Article - East Africa drought: Kenya's controversial camp opens

From : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14582085

East Africa drought: Kenya's controversial camp opens

The refugees who began arriving on Thursday are moving into new tents pitched at the Ifo II site

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East Africa hunger crisis

• Refugee success stories
• In pictures
• Rains fail to ease crisis
• Tragedy revisited

The first 200 Somali refugees fleeing famine and conflict have moved into a controversial camp in Kenya that has been lying empty for several months.

The government had stopped work to prepare the Ifo II site because local people resented the permanent buildings being handed over to Somalis.
It has more than 100 houses, three schools and a clinic, but most of the arrivals will be housed in tents.
The Dadaab area of north-eastern Kenya is now home to 400,000 Somali refugees.
The East African region is suffering from its worst drought in 60 years, affecting 12 million people.

The permanent houses at Ifo II will be reserved for the most vulnerable families

Somalia has been the worst-hit country with five districts suffering from famine and much of the country controlled by the Islamist al-Shabab group which has banned many aid agencies from its territory.
The BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Dadaab says relieved officials of the UN refugee agency described it as a very important day as the first Somali refugee family stepped off the bus at Ifo II.
UN officials acknowledged that the delay in opening the site had been deeply frustrating but said they realised the impact that such a large number of refugees had on local people.
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the 116 permanent houses built at Ifo II will be for the most vulnerable families.
An estimated 1,500 Somalis are arriving every day at Kenya's massive Dadaab camp - the world's largest refugee camp.

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Dadaab camp accommodation sites

• Dagahaley: Established settlement
• Ifo: Established settlement
• Hagadera: Established settlement
• Ifo Extension: New settlement made up of Ifo II and Ifo III
• Kambioos: New settlement being prepared, not yet open

It is made up of several sites where the refugees are accommodated - Ifo II is an area of the most recent settlement.

UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told the BBC many of the new arrivals have been staying in makeshift shelters without access to water and sanitation on the outskirts of Dadaab.
At Ifo II 1,500 tents have been put up allowing new refugees to be properly cared for, he said.
High-profile visits Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991 and has been plagued by infighting between rival warlords.
Two weeks ago, al-Shabab, a group which is linked to al-Qaeda, made what it called a tactical withdrawal from the capital, Mogadishu.
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Extended drought is causing a severe food crisis in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Weather conditions over the Pacific means the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to return until October.

An estimated 12 million people in the region are affected by the drought. The UN has declared a famine in six areas of southern Somalia, where it says 750,000 people could die in the coming months in the absence of adequate response.

The humanitarian problem is made worse by conflicts. Militants had lifted a ban on aid agencies operating in parts of southern Somalia, but have since accused Western groups of exaggerating the scale of the crisis and again limited access.

Since the beginning of 2011, around 15,000 Somalis each month have fled into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia looking for food and water. The refugee camp at Dadaab, in Kenya, has been overwhelmed by more than 420,000 people.

Farmers unable to meet their basic food costs are abandoning their herds. High cereal and fuel prices had already forced them to sell many animals before the drought and their smaller herds are now unprofitable or dying.

The refugee problem may have been preventable. However, violent conflict in the region has deterred international investment in long-term development programmes, which could have reduced the effects of the drought.

Development aid would focus on reducing deforestation, topsoil erosion and overgrazing and improving water conservation. New roads and infrastructure for markets would help farmers increase their profits.

The result of climate conditions, conflict and lack of investment is that millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are currently existing on food rations in what is said to be East Africa's worst drought for 60 years.

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In the past few days there has been a string of international politicians flying into the city to see for themselves the thousands of famine victims pouring into the capital from al-Shabab areas.

On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due in Mogadishu in an effort to draw the world's attention to Somalia's plight.
He will be the most high-profile political leader to visit Somalia and will come days after Turkey and other Muslim countries pledged $350m (£212m) to assist in famine relief in the Horn of Africa.
Meanwhile, the presidents of Uganda and Eritrea have agreed publicly that they want to see Somalia "re-constituted" as a nation.
In the past both countries have supported opposite sides in the Somali conflict.
Uganda contributes most of the troops for the African Union force providing security in Mogadishu for the weak UN-backed interim government, while Eritrea is accused of supporting al-Shabab - which it denies.
BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says both presidents now appear to be calling for a new Somali authority to be formed; this would bring the government in Mogadishu together with Somalia's breakaway regions - including Puntland and Somaliland.
It implies a considerable change, since it could mean the end of Uganda's unconditional support for the Somali government, he says.

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Article - Kenya hit by killer drought

From : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8267165.stm

Kenya hit by killer drought

By Peter Greste BBC News, Samburu National Park, Kenya

The region has not had a proper wet season for three years

It was not hard to find the dead elephant.
The stench of the rotting carcass made it easy to track down in the sparse bush. A young male - barely four years old and still an infant by elephant standards - lay on its side in the sand by a river.
Around its feet, the sand had been cleared in small arcs - signs of the animal's thrashing as it struggled to stand and survive.
But there was nothing to eat. Nothing. On the ground, not a blade of grass existed, every green shoot had been stripped from the trees.
For Iain Douglas Hamilton, from the conservation organisation Save The Elephants, it was a heartbreaking sight.
"In all my 12 years here, I've never seen anything as bad as this," he said.
"The last long rains [in April] failed completely, and we haven't had a proper wet season for at least three years. If the rains fail in October and November, we'll go into total crisis. I can't even begin to imagine how awful that would be."
Left rotting
In all, Mr Hamilton's organisation has counted at least 24 elephants that have died over the past two months across Samburu alone.

If the rains fail, we are all in trouble. It's not just going to be the animals dying. We'll die too, and it's not going to take long Local herder

And like most droughts, it is the old and the young that go first.
That is a worrying trend for the conservationists.
The losses on their own would not have much of an impact on the region's elephant populations, but when the old matriarchs die it is potentially devastating.
"If you get a large-scale mortality, and you get a lot of old matriarchs going, you lose the memory banks. That's the lessons the matriarchs have learned from their own mothers about things like where to go for water," Mr Hamilton said.
"If a matriarch dies before those lessons have been handed down, and the new head of the family makes a mistake in a drought like this, it's potentially very serious for the entire group."
This drought, of course, is not just about elephants. But they are an indicator species.
What happens to them points to trouble right across the spectrum.

Elephants are now being poached for their meat as well as their tusks

Other less drought-resistant animals like buffalo, warthog, hippopotami and certain species of antelope have been hit hard.
Crocodiles have been forced to migrate sometimes many kilometres in search of water.
Only the predators and scavengers are doing well. In good times, any dead animal would be surrounded by hungry lions, hyenas and vultures. Now most are simply left to rot in the sun. The scavengers simply cannot consume all the meat littering the bush.
Ominous warning
A few kilometres from the first elephant carcass, David Daballen, a researcher with Save the Elephants, found another dead male. This one was the victim of poaching.
The carcass lay on its chest, its legs spread like a spatchcocked chicken - clear evidence, according to Mr Daballen, that it had been shot.

Other less drought-resistant animals have been hit hard too

"It was probably killed with a couple of bullets in its head. It would have collapsed where it stood," he said.
The ivory had been hacked out of the 10-year-old male, but more disturbingly, each of its feet and its trunk had been removed - clear signs that it had been butchered for meat.
"Normally you only find poaching much further from where it is now, and it looks like people are desperate and going for anything, including the meat. This is not quite normal for people to hunt for elephant meat," Mr Daballen said.
The clash between elephants and humans also now extends more broadly than it might otherwise have done in better times.
The Ewasa Nyiro river runs along the Samburu National Park boundary.
The park rangers say it is only ever dry for a few weeks or perhaps a month out of every year. Now, it is a sea of bleached sand, and it has been that way for most of the past six months.
Each day, the elephants listlessly amble their way to a series of waterholes on a bend in the river.
Local herders dug the wells - perhaps two metres deep - for themselves and their livestock. But as long as the elephants are there, the herders have to wait their turn.
An old lady is philosophical: "We have to live with the elephants out here. When they come, they destroy the wells and fill them with sand, but what can we do? We all share this place."
But she also gave an ominous warning.
"If the rains fail, we are all in trouble. It's not just going to be the animals dying. We'll die too, and it's not going to take long."

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