The U.N. assistant secretary general discusses a recent visit to some Internally Displaced Persons camps in Mogadishu
NAIROBI (AlertNet) – The number of displaced people in Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu, has not fallen despite the end of famine in the country.
There are about 200,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in camps scattered across the city.
Most of the new arrivals fled the Afgoye corridor -- located 40 kilometres (24.9 miles) outside Mogadishu -- in February, out of fear of an impending attack by African Union troops on the area, which is controlled by al Shabaab militants.
Catherine Bragg, the U.N. assistant secretary general, recently visited some IDP camps in Mogadishu, and AlertNet's Katy Migiro spoke to her about her impressions from the trip.
Q: What were conditions like in the IDP camps you visited?
A: The conditions there are appalling . . . These people are living in very miserable conditions and we have to provide them with services so that they can live with at least some level of dignity and security.
Q: What most struck you?
A: They [the IDPs] were very concerned about some militias who were operating around there that were allegedly the cause of quite a bit of violence against the women. There were eight cases of reported rape in two weeks alone. That’s very worrisome…
Q: Why were the women so vulnerable to attack?
A: They were under tarpaulin and plastic sheeting and there is no way to have locked areas or secure areas.
Q: Why have people not gone home now that the famine is over?
A: If the alternative of going home is less than what they have at the moment – either in terms of their physical security or in terms of access to services or access to livelihoods – and if they see going home is a worse alternative, then they won’t.
It’s not just one rain is going to make the difference. One rain may in any particular area give them a better harvest but if they have left the area, there isn’t anybody there to even do the harvest.
Q: Is the crisis over?
A: The crisis is definitely not over… What we have done is actually move the conditions down the scale from famine conditions to very critical condition, to emergency condition. At the moment we estimate in Somalia still 2.5 million people are food insecure compared to four million last year.
What are malnutrition rates now compared to during the famine?
Global Acute Malnutrition dropped amongst the Mogadishu IDP population from 43 percent to 16 percent. Severe Acute Malnutrition dropped from 23 to 3 percent. We have made progress.
Outside of the IDP population, we are still seeing somewhere between 3 to10 per cent of malnutrition. Should we be rejoicing at 10 percent of children being malnourished? No.
What do you think should be done to end the hunger crisis in Somalia?
It’s time for us to have more conversations about what we can do for the long term because it’s not right that every few years we have this kind of acute crisis. We cannot see each one of them as discrete events and ‘Ah, phew! We got over that one’ and that we can go back to complacency.
We have to think of a long term phenomenon to which we need long term programming. Even though I am a humanitarian, I am not a development person, I have to think that way.
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