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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A mission is being organized from 24 August to 2 September to assess the key protection and displacement concerns in relation to the current drought facing the Turkana region of Kenya. The mission will assess the capacity of UNHCR and partners to respond to the protection concerns of those affected...

Planning is underway for a mission by UNHCR colleagues in early October to undertake an assessment of the environmental situation in the Turkana region of Kenya with the aim of developing a long-term strategy for mainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into UNHCR operatio...

In Djibouti, the authorities are working to open a camp to house more than 3,500 Somalis who have arrived so far this year. An existing camp called Ali Addeh is already overcrowded with 17,000 refugees from previous influxes. The new arrivals are currently encamped at the nearby transit centre, ...

In Kenya, UNHCR began populating yesterday (Thursday, 18 August) a new part of the Dadaab refugee complex to provide shelter for tens of thousands of new Somali refugees and to ease the chronic overcrowding of the existing camps - namely Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera. The first group to occupy ten...

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...