Regional drought causing ‘alarming’ overcrowding at Kenyan refugee camp: UN

The United Nations humanitarian agency reported today that the numbers of new arrivals of Horn of Africa drought victims at an already overcrowded refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya is growing “at alarming rates.”

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said: “The overcrowded Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa continues to receive new arrivals at alarming rates. The current number of registered refugees – 353,921 – is four times its capacity. Twenty thousand people have arrived in the last two weeks alone.”

The site is the largest refugee camp in the world.

Earlier this week OCHA estimated that 10 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, with some areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, experiencing their worst drought conditions in 60 years.

The Kenyan Government has declared the drought situation a national disaster, with malnutrition mortality rates in northern Kenya exceeding emergency thresholds, OCHA reported.