Eight years of living in a tent made of old clothes, with little food, medical services and no sanitation has taken its toll on Samira Timan Buulle, her six children and two grandchildren. She has the world-weary expression of someone who has put up with the harshest of conditions and for whom the future offers little escape.
Samira is one of about 2 000 people living in an impromptu settlement on a small patch of waste ground in the town of Garowe, in the autonomous region of Puntland, north of Somalia. Buulle, like most of her neighbours, is a victim of the lawlessness that has engulfed Somalia over the last two decades.
She was forced to flee inter-clan fighting in her home town Baidoa in the south of the country to the relative security of Garowe, about 1 000km away.
“Many of my family were killed; the fighting made it impossible to stay in Baidoa. We had no life there”, she said. During the eight years spent in Garowe, she has been safe but has been living a desperately poor existence, earning perhaps $1 a day collecting rubbish and washing clothes.
“We have nothing here. No medical care, little food, no toilet. My children can get ill easily as everything is so dirty. Until the war is over in my country, I cannot see the situation improving,” she said.
Residents of the dusty and hot settlement — which goes by the name Riiga — are desperately poor. Their tents, densely lined up alongside each other, are stitched together with old material and plastic sheeting. Most people use the dry, rubbish strewn riverbed as a toilet, just metres away from their tents.
In Garowe, there are 11 settlements like Riiga. UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, estimates that the district hosts about 6 000 internally displaced people. It’s a tiny proportion of the number of IDP’s across Somalia, of which there are said to be about 1,4-million.
As the insecurity in the south of Somalia increases there is a possibility of more people arriving in Puntland. The most immediate reason however for an increase in IDP’s was a severe drought in 2009.
Pastoralists move to town
One hundred and twenty kilometres south of Garowe lies the small town of Burtinle. On the edge of the town are signs of internal displacement, such as stitched tents made of clothes and other discarded materials. But it’s not people who have fled due to conflict who inhabit these tents, but pastoralists who have been forced out of their traditional way of life. People like Ahmed Jamma, who has seen his herd of 400 goats and sheep and 50 camels dwindle to 50 goats and sheep and a single camel.
“We have given up being pastoralists and moved to the town because there was not enough rain last year. There was no pasture for our animals so they died. Without animals we cannot survive as pastoralists, so we came to the town for help.”
What Ahmed Jamma and Samira Timan Buulle have in common is not that they have left their homes, but also a shared pessimism about the future of their families and way of life in a country which appears almost daily to be falling deeper into a state of lawlessness.
A major challenge for international humanitarian agencies providing relief to IDP communities is ensuring access to people in need. Philippe Royan is head of the Somalia country office of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid department and has a €35-million budget for aid for 2010 in Somalia.
“The insecurity across Somalia makes it extremely difficult to provide humanitarian relief to the most needy. In Burtinle, we have been able to support pastoralists and help them return to their traditional way of life and in Garowe we want to make sure that the displaced people can lead a dignified life above the poverty line.”
While the fighting continues in the south of Somalia, humanitarian aid agencies find it increasingly difficult to reach those in need. Many communities may be so inaccessible that agencies have little idea of whether they actually need humanitarian support.
After an eight-year wait for people like Samira Timan Buulle in Garowe, humanitarian relief will hopefully arrive soon, providing her and her family with a dignified life and the hope of one day being able to return home to Baidoa. – European Commission Humanitarian Aid