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Kabasa internally displaced camp in Dollow, Gedo Region, southern Somalia
Today, as we mark World Refugee Day, one in every 78 people on earth are displaced. According to the UN the number of people forced to flee their home has surpassed 100 million for the first time since record keeping began. In Somalia, which is suffering its fourth consecutive year of drought, hundreds of thousands have been displaced as a major hunger crisis grips the country. Mothers like Buhoy are living in crisis.
It is 40 degrees Celsius, and scores of weary women, men and children shuffle slowly in the searing heat through the vast Kabasa internally displaced persons camp outside Dollow, a bustling small town in Gedo Region in southern Somalia.
Young babies clutch to mothers dressed brightly in colourful traditional dress and scarves. Small children run around. Groups of tall, lean men, weary and beaten from monotonous days focused on keeping alive and scrambling to get enough food for the next meal, gather in small groups.
Mothers queue with their children at the Trocaire run outreach clinic in Kabasa internally Kabasa internally displaced camp in Dollow, Gedo Region, southern Somalia
Thousands of newly displaced people have been arriving at an already overcrowded Kabasa in recent months, hungry and in search of food as their crops have failed and livestock died. The drought in Somalia and the Horn of Africa is driving the overall numbers of people who are displaced globally.
Already overflowing new arrivals to Kabasa tell of villages deserted as hungry people move in search of relief, and of carcasses of goats, donkeys and camels strewn along rural roads, a catastrophe for Somalis who earn their living by raising and selling animals.
Kabasa is a sea of makeshift shelters built from sticks and covered with whatever scraps of material and plastics the displaced can get their hands on. The earth is scorched and there is no vegetation apart from bushes of dried sticks.
Mother of three, Buhoy Rahey (20), arrived in Kabasa from the Ethiopian border three months ago. She endured a gruelling 230 kilometres walk that took five days and nights.
As she stands outside her makeshift shelter with her three children Isaak (10), Abdi (6) and Mohammad (11 months) gathered around her, the grief-stricken mother tells how her husband died from hunger on the second day of the journey.
Said Buhoy: “Life was tough in my village but we were able to get by. Then as the drought continued it got impossible to survive. Our livestock died and the crops failed. We had no food. We were hungry. We had to leave to save our children.”
Buhoy and her husband Mohammad and family set out on foot with other members of their community with very little food or water for their journey.
“My husband was very weak and sick when we left our village. He died on the second day. We buried him on the roadside, and we didn’t get to mourn. I had to continue the journey, or we would have all died.”
“We are struggling here but we are getting some food and water. We have built a shelter and I will get my youngest son checked at the Trócaire health unit.”
Mother of three, Buhoy Rahey, (20), with her children Isaak (10), Abdi (6) and Mohammad (11 months), who walked five days and five nights with her family 230 kilometres from the Ethiopian border to Kabasa Internally Displaced Camp three months ago. Her husband died from hunger on the second day of the journey.
Trócaire has run the health services in Gedo region, an area slightly bigger than the size of Ireland, for the past 30 years, providing lifesaving healthcare, nutrition, and protection to over 200,000 people each year. In Kabasa it runs outreach services for mothers and malnourished children.
Currently 7.7 million people in Somalia, or half the population, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance as the country is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years with four seasons of failed rains and temperatures unbearably high. 90% of the country is now experiencing extreme drought.
The UN says over 800,000 people have so far fled their homes, flocking to already overcrowded Internally Displaced Persons camps similar to this one in Kabasa.
New camps are sprouting up to cope with the increasing numbers expected to rise to 1.4 million in the coming months. The UN has warned that 350,000 children could die this year if nothing is done to help them.
