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By
MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED
DADAAB, Kenya, June 27, 2009 -- The bloody conflict in Somalia has
created the world's largest refugee camp, with 500 hungry and exhausted
refugees pouring into this wind-swept camp in neighboring Kenya every
day, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
Dadaab, just 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the Somali border, is home to
more than 280,000 refugees in an area meant to hold just 90,000.
So far this year, the U.N. refugee agency has registered nearly 38,000
new arrivals, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said Friday. The vast
majority of them are fleeing violence and poverty in Somalia as Islamic
insurgents try to topple the government.
"It is hunger and destitution that drove us from our country,"
Abdillahi
Abdi Dahir, 50, said earlier this week. He fled Somalia with his wife
and their five children, the youngest just 3 months old. "All we need
now is something to eat and a shelter for the family."
Since May 7, fighting between Islamist insurgent groups and government
forces has killed at least 225 people, and displaced nearly 170,000 from
their homes in the capital, Mogadishu.
The three camps that make up Dadaab were established in 1991 after
Somali warlords toppled dictator Siad Barre and carved the country into
armed camps ruled by clan law. The area was never meant to hold so many
people, and overcrowding has become a massive problem.
"The new influx of refugees is putting more pressure on an already aged
infrastructure," said Anne Campbell, head of the UNHCR's office in
Dadaab. "We are appealing to the Kenyan government to provide us land to
settle them (new refugees), and call on the donors to give us the
funding we need to set up a new camp and upgrade the old ones."
Many longtime refugees also lament the fact that they cannot leave the
camp to make a life in Kenya. The government has strict rules requiring
them to stay, arguing that integration into Kenya is not a "durable
solution" for refugees.
Kenya closed its border in January 2007 to prevent Islamists fleeing
Somalia from entering the country, but the closure also has forced
refugees to sneak into Kenya.
Some refugees, like Dahir's family, avoid border points entirely and use
donkey routes in the bush. Dahir said the trip to the refugee camp took
his family 10 days, two of which they walked on foot. He said he begged
drivers of the cars heading for border towns to take his family.
The Dadaab camp complex is the world's largest refugee camp, followed by
Tindouf in Algeria, where some 90,000 are staying, according to UNHCR.
Before this year's influx of refugees began at Dadaab, the refugees were
complaining about shortage of services and aged infrastructure, such as
health, sanitation and water systems.
The U.N. said it needs funding to build 39,000 new latrines to cater for
the increasing number of refugees.
"The consequences of not having a functioning water system and adequate
latrines could be very severe," said Daniel Dickinson, spokesman for the
European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office, which is spending $4
million to repair the aged water system in the camps and says it will
build more than 5,000 latrines for refugees this year. "Certainly there
could be a humanitarian catastrophe if these people are not getting
enough water."
But those fleeing violence care less about the aged facilities or the
overflowing camps. Reaching safe camps, away from bullets and grinding
poverty in Somalia, is all Dahir's wife, Hawo Ahmed, needs.
"If you get food, what else do you need?" she said while breast-feeding
her youngest child. "He will not get enough milk, I know. But when we
settle down and I get enough food to eat, he will get sufficient milk."
Associated Press Writer Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this
report.
Source: AP, June 26, 2009
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