This week, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged a total of $122 million to famine relief in East Africa, putting the total U.S. contribution to the crisis over $580 million. The recent pledges maintain the U.S. position as the biggest donor nation.
But is it enough? The U.N. recently called for $2.5 billion to meet the need of 12.6 million people suffering from hunger across East Africa, many of whom are women and young children. While the president’s recent pledge is good news after thus-far-inadequate contributions from private donors and other countries, the developing reports out of East Africa show that the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” is far from over.
On Friday, seven people were killed in a looting of aid distribution trucks in Somalia. Last week, the UN announced that the famine has spread to three other regions in the nation and is likely to continue. And news broke several weeks ago that women in the overflowing refugee camps have been subject to widespread violent and sexual attacks, particularly in the surrounding tent cities.
“This is not a gender-neutral crisis,” says Liz Pender, an Emergency Technical Advisor for the Women’s Protection & Empowerment Unit of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). “It never is, but this crisis [especially] has a female face.” Women and children make up 80 percent of the refugees.
One encouraging development came in late July when the Kenyan government bowed to months of international pressure and agreed to open the IFO II camp to Somalian refugees, creating space for 90,000 incoming families. UNHCR began moving refugees into the newly opened camp on July 25. The camp had been sitting half-built and empty after the Kenyan government issued a letter last year ordering UNHCR to halt construction of mud-and-brick-homes. While some Kenyan officials claimed they feared potential terrorist attacks by incoming refugees, it’s more likely, given that four-fifths of the refugees are women and young children, that officials were simply reluctant to establish yet another semi-permanent refugee camp within their borders. Scarce resources such as firewood have already caused tension and conflict between the local Kenyan population and arriving Somalian refugees. Kenya too faces huge shortages from the drought.
While the opening of IFO II is a small victory, it is impossible to open new camps fast enough to meet the ever-growing need. Even with the construction of a new camp, Kambioos, near the Hagadera camp, the backlog of refugees waiting to register at any of the Daddaab camps is 16,000 and growing. Refugees can only move into the camps and receive non-food aid once they are registered.
Meanwhile, women still face danger both outside and inside the camps, says Pender, who recently returned from compiling a report for the IRC on the experiences of women refugees in the Hagadera camp in Dadaab. Women continue to report frequent harassment and violence when leaving the camp to retrieve firewood or visiting the few established latrines within the camp. (UNHCR is conducting a similar, more extensive survey of violence in the other Dadaab camps.)
Pender also received reports of widespread domestic violence in the camps. UNHCR spokesperson Charity Tooze explains:
Everything is exacerbated in a refugee situation. For example, when I worked with Iraqi refugees there was a rise in domestic violence because the gender dynamics changed. In a camp situation, like Dadaab, where the capacity is far beyond it’s intended purpose, issues that arise in normal life are tenfold.
Aid organizations like the IRC and UNHCR are trying to establish some level of security for those still forced to live outside the camp. The IRC is distributing “dignity kits,” complete with whistles and solar-powered flashlights. They’re also advocating for the establishment of community-driven initiatives to minimize and reduce risk while women are collecting firewood, or going to the forest to find privacy to go to the toilet. The Women’s Refugee Commission has suggested to aid organizations th