KENYA: SOMALIAN REFUGEES DESPERATE FOR FOOD AND MEDICINE MAY HAVE TO RETURN TO STRIFE-TORN COUNTRY.
Record ID:
275249
KENYA: SOMALIAN REFUGEES DESPERATE FOR FOOD AND MEDICINE MAY HAVE TO RETURN TO STRIFE-TORN COUNTRY.
- Title: KENYA: SOMALIAN REFUGEES DESPERATE FOR FOOD AND MEDICINE MAY HAVE TO RETURN TO STRIFE-TORN COUNTRY.
- Date: 4th June 2002
- Summary: (U5) MANDERA, KENYA (MARCH 31, 2002) (REUTERS) 1. VARIOUS: SLV MAKESHIFT SHELTERS IN TEMPORARY CAMP; SLV/MV REFUGEES AND CHILDREN IN THE CAMP; MV WOMAN WITH WALKING STICK, STOPS TO REST; MV CHILDREN CARRYING BABIES ON THEIR BACKS (7 SHOTS) 0.50 2. MCU: (SOUNDBITE) (Somali) HALIMA GURHAN, A SOMALI REFUGEE, SAYING "The situation is not good because
- Embargoed: 19th June 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: MANDERA, KENYA
- Country: Kenya
- Reuters ID: LVA6MYR7ZHUNJ9T7OCK5S7JBINYQ
- Story Text: Desperate for food and medicine for their emaciated
children, Somalian refugees in Kenya have said they may be
forced to return to their strife-torn country, despite the
risks.
The refugees who said they may have to return to
Somalia were speaking at Mandera's Border Point One, a
flyblown patch of Kenya 500 meters (yards) from the frontier
condemned by the United Nations as a "ramshackle" location too
dangerously close to Somalia to house refugees for any length
of time.
These Somali refugees are just a few kilometres away
from their hometown, Bula Hawa, on the other side of the
border. Around 10,000 people had fled to Kenya in recent weeks
to escape violence in their anarchic country.
The fighting is believed to have pitted factions
loyal to Somalia's shaky Transitional National Government
(TNG), and others supporting a loose coalition of opposition
warlords, the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council
(SRRC). The refugees left all their belongings behind.
"The situation is not good because there is no
medicine. A lot of children are suffering, they are sick,
some of them are dehydrating and we are not getting much
assistance. Because of this, I will go back to my country,"
said Halima Gurhan Hersi, a 53-year-old mother of 10, who said
she had hopes for protection and assistance.
The Kenyan government is uncomfortable with the presence
of large numbers of refugees in makeshift camps near the
border, and wants to send them back home or settle them in
established refugee camps hundreds of kilometres away.
Nearly 3,500 have been registered by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees and they may be moved to the
Dadaab refugee camp located south of Mandera.
But several thousand refugees have returned home
following intense pressure and intimidation from other Somali
clan factions, who have made their way into Border Point One
from Bula Hawa. And for weeks the world body has lobbied
Kenya's government to move the 5,000 remaining refugees to a
place further from the border but President Daniel arap Moi's
administration, exasperated by a decade-old influx of Somali
refugees, has yet to respond.
Meanwhile, tensions remain high in Bula Hawa, and
insecurity has hampered efforts by humanitarian organizations
to provide food and health care, where the refugees are
camping. Four people where killed last week by stray bullets
coming from the other side of the border.
As the tensions continue, dozens of listless ailing
infants suffering from dehydration, diarrhoea and respiratory
disease remain housed at a canvas-walled therapeutic feeding
centre and clinic.
Medicins Sans Frontieres runs the centre, to help deal
with severe cases.
"All these children are critically ill, critically
malnourished and need very intensive care, very difficult care
you cannot just give a starving child lots of fluid, because
it is dehydrated, you would cause it's heart to fail," said
Janet Hearn, a nurse with Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Hundreds of children still risk falling prey to severe
malnutrition. Refugees, mainly children accompanied by their
mothers, are also suffering from serious cases of malaria,
conjunctivitis, anaemia and worms.
Hussein Abdullahi from MSF confirmed that several children
have died.
"Only four children have died at the moment, that was due
to medical problems since then there are no other deaths," he
said. It is feared that more children could die.
Eight Somali children and two adults died from
malnutrition and other illnesses at the camp near Mandera town
the same week, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
said.
More refugees are at risk of dying -- from stray bullets
as well as illness -- if conflict erupts again in a nearby
Somali village just to the north of the frontier, UNHCR said.
"This is not a safe area, as I said 500 metres from here
is the Somali Border where you have activities going on, which
sometimes you can hear gunshots. Yesterday right on the spot
where we are standing now, we heard some bullets fired from
the other side and nobody was hurt, however everybody was
quite afraid," said Yvan Strum from UNHCR.
UNHCR remains gravely concerned about the security and
health conditions in Mandera.
Four refugees were killed two weeks earlier in the camp
near the Kenyan town of Mandera when fighting restarted in
Bula Hawa.
Meanwhile, food distribution has not been maintained due
to insecurity in the area.
"Two weeks ago we airlifted 7.5 tonnes of CSB which is
basically, Corn, Soya, Blend which is a mixture to make
porridge, highly nutritious porridge, to distribute mainly to
children and to women - pregnant women, lactating women.
Unfortunately until now we have not been able to distribute
this food due to the security circumstances," said Laura Melo,
the world Food Programme Spokesperson.
Thousands of terrified Somalis fled to Kenya in late April
and early May to escape battles between rival militias at the
village of Bula Hawa, setting up their settlement of reed and
mud huts near Mandera town.
Somalia has been without central government since 1991,
when it descended into chaos after the ousting of former
dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. A shaky interim government
controls half of the capital of Mogadishu while warlords
control most of the remaining areas in Somalia.
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