Thousands flee Somalia as world watches its modern pirates

The week the first attempted hijack of a US ship off Somalia shot the troubled nation to the top of the news agenda, the image of a shoeless young Somali, with a rocket launcher stays etched in the minds of many. But the hundreds of thousands of Somalis in Dadaab, about 100 kilometres from Kenya-Somali border are as much victims of those pirate gangs as the foreign sailors. Food supplies to these refugee camps were delayed by this week's surge of hijackings and the refugees' rations have been cut by one third. Aid agencies have warned conditions in these camps are "conducive to a public health emergency."

Five hundred Somalis are now arriving at this bleak Kenyan outpost every day. They join a population of 267,000 and counting, in a facility built to for 45,000. While the world has been captivated by the high seas drama of Somalia's pirates, this human tide has swollen the ranks of Dadaab, turning it into the world's largest refugee camp.These people are proof of the human cost of the accelerating collapse of Somalia, yet their fate attracts nothing like the global interest that surrounds Somali piracy and its threat to commerce.

The United Nations refugee agency that runs Dadaab urgently needs new money from donors and new land from the Kenyan government. Neither has been forthcoming. The annual budget for this camp is £13m, which according to a report in The Independent newspaper is roughly half the annual cost of running a warship patrolling the Indian Ocean in search of modern-day pirates.

Dadaab’s three camps, were built to house those who fled when the last functioning central government – that of socialist dictator Siad Barre – collapsed in 1991. The camps soon reached capacity and as the mother country just 50 miles to the north has sunk deeper and deeper, so the number of refugees has risen and risen. An entire generation of children has grown up knowing Dadaab as their only home. Last August the land ran out and the UN had to declare the camps full. It has not stopped the desperate masses arriving.

Somalia is a country surrounded by political walls. Its borders with Ethiopia and Kenya have been closed to protect their countries from the Islamic militias on the other side. But the only effect of the closures has been to make it harder for people like Habib Waleda to flee. “In Mogadishu bombs were coming down from the sky and hitting houses. When the mortar hit my house we all just ran away,” she told the newspaper. “We were separated. I had nine children. Now I don't know where my husband is or where eight of my children are. I looked for them in Mogadishu but they don't have a telephone. It's impossible to find them. I found a taxi and I offered to give him the small money I had. I gave him $150 and I told him I didn't have any more money. He brought me near to the border. I don't know where they are. All I have is to hope they are coming.”

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children