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Thursday 7 July 2011

Kenya: EU Donates Emergency Funding to Dadaab Refugees

The Commission is giving €5.67 million to address the upsurge of refugees arriving at the Dadaab camps in Kenya.

By George Okore

NAIROBI---The European Union Commission has committed more than five million euros to alleviate the drought in  Dadaab camp, which hosts one of the world’s largest refugee populations.

The Commission is giving €5.67 million to address the upsurge of refugees arriving at the Dadaab camps in Kenya. At least 61,000 Somalis have sought refuge there since the beginning of this year, fleeing hunger, thirst and conflict. Dadaab’s refugee population now stands at more than 370,000 in three camps – Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley.

More aid to the stricken region from European Commission will be announced in the coming days. “Severe drought is making tough living conditions unbearable, adding new pains to those caused by conflicts and erratic weather,” said Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response.

“Dadaab is just the starkest reminder that the spectre of hunger has returned to Africa. We are acting today to respond to one of the most urgent problems, but we are preparing to commit more resources to the relief operation. What we are witnessing in the Horn of Africa is now considered to be the worst food crisis in the world today.”

The Horn of Africa is one of the most complex and conflicted regions of the world. Each of the countries of the Horn—Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan—suffers from protracted political strife, arising from local and national grievance, identity politics and regional inter-state rivalries. For 150 years, the Horn has also been a theatre for strategic power struggles—the British Empire’s demand to control the Red Sea, Egypt’s attempt to control  Nile Waters, Cold War confrontation in which each of the principal countries of the Horn switched sides at crucial junctures, and most recently the U.S. Administration’s “Global War on Terror.”

The rise of the Union of Islamic Courts in Somalia, the Ethiopian invasion to install the President Abdullahi Yousif in power, and the U.S. bombing raids aimed at suspected al Qa’ida members have again highlighted the turbulence of the Horn. The resurgent conflict in Somalia comes against the backdrop of a successful exercise in locally-driven reconstruction in Somaliland (north-west Somalia), an unresolved war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, internal political crises in both countries, and a host of active, latent and imminent conflicts in Sudan.

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