Aid agencies warn of crisis at world's biggest refugee camp

With thousands of families still fleeing the fighting in Somalia, for northern Kenya, aid agencies are warning of a growing humanitarian crisis. Without proper shelter and food and water in short supply, about 300,000 refugees are crowded into the largest refugee camp on earth, where the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has described conditions as “inhuman.” "This year 53,000 people have come here and last year it was 100,000," said Efraim Tan, from the UNHCR. "The situation is very difficult."

Every day, hundreds of extended families arrive at the dusty gates of the desert camp, near the town of Dadaab, waiting to be registered and issued with ration cards. Many are exhausted, frightened and hungry, but conditions where they have come from are so dangerous, they’ve been left with little choice. It is still safer than life in Somalia, where Islamic insurgents are leading a brutal uprising – the latest violence in two decades of conflict. “I still have nightmares about watching my family die. I hurt so much I don't really feel alive,” said 14 year-old refugee Nimo Abdi Mohammed. Nimo was badly injured in a bomb attack in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. It killed her father and two brothers. She herself has a network of deep scars crossing her chest and abdomen. Her wounds have still not healed. Another refugee, Adey Mohammed arrived from Kismayu.” She said “the fighting was all around us. Militants were chopping off people's hands and feet in the streets." Unsurprisingly many have in the camp suffer post-traumatic stress and aid agencies and providing some counselling to help. Because of their refugee status, the Somalis have no right to enter Kenya to find work. Some have now been living in the camp for as long as 18 years, Sky news reported. At least 20 babies are born at the camp every and all of them rely on the aid agencies working there for survival.

Food is scarce and water is rationed during the dry season, while when it does rain, the camp floods, which makes it harder for people to deliver food there. Outbreaks of malaria, diarrhoea and cholera are common. More than 300,000 refugees have left Somalia and have headed to neighbouring Kenya, with most ending up in the overcrowded Kenyan camps of Dadaab 90 km from the border. Most of the people living in the camps — 97 percent — are Somali, though there are also refugees from Sudan, Uganda, the Congo and other countries. In the past year, increased violence in Somalia has led to a sharp influx of new refugees, as many as 1,000 a day in some cases, putting a heavy burden on already overstretched resources.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children