and shelter, and there was nowhere else to go," Moalim said.

Sharp cracks of rifle fire ring out close by, with the sounds echoing in the high walls of the building, but Moalim does not flinch.

Shootings are common here, and heavily armed gunmen perched on top of pick-up trucks cruise the sandy streets nearby.

Instead, crouching on the rubble-strewn stone flags of the cathedral's floor, Moalim tries to chip out holes to slot in thin branches for the poles of the hut.

"We have nothing, and my children cry because they are hungry, but I have not got food to give them," he added, lifting up some of the plastic bags and small scraps of grubby material that will form the hut's patchwork roof.

High up on the wall above his head a life-size stone statues of Jesus Christ and his disciples -- their heads blasted with bullet holes -- stare down on the crowded people struggling for survival below.

Islamic extremists -- who still control much of southern and central Somalia and continue with a draconian ban on several foreign agencies -- reportedly used the cathedral for target practice.

Conflict-wracked Somalia is the country hardest hit by the extreme drought affecting 12 million people across the Horn of Africa.

The United Nations has officially declared famine in Somalia for the first time this century, including in Mogadishu and four southern regions.

Despite a withdrawal earlier this month from the city by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels, government forces backed by African Union troops continue to struggle to secure one of the world's most dangerous capitals.

"People died in my village -- it was not a choice that we come here," said Huwa Adan Ismail, from the famine-struck Lower Shabelle region.

"It has rained heavily in the last few nights, and there is no protection from the rain -- it is so cold," she added.

Some of her seven young children peer out from holes in their rag hut, while Ismail struggles to boil a saucepan of grain over an open fire beneath a pillar of the cathedral.

"We are not getting enough support," said Mohamed Ahmed Ali, a community leader of the cathedral camp.

"People come and take assessments, and we see the aeroplanes coming in over our head to land, but we don't get the food that they bring," he added.





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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Border town a break for drought-fleeing Somalis
Dhobley, Somalia (AFP) Aug 11, 2011
Exhausted, sick and starving Somalis fleeing extreme drought tarry in this desolate village before making the final long trek across the border to become refugees in neighbouring Kenya. Although Dhobley is just five kilometres (three miles) from the Kenyan border, the sprawling Dadaab refugee complex - the largest in the world with more than 400,000 people - is still a tough 100-kilometre ... read more


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