Refugee influx strains Daadab camps

By Mike Owuor

If she had her way, Ms Hawa Abdirahman, 60, would have carried her bullet-scarred house in central Mogadishu, Somalia, to Hagadera Refugee Camp in Daadab, northern Kenya.

Her wish is understandable. Hawa, a widow who arrived in the camp in May after a strenuous eight-day journey, lives in a tiny room with wattle walls and earthen floor. Incredibly, this is also what nine other people call home.

Lying side by side at night on ragged mats, space is scarce, ensuring sleep is an art form where one can only make half turns for fear of bumping into the next person. Hawa and her two children are duly registered by United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), but have been forced to host friends and clan members who have recently fled the fighting between the Islamist Al-Shabaab militia and the weak Transitional Federal Government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. With nowhere to turn as the registration process continues, the new arrivals seek shelter among those already settled, putting a strain on the limited resources.

Somali refugees at Dadaab camp. The camp meant for 90,000 asylum seekers now hosts more than 288,000 refugees [PHOTOS: MIKE OWUOR/STANDARD]

"My house in Mogadishu has more than enough room," she says, through a translator. "But I cannot go back because of the war."

For 18 years, following the fall of the Siad Barre regime and her country’s slide into anarchy, Hawa has perfected the art of slipping in and out of her central Mogadishu home during lulls in the fighting.

As bullets whizzed past and mortar shells hurtled overhead, she would wait for a brief lull to drag her family of five to safer neighbourhoods or, when the fighting was really bad, move to nearby towns like Marka. A risky game of hide-and-seek it may have been, but Hawa always believed things would get better.

Resolve shattered

"The last thing I wanted was to leave Mogadishu for a refugee camp in Yemen, Kenya, Djibouti or Ethiopia," she says.

But that was until May when her hitherto steely resolve was shattered after mortar fire rattled her neighbourhood, forcing her to flee to the port city of Kismayu. Alongside other families, they hired a van to the Kenya-Somalia border, which has officially remained closed since January 2007. They had to hire guides to lead them through panya routes (shortcuts) into Dadaab.

Figures released by UNHCR estimate that at least 6,500 refugees arrive every month. Last year the number was 5,000 a month. Like Hawa, most had endured the fiercest fighting over the years to remain in their country, but had eventually been forced out.

"This has put a strain on protection of refugees and provision of basic services," says UNHCR spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera.

When it was established in the early 1990s, Dadaab, which consists of three camps (Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley), was meant to accommodate 90,000 refugees. But Nyabera says by the end of last month the number had reached 288,508.

This, he adds, means that even after the new arrivals are registered, UNHCR has no land to allocate them to build shelter. Services like provision of water, healthcare, education and sanitation have also been strained.

"We urgently need to be allocated land in Dadaab for the new arrivals. We have identified a site at Jaranjira for a new camp but are still waiting for a nod from the Government before starting construction," says Nyabera.

Solution sought

So protracted has this approval to build the new camp been for the last two years that this week the UN High Commissioner for Refugees AntÛnio Guterres led a delegation from Geneva in a mission to seek a solution. Guterres, a former Portuguese Prime Minister, was in the camp on Tuesday. He described the situation in Daadab as "dramatic" and "the most difficult camp situation in the world".

He met President Kibaki and top Government officials yesterday on the issue. The Government pledged to provide more land for the camps.

"We are grateful for the support the Government and the host community have provided so far. But there is need to allocate more resources to improve the situation in the camp and support the local community," said Guterres.

He says apart from the additional land, there were plans to relocate some of the refugees to Kakuma, a camp in the northwest near the border with Sudan.

But Fafi MP Aden Sugow, in whose constituency part of the camp lies, says there is no need to move the refugees: "The Government has an obligation to provide extra land. There is need to resolve the issue because the congestion has put a strain on the local community and the environment."

But Mr Peter Kusimba, Commissioner for Refugees in the Ministry of Immigration, says the matter "is at the highest level" and will be resolved soon.

This might be good news for new arrivals like Halima Ali Mohamed, 35. The Standard found the mother of eight in a queue of about 80 others at a UNHCR field office waiting to be registered. If a new camp is not built soon, she and her family may be forced to look for luckier friends and clan members.