UN launches flash appeal as Somali refugees flood into Kenya

As the rapid surge of refugees fleeing to Kenya from war-torn Somalia brings the 2006 total to more than 34,000 and fears grow that this could climb to 80,000 by the end of the year, the United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for $35 million to meet the increased needs over the next six months.

“This refugee migration is occurring in a predominantly pastoralist area of Kenya already severely stressed by three seasons of drought, with the majority of pastoralist households already dependent on humanitarian aid,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a news release.

The UN High Commissioner for Refuges (UNHCR) said today it will lead the emergency response in collaboration with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO), along with several non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The long-running Dadaab camp in north-eastern Kenya now hosts 160,000 Somalis in three sites, mostly from previous influxes from a country torn by 15 years of factional wars as well as by drought, “so we would need to find a new location for new arrivals,” UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told a news briefing in Geneva.

“In the past two weeks, the arrival rate reached 1,000 a day on several occasions, and 2,000 per day on October 4-5. A total of 14,000 have crossed since September 1,” she added.

The sudden surge comes as the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) expands its influence beyond the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and jockeys for power with the Transitional Federal Government in Baidoa and various warlord militias.

UNHCR has suspended operations at the Somalia-Kenya border for the last few days to set up a more efficient screening and registration process. “We're doing this because we’ve seen evidence that some refugees in the Dadaab camps have tried to cheat the system by registering twice so that they can get extra ration cards,” Ms. Pagonis said.

“We have deployed additional staff members to Dadaab to implement emergency registration procedures, which include fingerprinting all new arrivals.”

UNHCR also reported today that a three-year-old girl was diagnosed on Friday with polio in one of the three sprawling camps in Dadaab – the first case in Kenya in more than 20 years. There have been 30 cases of polio so far in Somalia in 2006.

“The girl had reportedly received all necessary vaccinations but still contracted polio,” Ms. Pagonis said. “This new case is quite worrying, and a team composed of Government officials, UNHCR, WHO and UNICEF is on the way to Dadaab today to organize a response to this threat.”