SOMALIA:

Home of the Worlds Largest Refugee Camp

Its almost impossible to deliver aid into Somalia, one of the more remote and dangerous regions of the world, most non governmental organizations (NGO's) have left due to the insecurity. The United Nations have had 8 of its staffers and 24 aid workers killed this year. Convoys of food aid are attacked and hi jacked while aid workers face kidnapping or death.

There are more than 200,000 people crowded into the world's biggest refugee camp, at Dadaab with some 5,000 new refugees arriving each month. Refugees are also fleeing into Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya.

Somalia's main export is terrorism with a number of key figures and groups having free reign in this region. Al-Shabaab (Arabic for Youth) now controls much of the south of the country, similar to the Taliban: recently, 1,000 spectators gathered at a sports stadium in the port of Kismayo to watch al-Shabaab stone to death a 13-year-old girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. Amnesty International says al-Shabaab arrested her and convicted her of adultery after she complained she had been gang-raped. Al-Shabaab is taking its terrorism to new territories. On Oct. 29, members detonated five car and suicide

bombs outside U.N., Ethiopian government and local administration buildings in the northern regions killing more than 30 people. The Horn of Africa is volatile and dangerous making it difficult for aid workers to help those suffering from famine, drought, war and disease.

In spite of difficulties and endless challenges: our workers being detained for hours, harrassed, endless roadblocks, guns pointed & threatened our team managed to successfully deliver and distribute 70,000 meals of food aid to 500 internally displaced families seeking refuge in Northern Somalia.

This is Maduule Maadin, standing outside the shelter that
he and his wife Jibriilo Shakur share with 17 people.

They have six children, four of them being young girls.

They are from Afgooye ( a village near Mogadishu) where they lived as pastoral farmers, living off whatever crops they were able to grow and harvest from their piece of land, which although not enough to have crops to sell, provided the family with sufficient food to survive.

They left their village in despera-tion and without any possessions, after heavy artillery bombardment destroyed their home. His mother-in-law was injured in one of her hands.

They attempted to reach Burco by vehicle, but the meager amount of money they had was exhausted before they had reached the halfway point. They completed the rest of the journey on foot.

Their life here is, according to him, slightly better than what they had in Mogadishu, because they are no longer caught in the middle of continual fighting. They have no food, inadequate shelter, no access to health care or medical facilities, no education. In Jibriilo’s words, “We have no life at all. We’re here to wait our time to die of hunger”.

This is the family of Bilan Abdullah (35)
and her husband Ramadan Mohamed (38)

They have fourteen children, the youngest of whom is 9 months old. Originally from Mogadishu they fled to the IDP camp because of the war, inter-tribal militia fighting, and a lack of food resources. It took them 4 months to reach Burco, travelling by vehicle and by foot, relying on the hospitality of nomadic groups for food and shelter during their journey. Bilan told us that her brother had been killed during the war. She doesn’t know where the rest of the family is, or whether they are even alive. Her father was too old to travel and the last she saw of him was as they were leaving Mogadishu. Despite the fact that her family has escaped war zone, she maintains that her life in Burco is even worse than in Mogadishu because of a lack of food and water.

This is the family of Shaakira Macalin (39)
and her husband is Isaaq Ali (55)

They have 7 children. Shaakira's younger sister and child live with them.

This family is from Baardheere, a village in the Hiran province of southern Somalia, close to the Ethiopian border. It was a transit point used by the Ethiopian military forces during the invasion of Somalia. Before they fled the war and ongoing conflict in the area, they were pastoral farmers and were able to cultivate sufficient food from their land to feed their family. They even produced a surplus that was sold at the market to provide an income for the family.

Shaakira told us that it took them two and a half months to reach Somaliland. She considered herself fortunate that so many Somali people had helped her and her children with food and hospitality during their journey. Shaakira suffers from PTSD as a result of the deaths of her brother, her 14 year old child, her father-in-law, and her younger sister's husband during separate incidents as a result of the war. Isaaq was also injured during the wars and has lost the use of his right hand, and has kidney damage. He has been reduced to begging in order to try and generate some income to support his family. She maintained that no organization had helped her family subsequent to their arrival in Somaliland. Their main source of income is from begging.

She told that she too has had to resort to begging, and comes back in the evening to start cooking some food for her children, going on to say that “we only eat at night”. “Sometimes I go back at night to do more extra begging”, earning an average of Birr 10 per day(about $1.01 American Dollars). “Some of the children are sick but we not have money to take them to the hospital”.

This is the female-headed family of Saruuro Ali

Her deceased husband, Dule Dahir was killed by the militia during the war.

She has five children, the youngest of whom is 7 months old.

When asked why she had left her home in southern Somalia to make the perilous journey to Burco she said “how can we stay where heavy artillery guns are destroying every single living thing, including the insects. I think you are joking when you are saying why didn't you stay inyour home.”

It took her 2 months to reach Burco, and during the trip she was raped and physically tortured a number of times.

This is a home, a shelter where some
internally displaced person's (IDP’s) live.

The shelter is made of paper, leaves, branches and rags.

The living conditions for “internally displaced people” (IDP’s) within Somali camps are abysmal: there are no services at all. Water needs to be collected from a central point and carried, sanitation conditions are basically pit latrines that the IDP’s have set up themselves. Plans are in place for the provision of healthier facilities by the UNDP, but are yet to be implemented.

The prevailing emotion amongst the IDP’s in the camp is one of stoic resignation: they are not welcome by the local community, and are seen as a threat both in terms of their impact on the local economy, as well as being perceived as a security threat by many. Many of the IDP’s have moved, or are planning to move, to Ethiopia, there is even talk of them trying to get to Kenya or Uganda, in the hope of finding a more secure future for themselves there. None of the people I spoke to appear to have any thoughts of moving back to their places of origin, and seem to have no confidence in the security situation in the south improving within the foreseeable future.