Struggling with the tide

MORE than three weeks after a famine was declared in two areas of Somalia, and a week after it was extended to a further three regions, thousands of refugees are still flocking over Somalia’s borders to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.Every day at Dadaab, on the Kenyan border, 1,300 men, women and children, many of whom have walked for weeks, arrive at the camps. The camps were initially designed to hold 90,000 people. It is now estimated that there are currently more than 400,000 refugees at Dadaab, with more than 40,000 arriving during July alone.The sheer numbers of new arrivals and the desperate state that they are in is creating a major problem for agencies like ourselves.I have seen new arrivals walking out of the bush, some having trekked for 20 days to get here. They are desperately malnourished. They are thirsty. A child or maybe a father has died along the way, and they have continued to walk. Rape and robbery is a common part of the journey.One can only imagine the torment they endured to get here.Heartbreakingly, some of the weakest expire shortly after getting here. It’s as though they expended every ounce of energy to reach us, and when they arrived they didn’t have enough left in reserve to keep them alive. We are seeing more and more burial sites are appearing around the camps every day.Those that arrive are receiving assistance from GOAL, which has been sending in truckloads of aid to cater for 10,000 new arrivals, and are planning to provide shelter for 70,000.It is difficult for people in Ireland to grasp the size of this place, and the sheer magnitude of the relief operation we are facing. Food, water, shelter and health care must be provided to a population that is bigger than most cities in Ireland.The world has been slow to realise how serious this is. What few people seem to appreciate is that what we are witnessing just the beginning of this crisis. It is generally accepted that things will get much worse before they get better.We are just one of a small number of international aid agencies responding to the Somali refugee situation in Ethiopia. As well as dealing with the crisis there, our emergency response teams are also providing aid to refugees streaming across Somalia’s borders into camps in Kenya. Thus far, we have provided clean water to 140,000 people and over 90 metric tons of food aid to malnourished women and children in the Somali region of Ethiopia.We have also been addressing the needs of drought-affected populations within Ethiopia since January. As a consequence, more than 33,500 children suffering from malnutrition have been treated by GOAL, and we have distributed more than 47 million litres of water to 500,000 people.We are also dispensing large amounts of aid at the Dadaab refugee camps, on Kenya’s border with Somalia, sending 11 truckloads of hygiene kits and other essential items to be distributed to 10,000 newly arrived refugees at the Dadaab camp. This programme is on going.GOAL has been undergoing a major expansion of its Ethiopia programme and we are now in over 20 locations across six regions.We are currently raising funds to allow direct delivery of nutrition, water, shelter and other support to 120,000 Somali refugees in the planned camps.We are also continuing to expand our community-based nutrition programmes to over 100,000 drought-affected Ethiopian people.And we need to provide agricultural food security training and resources for 25,000 people.As well as that, the implementation of water and sanitation programmes for the drought-affected Ethiopian populations of all six regions of GOAL’s area of responsibility are a priority.GOAL can be reached on 01-2809 779 or at www.goal.ie