Updated: In Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, relief efforts intensify
The Irish public has generously donated over €100,000 to World Vision Ireland’s Horn of Africa Appeal. With a historic drought driving a food crisis and famine that continues to threaten lives, World Vision continues its response in devastated areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Below is an update on our relief efforts.
It’s a daunting figure: According to the United Nations, more than 13.3 million people are in need of humanitarian aid in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa. The year 2010-2011 is predicted to be among the driest on record in 60 years.
In project areas where World Vision already works in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, more than 2.5 million people are affected. It is our plan to reach all of them with some form of assistance. We’re also reaching an additional 400,000 people in need of food aid in Tanzania.
With the support of generous donations, we are helping to save lives and sustain livelihoods through interventions, such as:
- Distributing therapeutic food, in partnership with the World Food Programme, especially for children and women.
- Improving water and sanitation by trucking in water, rehabilitating wells, and providing water storage tanks.
- Providing assistance for refugees and displaced families in camps.
- Supporting agriculture by providing seeds and food for livestock.
- Promoting practices to make land more drought-resistant.
Kenya: What we’ve done so far
In the Dadabb refugee camp in Kenya — the largest such camp in the world — World Vision has coordinated the distribution and assembly of the temporary shelters.
The irony of drought is that when the rain finally does arrive, the parched earth often can’t absorb water quickly enough. This is exactly what has been happening in Kenya’s Turkana region, with the resulting floods hampering ongoing relief efforts.
However, World Vision is committed to providing short-term relief and long-term recovery. In addition to the general interventions mentioned above, our efforts in Kenya so far include:
- Providing kits with items like blankets, mosquito nets, cooking pots, and more to refugees and displaced families.
- Partnering with ShelterBox to construct thousands of short-term shelters and tents.
- Helping build resilience though projects that provide water storage systems, plant trees, and set up irrigation systems.
World Vision Ireland’s longterm work in Kenya
In one of World Vision Ireland’s area development programmes in Mutonguni, Kenya, we have worked with the community to enable them to become more resilient and better equipped to deal with drought. For example, we built a pipeline that covers 10km2 and reaches 4,000 people with a sustainable and safe water source, improving the health of the community and supporting agriculture - it is a small drop in this very dry ocean but a start that is inspiring other Kenyans to imitate this project.
Somalia:
The UN has officially declared famine in five regions of Somalia, where lack of rain and soaring food prices have resulted in dangerously high malnutrition rates, especially among young children. Nearly 30,000 Somali children have already died from hunger-related causes.
World Vision has worked in Somalia since 1992, but in 2010, armed groups demanded that most aid organisations leave the south-central area of the country. Frustratingly, even now, we are only able to work in the Somaliland and Puntland regions — not in the epicenter of the famine, due to lack of security for aid workers.
Without improved access, as many as 750,000 Somalis may die in the next few months.
In the areas where we are able to work in Somalia, we are intervening through cash-for-work programs, restoring water catchments, and constructing new boreholes. Meanwhile, nearly 700,000 Somalis have fled to refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, where we are providing assistance.
We are distributing kits with non-food items to families who have travelled from Somalia to these refugee camps, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Kits contain things like blankets, a bucket, a cooking pot, and a mosquito net.
Ethiopia: Initial 90-day response
A recent outbreak of measles at a refugee camp in Dollo Ado (near the Somali border) is increasing child mortality rates as tiny, malnourished immune systems struggle to cope with cramped living conditions. In Ethiopia, we are responding with:
- Emergency food
- Seeds for vegetables and other crops
- Non-food items such as blankets, mattresses, and utensils
- Training for local staff and community members in bee-keeping
- Commodity management training to staff
Three ways you can help
Share information about this humanitarian emergency with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog.
Make a donation to the World Vision Horn of Africa Appeal and help us provide emergency food, healthcare and other critical assistance to the people of East Africa.
Join the ActNow2015 campaign. You can email your TD on the ActNow2015 website and ask him or her to use their influence to make sure Ireland keeps its overseas aid promise.
Learn more
Read the stories of Fadija and Gaalo — two mothers who are struggling to survive with their children in the midst of drought and famine in Somalia.