It's surreal to be here - in the heart of the world's largest humanitarian aid effort. Dadaab already hosted the largest refugee population in the world. Then the summer of 2011 saw drought and famine in Somalia, northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. Dadaab then saw thousands of Somalis DAILY fleeing into Kenya in search of safety and sustenance. I have heard that the UN has managed to receive 1,000 per day, but even those numbers do not reflect the actual population flows Dadaab has been overwhelmed with. The current number of registered refugees in Dadaab is around 455,000. MSF estimates that by the end of this year, the number of Somalis seeking refuge in Dadaab's refugee camps will pass 500,000. The UN, IOM, MSF and other aid organizations are doing their very best to provide the refugees with the aid they need, but with #s increasing daily, al-Shabaab led violence, kidnappings and carjackings on the rise, providing sufficient aid is proving difficult. MSF recently posted statistics on their website which state that in a recent nutrition survey of children seeking refuge in the the outskirts of one of Dadaab's 4 camps, "37.7 percent of children between six months and five years old were suffering from acute malnutrition," while "43.3 percent of children between five and 10 years old were malnourished."
Referenced article:
http://www.msf.org/msf/articles/2011/08/dadaab-kenya-somalis-fighting-for-survival.cfm
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