In Ethiopia, a large scale effort has meanwhile been underway to address the high mortality rates among new arrivals from Somalia. Malnutrition remains the leading cause of death but the situation is being compounded by suspected measles and other diseases. Children under the age of five, already...

NAIROBI, Kenya, August 19 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency said Friday it is continuing to distribute emergency aid to displaced people in southern and central Somalia, reaching some 30,000 of them this week alone. Since early July, UNHCR teams have assisted some 180,000 people displaced by drough...

NAIROBI, Kenya, August 23 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has sent a team of experts in several disciplines to a remote area of eastern Ethiopia where some 18,000 Somali refugees are in urgent need of aid after fleeing their country. The UNHCR team sent to Gode includes specialists in health, nut...

With the crisis in the Horn of Africa continuing, UNCHR has noted an evolving displacement pattern during August with fewer Somalis displaced within Somalia or into Kenya or Ethiopia, but rising arrivals in Yemen. In Somalia, UNHCR’s Population Movement Tracking (PMT) partners have reported a sig...

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres is on a three-day visit to the Horn of Africa to show solidarity with displaced Somalis during Eid il-Fitr. Over the Eid period, UNHCR is airlifting 240 metric tonnes of aid from Saudi Arabia to Somalia. The assistance comprises dry goods and spe...

In Kenya, this coming Monday marks the start of the new school term and at Dadaab, the largest refugee complex in the world, some 40,000 refugee children are preparing to go to school - many for the first time. The influx of 154,000 new refugees from Somalia this year, more than half of whom are chi...

UNHCR is becoming extremely concerned about the increasingly poor health state of recent Somali arrivals in Ethiopia. At the Kobe camp, in the Dollo Ado area, medical screening of new arrivals is recording severe acute malnutrition among 19 percent of children. At nearby Hilaweyn, the rate is 16 pe...

Somali children are the biggest victims of the refugee crisis in the Horn of Africa, according to the latest profiling data collected by UNHCR in Ethiopia. The most recent demographic breakdown of the Somali influx into Ethiopia shows that children under the age of 18 are the largest age group amon...

Amid assessments of a somewhat improved security situation in some parts of Somalia, UNHCR is scaling up its presence in Somalia’s border regions and in Mogadishu. Yesterday, a UNHCR team undertook a mission to Liboi (Kenya) and Dobley (Lower Juba), which is the main transit point on the route to Da...

DADAAB, Kenya, Sept 9 (UNHCR) – Muhioadin Ahmed Aden stares out at the horizon, knowing that the second most important journey of his life will begin today. A struggle within his heart, between despair and a desperate enduring hope, has finally come to a conclusion. <p>His family sits by his side...