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Twelve million people are affected by the food crisis. 2 millions children. Half a million children are severely malnourished and in danger of imminent death. The latest figures (FAO, UNICEF) on the disastrous drought in the Horn of Africa are overwhelming. Terre des hommes is already working in the border region between Kenya and South Sudan, and will be launching an additional emergency mission in the next few days for the distribution of vital goods, nutritional aid and child protection.
The Horn of Africa, that region of the African continent covering Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea, is currently undergoing an exceptional humanitarian crisis. Doubly hit by war and drought, as well as the increase in the prices of cereals, the worst in the past 60 years, this East African region is now the scene of a food crisis of unprecedented extent.
During the month of July alone, the High Commission for Refugees (HCR) estimates that 54,000 Somalis fled their country due to the drought and violence. The refugee camps in Dadaab, in eastern Kenya, already crammed with nearly 400,000 refugees, will see a daily influx of some 1,500 persons. The majority of them are in an advanced state of malnutrition. Hundreds of others, too weak to endure the long journey, died on the way or had to be left behind in a Somali border town.
Terre des hommes comes to aid the victims. Already on the spot with its network in the Turkana area of northern Kenya (frontier to South Sudan), it is setting up food assistance for communities hit by the famine. An emergency team will soon be in the country to bring vital goods to the victims and to organise a programme for nutrition and for child protection together with other parties there.
Terre des hommes has released a first sum of CHF 200,000.-. It will probably concentrate its activities in northern and eastern Kenya (frontier to Somalia), where famine threatens 2.5 million residents and the refugees who walked there from Somalia – who are often already suffering from severe undernourishment.
You can support the Tdh intervention in Kenya on www.tdh.ch
