Oxfam warns many Somalis could face another food crisis in the next two months after poor rains hit harvests
LONDON (AlertNet) - The number of Somali refugees fleeing fighting and hunger has passed the 1 million mark, but the exodus from the Horn of Africa country is slowing, the U.N. refugee agency says.
UNHCR said the latest data from Kenya and Ethiopia - the main host countries for Somali refugees - showed that the number of arrivals, though steady, is lower than last year when famine was declared in parts of the country.
It said in the first six months of 2012 some 30,000 refugee arrivals were registered in the region, compared to more than 137,000 Somalis who fled their homes during the first six months of last year.
"Somalia is one of the world's longest and worst refugee crises," UNHCR said in a statement. "In the past decade only two other conflicts, the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, have forced more than a million people to flee their homes."
In addition to the million refugees in neighbouring countries, more than 1.3 million Somalis are internally displaced, UNHCR said. Altogether that amounts to a third of Somalia's estimated 7.5 million population living in forced displacement, it added.
In a separate statement, aid agency Oxfam warned that over 1 million Somalis could again suffer a food crisis in the next two months after poor rains hit harvests.
It said it was a critical time for many Somalis who are already struggling to recover from last year's famine, the loss of their livestock, crops and means of earning a living.
"Our partners confirm that some people are again slipping back into emergency. The farmers who live away from the rivers are the hardest hit, since their fields are far from irrigation," Oxfam's associate country director, Zachariah Imeje, said in a statement.
"If we don't act now, they say we are likely to go back into a deepening emergency in the next 60 days," he said, adding that Oxfam was coordinating an assessment of humanitarian needs.
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