The Czech charity organisation People in Need working in south-eastern Ethiopia has found a group of roughly six thousand people suffering from hunger and malnourishment. Known for working in remote areas, the organisation was near the Somali border looking into the state of a group of local herdsmen whose cattle had died out and found that they had been joined by several thousand drought refugees from neighbouring Somalia. Local communities have been trying to care for the refugees so far, but their material support - water, food and firewood – is quickly running out, children are dying on a weekly basis, and the group has not yet even received refugee status by the Ethiopian government. Earlier today I spoke by phone with People in Need’s coordinator Marek Štys, who is currently in the Somali region of Ethiopia and described the situation.
Photo: Djamal Belayachi, People in Need
“There are all in very primitive shelters made of wood and pieces of cloth, they have very few personal belongings. They have practically no food at all, and their health status and the nutritional status of the kids is pretty alarming. All the indicators - given the child mortality and the malnutrition figures – are in the red, indicating famine. The most pressing needs are presently to provide them with health and nutritional support, water and food, and that is what we are currently working on.”
How has the situation changed since last week when you found these people?
Photo: Djamal Belayachi, People in Need
“Well the situation has not changed much frankly. We have undertaken a few emergency food distributions, we brought in the people from the local health bureau and one other NGO which is helping with health and nutrition screening, targeting the kids, the mothers and the elderly first, and as we speak we are dispatching a big convoy with about 120 tonnes of food and different relief items such as jerrycans, water purification tablets, some tarpaulins and to protect them from the wind and blankets against the night cold – because the temperatures drop pretty low during the night – and the convoy should be on site next week, which will mean a radical improvement in the situation. But it takes time, because the distance from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, is about 1,500 kilometres, which means five days for the trucks to reach the place, and to assemble all the materials and food is not easy either. So the situation will start to change in the course of next week.”
The area is extremely remote, what are the logistical problems of getting the aid there and how do you surmount them?
Photo: Djamal Belayachi, People in Need
“Well there’s the distance I mentioned, but there’s also the question of administrative access, because when you are working with refugees in Ethiopia you have to have an agreement with the agency for refugees and returnees, and it is still not clear how the government is going to react to these pockets of people. It seems they would like to relocate them to these big official camps in Dolo Odo, which currently host over 120,000 refugees. But from a logistical point of view, and with regards to the very malnourished kids and sick people, they physically cannot be transported in the coming month or two, and the people have to be stabilised a bit before they can be moved. So the administrative issues are really on our everyday agenda. They are refugees, but the refugee status has not been granted yet. So in these days we are joining UNHCR and the local government on a fact-finding mission in which our people and the officials are basically driving along the Ethiopian-Somali border and trying to assess the situation, locate other pockets of refugees and internally displaced people – who will most likely be in the vicinity of the two places that have been discovered so far – and we have to keep in mind that Ethiopia has an 800 kilometre-long border with Somalia, and in many places refugees are crossing the border unnoticed. Logistically speaking, it’s a challenge.”
