Severe Drought Creates Millions of Refugees

Somali refugees are flooding across the Kenyan border to overcrowded camps in search of water and food.  The worst drought in sixty years has caused a human tide of 10,000 a week to arrive in Kenya's northeastern province, overwhelming limited resources and spreading disease. More than half the refugees are children suffering from malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are caught in a deadly squeeze of soaring food prices and failed rains. In Ethiopia the food price index increased by 41% last month, and the price of grain in Kenya's drought affected areas is 30 to 80% more than the five year average. International aid agencies are working to stave off mass fatalities, but money, water and food are in short supply. The Dadaab refugee camp alone sprawls for over 30 miles bursting with 367,000 registered refugees, a living hell that some desperately poor Africans have walked to for twenty-two days in hope of receiving help. What is perhaps more frightening is that the drought which caused this humanitarian crisis if becoming almost an annual occurrence. There have been five droughts in the last seven years. Of course contributing to the intensity of the crisis is the fact that Somalia is a failed state, shattered by decades of war. Even relatively rich Kenya has little infrastructure in the northeast. Despite the bleak prospects for the region, international aid donors are often slow to respond to appeals until a crisis develops.