ECHO Releases 15 Million Euro for Dadaab Refugee Camp
By ARIANNA AZZOLINI
Dadaab Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya will receive 15 million Euros this year from the European Commission for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), officials have announced.
Thanks to the funds, the world’s biggest refugee camp will be expanded this year by ECHO and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to accommodate 80,000 people, thus easing the overcrowded and inhuman conditions that have been prevailing at the camp.
The Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera camps – which form part of the larger Dadaab Camp - are now hosting around 300,000 refugees, 97 per cent from Somalia. The camps were meant for only 90,000 refugees at the time of construction twenty years ago.
More than 61,000 new refuges were registered in 2008 while in 2009 over 72,000 arrived. In 2010 , almost 4,500 Somalis were arriving at the camp each month.
ECHO has been the major funder of the Dadaab camp since it was constructed in 1991. It provided 10 million Euros in 2009 which, according to them, was spent on a variety of interventions including food, water, services and sanitation.
Funds from ECHO are given to around 170 European-based NGOs as well as UN humanitarian agencies which use the funds to run projects that help the victims of conflicts and natural disasters.
In Dadaab UNCHR and CARE are among the major recipients of the funds, which they mainly use to help improve the living conditions of the refugees. The two agencies reported progress in education, food supply and sanitation, but they say refugees running away from the Somali war are still barely surviving because of inadequate food , medicine and water - as well as periodical disease outbreaks.
In June 2010, Human Rights Watch’s released a report titled “Welcome to Kenya” that cited abuses and violations meted out on the Somali refugees by Kenyan police.
“They use violence, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention in inhuman and degrading conditions, threats of deportation, and wrongful prosecution for ‘unlawful presence’ to extort money from the new arrivals - men, women, and children alike,” the report said.
“In some cases, police also rape women. In early 2010 alone, hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Somalis unable to pay extortion demands were sent back to Somalia, in flagrant violation of Kenyan and international law,” it claimed.