Rebel taxes drive hungry families out of Somalia
NAIROBI: Thousands of malnourished Somali women and children are fleeing into Ethiopia to escape militants who are taxing them and seizing their food, animals and land, the United Nations said on Friday, amid fears of renewed famine. Arrivals into Ethiopia’s Dollo Ado camp from Somalia surged in January to more than 100 a day, said the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, the highest number seen in four years.
“They report being taxed heavily by Al Shabaab,” said Clementine Awu NkwetaSalami, UNHCR’s country representative in Ethiopia, referring to the Somali militant group.
“In some cases they also report they have had their land confiscated as well as crops and livestock,” she said by phone.
The UN issued a pre-famine alert on Thursday, with 6.2 million of Somalia’s 10 million people needing emergency aid due to conflict and severe, prolonged drought.
Al Shabaab, which has been fighting Somalia’s Western-backed government for a decade, partially controls Bay and Bakool regions where most of the new arrivals come from.
Al Shabaab could reached for comment.
Few international agencies work in Al Shabaab controlled areas, relying on local charities to deliver aid for them.
“The real question is going to be whether (humanitarians) are going to be able to get enough food and water into those communities in time to prevent a mass exodus,” said Charlie Mason, Save the Children’s humanitarian director. A lack of access to food aid was one of the main reasons 260,000 people died in Somalia’s 2011 famine, also caused by drought not immediately be and conflict.
The UN hopes it will have better access than in 2011 as African Union forces have pushed Al Shabaab out of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and other southern strongholds.
“In 2011, the access in drought-affected areas was so limited, the only option people had to seek assistance was to head towards the border,” Justin Brady, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a news conference on Thursday.
“We (now) have the ability to mount operations that can help stabilise rural areas before they fall into famine conditions.”
Three-quarters of new arrivals in Ethiopia are children, who travel up to 10 days on foot or donkey cart, Salami said. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is screening all children under five on arrival in Ethiopia.
In the first three weeks of January, 77 per cent had Global Acute Malnutrition — five times higher than the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold of 15 per cent.
“What we have seen in relation to their nutritional status is quite concerning,” said Kate Nolan, head of mission in Ethiopia for MSF, which pulled out of Somalia in 2013 due to attacks on its staff.
Some new arrivals reported delays crossing the border, she said, although she was unclear about the cause.
The UN is revising its projections for new arrivals in Ethiopia, which it predicted last year would be 10,000 refugees in the first four months of 2017. “If the current arrival pattern continues and we get on average 3,000 a month, then we will reach that 10,000 mark very quickly,” said Nkweta-Salami.