The growing tide of Somalis fleeing conflict at home has raised the number of refugees in Kenya to the highest for a decade and is threatening to exhaust food aid stocks, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
About 24 000 people have entered the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya since the start of the year, with the latest flare-ups in south Somalia pushing arrivals up to between 300 to 400 a day, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said.
”Unless we get new funds for our refugee operation immediately, we will have to cut rations in the camps in November,” said WFP’s Kenya deputy director Maria Read.
”It’s a terrible decision to face but we have no choice … even with the cuts, we will still run out of food in February next year. The situation is dire.”
Islamist forces took over Mogadishu in June after heavy battles with US-backed warlords, and have extended their grip on south-central Somalia in recent days with the capture of a southern port, Kismayo.
To bolster the weak interim government against the Islamists’ expansion, neighbouring Ethiopia has sent more troops across Somalia’s eastern border, residents said.
”If the violence continues to escalate, we are very concerned that the numbers here will become unmanageable,” UN refugee agency UNHCR spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera said by telephone from Dadaab.
”It is mostly women and children who are coming. They are very exhausted,” he said, adding that UNHCR was running convoys to Liboi on the Somalia-Kenya border to ferry them to the camps.
Living off rations
Dadaab’s three camps of flimsy huts on sandy scrubland now house about 143 000 people, taking the total number of refugees in Kenya to a decade high of 240 000, according to WFP.
Given its relative stability in a region wracked by conflict, Kenya has long been a haven for refugees from around East Africa, particularly Somalia and Sudan.
WFP said without new funds, it would be forced to cut rations at Dadaab in November by 12% to 1 900 kilocalories per person per day instead of the recommended daily minimum of 2 100 a day. That would go down to 1 700 in December.
”WFP rations are all these people have to eat. They have no other way of making up the difference,” Read said.
While Kenya donates land for the refugees, it does not allow them to leave the camps for work or farming. — Reuters