Somali Refugee Crisis Is Killing Children: U.N.

GENEVA (AP) — Throngs of Somali children are dying because of the harrowing journey with their families to reach refugee camps in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

Some of the children don't survive the exhausting trek and aid workers are learning of those deaths from families who tell their stories once they arrive at one of the overcrowded border camps that now host more than 382,000 people, agency officials said.

But agency officials said many of the children arrive so hungry and frail that even the emergency care and therapeutic feeding that they immediately receive isn't enough to revive them. The officials say they do not yet know exactly how many children are dying, but the crisis is taking on unimaginable proportions.

"It's so extreme," agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said. "Our people are saying they've never seen anything like it."

Fleming said 54,000 people fled Somalia in June — triple the number in May — and the refugee families include an unknown number of children under age 5 who are dying from hunger and exhaustion.

More than 135,000 Somalis so far have fled the unending violence in their country in a fast-escalating crisis that is being compounded by one of the worst droughts to hit East Africa in decades, Fleming said.

Her agency estimates a quarter of Somalia's 7.5 million population is now uprooted in their own country or living as a refugee abroad. In Dadaab camp in Kenya, for example, 1,400 refugees a day are pouring in.

Some 9 million people need humanitarian assistance in the drought-hit countries of the Horn of Africa, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts since the early 1950s, according to the U.N.'s humanitarian aid coordination office.

Child malnutrition rates have reached emergency levels of 15 percent in some areas, said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which cited a lack of food as a major factor in the surge in people leaving Somalia in search of help.

Comments

[HappyandProud]

06:08 PM on 07/07/2011

Meanwhile, "humanitarian activists" are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to personally deliver letters to Gaza.

The Somalian kids? F*** 'em! Even the U.N. can't blame Jews for their suffering (though I'm sure they're busy trying). Besides, don't you know that there are no people worse off than the Palestinians?

[Diini]

09:34 AM on 07/08/2011

HappyandProud. No one is denying that the Palestinians are suffering big time but insulting Somali kids only inspires hatered and stupidity. Wish them good luck. We all need three meals a day and a place to sleep.

[The Grand Inquisitor]

07:48 PM on 07/05/2011

I'm sure more bombing and sanctions will help the situation...LOL

[NYC619]

04:54 PM on 07/05/2011

Meanwhile we have an obesity epidemic and need to bury a growing majority of people in warehouse-sized coffins, the difference is staggering.

[CoronaDischarge]

02:10 PM on 07/05/2011

Over-population at the fringes, ... it's heart breaking but these stories are inevitable until birth rates decline, which is not to say that something shouldn't be done, but that we must address root causes, or the magnitudes of these reports will only increase.

[tao88jeetkunedo]

01:26 PM on 07/05/2011

The UN is killing children with its stupid resolutions and the 5 nations who have a permanent seat in the Security Council.

[kickserv]

01:19 PM on 07/05/2011

We would like to help but you don't have any oil.

[kottkep]

11:47 AM on 07/05/2011

There is a school of thought that most wars in history derive over a fight over limited resources. Basically when people rely on the same pool of limited resources they will eventually start fighting and killing each other.

If true, then rising food prices would foreshadow much worse fighting and atrocities to come.