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Once more a catastrophe is unfolding in the Horn of Africa and we’re transfixed by pictures of haunted faces and distended bellies, of huddles of humanity slumped in the sand, stoically waiting for help. A quarter of a century after Ethiopia became a byword for famine, now neighbouring Somalia is the epicentre of another and once again the call goes out for help. But who is listening?

Desperate Somalis are trekking for three or four weeks to neighbouring Kenya in the hope of finding food - and sanctuary from civil war. If they’re lucky they’ll find a place inside Dadaab – a camp that’s become a city.

Dadaab in northern Kenya was once a quiet, dusty town near the Somali border but when war broke out in Somalia in the early nineties it became home to the first wave of refugees.

Three distinct camps were built for 90,000 refugees, most of whom stayed and had families.
Now drought, desperation and an unrelenting civil war has forced out new waves of Somalis and the surge has swamped the camp.

Dadaab’s population is rapidly approaching 400,000 and it is the world’s biggest refugee camp.

Every day another thousand people stumble in from the bush – some days there are 1500 arrivals - exhausted from weeks of walking and very little food. Initially the best they can hope for is a wrist band entitling them to emergency food supplies and the hope that in three or four weeks they can be found space in a tent.

If they’re lucky they’ll come into contact with people like Regina Muchai, of the Lutheran World Foundation, the lead manager of the Dagahaley camp who offers calm assistance and compassion to those who queue every morning outside the compound.

‘I’ve not seen anything like what I’ve seen in the past two months and I’ve spoken to a lot of my colleagues. I don’t think anybody has experienced this before.’

REGINA MUCHAI - Lead Manager, Dagahaley camp

If there is one small positive that visitors to Dadaab like correspondent Ben Knight take away, it is that a small number of Kenyan and international workers are doing remarkable things in a rapidly worsening environment. But what’s also remarkable is the effort among the residents of Dadaab top get on with building their lives. The camp has an impressive and developing commercial dimension with refugees establishing small shops and businesses.

Despite the impressive infrastructure of camps and food warehouses Foreign Correspondent reveals that Kenyan bureaucratic obstacles are making the refugee experience more difficult than it needs to be.

General views Dadaab camp

Music

00:00

[At gate to camp – man on loudspeaker] “All of you move back! Keep order!

00:14

KNIGHT: This gate and this wire mark the border between famine and food, between war and safety. Somali refugees are desperate to get inside. They’ve waited long enough in the blistering sun.

00:17

Somali woman

SOMALI WOMAN: [outside of the gate] “You’re saying stand here but I can’t even more. I am fainting”.

00:38

Women with children taken inside camp

KNIGHT: Those who are most in need are picked out of the line and taken inside but some of them won’t be finding sanctuary today. There are simply too many people already inside.

00:46

Official to crowd

CAMP OFFICIAL: [to waiting crowd] “Get off the gate! Get back, all of you!”

01:00

Crowd at camp gate

KNIGHT: Some of those waiting have literally just walked in from the bush with children, some of them born just days before, all of them starving, many of them sick and trying to get in for treatment. They constantly move towards the gate, trying to join those already inside. The organisers try to push them back, without much success.

01:09

CAMP OFFICIAL: [on loud speaker to crowd] “We give priority

01:34

Official addresses crowd

to women carrying children and to old people”.

01:37

KNIGHT: There was a riot here in June, several people were killed.

01:42

ABDULLAHI AHMER: “These people who are coming are just like skeletons.

01:47

Abdullahi. Super:
Abdullahi Ahmer
Somali refugee

These people are dying, you know, for hunger and the starvations and the lack of the nutrition. The children are just dying on the way”.

01:50

Official has altercation with woman

KNIGHT: The refugees who’ve already been in this camp for years are trying to bring the newcomers under control.

02:02

Women and children at gate

CAMP OFFICIAL: [on loud speaker to crowd] “If you don’t sit down and stop yelling I will close the gate. Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me?”

02:14

Noor with baby

KNIGHT: Oray Noor Buleh gave birth on the road, five days before reaching this camp. Having walked all the way from her village in Somalia.

02:24

ORAY NOOR BULEH: “We travelled by foot, all the way from Sakow. We were starving. We didn’t eat for five days”.

KNIGHT: At least she has her husband and all her five children with her.

02:33

Many women who come here are already widows or have left their husbands behind to look after the last of the family livestock.

02:47

Official with women at gate

OFFICIAL: [at gate] “Get in Mama… get in Mama!”

KNIGHT: It’s been like this most days since June, that was when the United Nations made official what had been obvious to aid agencies for months – that there wasn’t just a severe drought in southern Somalia, it was a famine.

02:54

Families arrive at camp

More than a thousand new arrivals, sometimes as many as 1,500, are straggling in here from the bush every single day. It’s remarkable that the

03:17

Regina with camp arrivals

Dadaab complex of camps runs as well as it does and that has a lot to do with people like Regina Muchai of the Lutheran World Federation ACT Alliance.

REGINA MUCHAI: “I’ve not seen anything like what I’ve seen in the past two months

03:29

Regina. Super:
Regina Muchai
Lutheran World Federation

and I’ve spoken to a lot of my colleagues. I don’t think anybody experienced this before”.

03:46

Regina with camp arrivals

KNIGHT: At 32 years old, she’s the manager of the whole Dagahaley Camp and its 120,000 refugees. Regina spots a boy who appears to be by himself. It turns out that the boy’s parents are still in Somalia. He got here just the night before - and the reason he’d been sent alone?

03:53

Regina with boy

REGINA MUCHAI: “The parents want him to come and study. [to camp worker] This boy is unaccompanied but he needs to be fast-tracked, the uncle did not come with him. So please let him in”.

04:20

People at gate

KNIGHT: Men who’ve travelled here alone are the lowest priority at this gate – after women, children, the sick and the elderly. Some of them will spend days here, waiting for the wristband that will entitle them to their first proper food since leaving home in Somalia.

04:36

REGINA MUCHAI: “It is sad because everybody here has a story. When you see these men sitting here, they may look strong now but they’ve left probably families that are weak in the camp”.

04:56

Knight walks with Regina

KNIGHT: “So when you have to be the one who tells him you can’t do this, it’s not going to happen here today, you need to bring everybody in, it must be hard for you”.

REGINA MUCHAI: “Well it is because as I’ve said you need to speak with everybody independently. Otherwise even if you tell them in the multitude you’re not really solving the problem”.

KNIGHT: “No”.

REGINA MUCHAI: “You need to listen to each one of them”.

‘Stabilization Centre’ exterior

KNIGHT: Of all the new arrivals babies are the most critically in need.

05:27

Babies in clinic

Some of them are sent to a specialist clinic run by the International Rescue Committee.

05:35

Ibrahim with children at clinic

Ibrahim Abdule is here with the youngest of his four children. Adan is three years old and in his short life, has known nothing but drought. His growth has clearly been affected.

04:42

Ibrahim with Adan at clinic

IBRAHIM ABDULE: “Drought has destroyed us. A lot of families have perished. We used to cultivate land but now there is drought so we came here. It took 25 days to walk here and the children were hungry. After 15 days my wife died”.

05:56

Dr Musyoka examines child

KNIGHT: Dr Humphrey Musyoka has been concentrating on this eleven-month-old child who’s been vomiting and feverish.

DR HUMPHREY MUSYOKA: “The child’s weight is five kilos

06:29

Dr Musyoka. Super:
Dr. Humphrey Musyoka
International Rescue Committee

which is quite low for an eleven month old child. He should be around 10 kilos and so that’s half the weight.

06:39

The hair distribution is sparse and the hair is thin. He’s obviously wasted and what is a very clear sign, an indication of malnutrition is wasting of the muscles. So when you lift the child up the muscles of the buttocks are completely wasted and that’s a very clear indication that this child is severely malnourished”.

06:45

Children and parents at clinic

KNIGHT: Dr Musyoka and his colleagues are dealing with up to six new cases here every day but this hospital is also bracing for the wave of refugees that they know are still coming.

07:09

UNICEF tents

The hospital’s been given tents to turn into new wards but they can’t open them yet because they can’t find a way to keep them warm enough at night.

07:22

Dr Musyoka

DR HUMPHREY MUSYOKA: “For our feeding program our return rate has not been that bad. But now, with the existing numbers and increasing new arrivals then really anything can happen”.

07:32

Drought-stricken Somalia

Music

07:44

KNIGHT: So why is this international emergency happening? Well the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for sixty years has wiped out the food supplies on which 11 million people depend. The UN predicts that all of southern Somalia will be in famine within a month. It’s a catastrophe.

07:49

al Shabaab militia

Music

08:15

KNIGHT:  And it’s questionable whether Somalia’s drought would have ever become a famine were it not for al Shabaab. The Islamic militia has been fighting for control of southern Somalia against an internationally recognised interim government.

08:20

Al Shabaab insists there is no famine, but the UN says tens of thousands have died because relief aid couldn’t be delivered to the starving, and while some al Shabaab fighters have withdrawn from the capital Mogadishu, food distribution is still an incredibly difficult operation.

08:35

Nurow at camp

Nurow Somow certainly didn’t wait for the official announcement of a famine to flee with his three wives and twenty children.

08:59

Nurow introduces children

NUROW SOMOW:  “This is Isaac… this is Muhamed… this is Hussein. This girl is Khadija…this one is Ibrahim”.

KNIGHT: Nurow Somow arrived here two months ago. Back in Somalia he was a farmer with three hectares of land, which he says made him a wealthy man – until the drought and the al Shabaab militia took control.

09:06

Nurow Somow

NUROW SOMOW: “They used to seize some of our livestock. They used to tell us to bring our kids to them. Those are the problems we faced from them”.

KNIGHT: “When you said no to al Shabaab, you can’t take my children, what happened then?”

NUROW SOMOW: “What else can they do to you? They tell you to go and fight for the religion”.

09:34

Somalia-Kenya border patrol

KNIGHT: Security along the Somalia-Kenya border has been a concern for a long time. There’s a para-military police presence even on the tracks that run between the refugee camps. The Kenyan Government is worried that al Shabaab could try to use this exodus of refugees as a cover to try and infiltrate its people into the camps.

The Kenyan Government is looking for something different.

09:52

Knight with Regina at camp

They’re of course worried that al Shabaab are going to come in and hide in groups like this. Is that an issue?”

REGINA MUCHAI: “When you see the situation it’s not in the mind any more for us as humanitarian workers, but at a national level it’s always a concern”.

10:22

Music

10:37

Family by wire fence at camp

KNIGHT: Dadaab was once a small town, just a few thousand people lived here, mainly ethnic Somali-Kenyans, but the outbreak of war in Somalia twenty years ago changed all of that.

10:42

Tents in  camp

The refugees who arrived back then settled in three main camps – Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera and most of them have never left. The camps were built to hold a total of 90,000 people. Now they’re jammed with four times that number. In July alone there were more than 40,000 new arrivals.

10:55

Knight walks with Shankaron

Shankaron Ahmed’s family moved to Kenya from Somalia generations ago. She’s a social worker in the camps.

SHANKARON AHMED: “When we see some cases like mothers when they’re coming here,

11:24

Shankaron. Super:
Shankaron Ahmed
Lutheran World Federation

some maybe children become sick and they’re forced to leave them on the way so they just come alone and we ask them, they say that I couldn’t take care of them so I had to leave them over there. Maybe they’re eaten by hyenas or something like that”.

11:35

People at  camp

KNIGHT: “And how many people are telling that story?”

SHANKARON AHMED: “We get a lot of those cases. First of all they don’t want to give that information. They say that they’ll get arrested but we just convince them that it is for their own good that they tell us so that we shall know how to help them”.

11:49

People in queues

KNIGHT: New arrivals can often spend days waiting to be admitted to the initial reception centre. They’re given emergency rations that are meant to last three weeks. That’s because the processing system is now so overburdened that it will take at least that long before these people can be officially registered as refugees and given their ration card.

12:09

Drought-stricken Somalia. Walking to camp

Music

12:34

KNIGHT:  People spend weeks walking through the bush on their way from Somalia to make it here, so you can imagine their relief when they finally see it. This is the very edge of the outskirts of the Dadaab refugee camp and out here life is very, very rudimentary. It’s outside the official borders of the camp so technically these people shouldn’t even be here but because space inside the official camps is opening up so very slowly, these people have essentially created their own.

12:47

Makeshift village on camp outskirts

This place is called the village of carcasses, but it’s actually very much alive with refugees who are getting on with the business of surviving. First they build shelters, shelters that may have to last months until tents become available inside the camps – if they ever do.

13:24

Children outside makeshift school

Everything here is makeshift. While the children wait for a place in the official camp schools, a temporary Islamic madrassah is built from sticks. It’s a vital space where the children can learn something other than survival.

13:52

Rows of tents

But why isn’t more land being made available?

14:15

Fafa walks through camp

I asked Fafa Olivier Attidzah as the man who oversees the entire Dadaab camp for the UN.

FAFA OLIVIER ATTIDZAH: “That message, the Kenyan Government did not want to pass it on. The Kenyan Government did not want to let the refugees of Somalia believe that it is just open,

14:19

Fafa

and they can just be fighting and crossing and coming in to Kenya”.

14:37

Agency signage at camp

KNIGHT: This is very tricky territory for the aid agencies working here in Dadaab. Privately many here say the reason the new camps aren’t being opened up is because of the Kenyan Government’s fear of having more than a million Somali refugees sitting permanently inside its borders. 

14:41

Ifo 2

But this is what really frustrates aid workers. It’s called Ifo 2. The international aid agencies have spent millions of dollars building houses, water towers, even toilets here – but the camp is not being used.

FAFA OLIVIER ATTIDZAH: “Ifo 2 is open - the Prime Minister has said it -

15:01

Fafa

and for us as UNHCR humanitarian agencies, for us Ifo 2 is open”.

15:25

Ifo 2

KNIGHT: When the Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga came here in July, he promised publicly to open the new camp straight away, but still the mud brick cabins are locked and the schools remain half finished. Nothing is moving.

FAFA OLIVIER ATTIDZAH: “Where we have made some infrastructure, we have decided to revisit the plot size so that we can accommodate more people. That is why we haven’t started putting people there.

15:31

Fafa

But in the coming three weeks the first people will move into the so-called Ifo 2”.

15:59

Ifo 2

REGINA MUCHAI: “I would call it politics in a nutshell because it is difficult for anybody to comprehend a camp that has all the services it deserves,

16:05

Regina. Super
Regina Muchai
Lutheran World Federation

all the services it requires. It has several boreholes. It’s still difficult to understand why we cannot move people in there”.

16:16

Site for new camp - Kambi Oos

KNIGHT: But the Kenyan Government’s reluctance to extend the Dadaab complex of camps isn’t just about security. This 20 square kilometre plot has been marked out for new refugees and the plan is that by November, there’ll be 90,000 of them living here in this area.

16:26

Locally this place is known as Kambi Oos. It literally means ‘the place of the long grass’ and while it might not look like it, this is some of the best grazing land around. It’s actually owned by the Kenyan government, but the people who live in this area do regard it as theirs and it’s where they run their goats and camels and that is going to cause tension, because in north Kenya, there are two and a half million people who are also living in drought”.

16:42

People moving towards camp

Music

17:13

KNIGHT: The pressure to make room for the thousands who arrive here each week is having some effect.

17:18

Ifo 3

This camp is known as Ifo 3. All these tents have been put up in just the past few weeks and the first residents are about to move in from the outskirts to the place that will be their home for years to come. As always, there’s an air of chaos.

17:25

CAMP OFFICIAL: “Tell this other group that we have just come – let them stay here for a while.

17:49

Camp official

They can even sit down around here. Let them sit down, eh? Let them relax over this side”.

17:53

Smiling woman

KNIGHT: But here we found genuine happiness and excitement from refugees who’d finally reached the end of a long and frustrating process. After the horrors of Somalia, the journey to Kenya, the constant waiting and queuing, there’s finally relief - not just for the refugees but for the authorities as well.

18:02

Rows of tents

“Now that you’ve seen how this is working and you know what’s coming,

18:31

Fafa. Super:
Fafa Olivier Attidzah
UNHCR

how do you think it’s going?”

FAFA OLIVIER ATTIDZAH: “No I think it’s going well. It’s going well. We didn’t expect to reach this far when we saw the situation on the 6th of June. And today when you look at these people with some smile on their face, the assistance is still minimal but they have access to water, they have access to healthcare and they are somewhere where, you know, there is no fear for them to be flooded when it rains”.

18:34

View of camp

KNIGHT: To outsiders Dadaab might seem like a very large detention camp, but to these refugees, this place offers opportunities they never had in Somalia.

NUROW SOMOW: “Yes, we are from the bush and we want more education.

19:04

Cattle

We’re farmers and herders who live in the bush and we don’t know anything. Now we need help to get better.

19:21

Nurow Somow

We don’t want to go back to the bush, we want to stay here. People can go to school and learn some skills”.

19:27

Children and young men play football

KNIGHT: And when he looks at the refugees who’ve been here for years, he sees something to aspire to.

19:38

Nurow Somow

They can go anywhere for a job and be successful. I want to help to achieve that”.

NUROW SOMOW: “People have achieved success. They have gained education. Their children live in harmony. They have education – they’re developed.

19:52

Camp at sunset/Refugees awaiting registration

KNIGHT: A critical step in a refugee’s life is to be formally registered as one. These Somalis had boarded buses in the early morning to come here, to spend in many cases, the whole day waiting. This bottleneck is Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs. It runs what’s called the registration tent, the final step when a refugee moves from having a wristband to a ration card and the hope of a new home.

20:02

UNHCR registration tent

It’s tedious – fingerprinting, photographing, interviewing and checking.

20:38

MABLE OMINDE: “I’m sorry the number which arrives here at Ifo Registration is big

20:50

Mable. Super:
Mable Ominde
Kenya Department of Refugee Affairs

and I’m sorry to tell you that we do send some home for the other day’s registration”.

20:54

Queue of people for registration

KNIGHT: It’s clear the Kenyan Government needs to deploy more people here and to run the process more efficiently, but eventually the refugees do get their ration cards and once they do, every two weeks they can turn up on their allotted day to one of these warehouses to collect their food.

21:05

People carrying rations

The problem for the UN is maintaining supply because every day they’re going to need to feed a thousand extra people. That’s why the current UNHCR appeal is for 140 million dollars specifically to fund the Somali Relief Program.

21:28

REGINA MUCHAI: “If things continue the way they are in Somalia and no intervention in Somalia in as far as the drought is concerned,

21:50

Regina

I don’t think they have a choice. Kenya is the destination”.

KNIGHT: “So this camp is going to be under even more pressure in the months to come?”

REGINA MUCHAI: “A lot more pressure”.

21:59

Camp shots

KNIGHT: Refugee camps can often be places of despair where people develop a hand out mentality. While there’s no lack of suffering here, what’s striking is the industriousness of the Somalis and their determination to overcome their situation. In the new camp, huts and brush fences go up within hours. Within days the first businesses appear.

22:08

Mud bricks

There’s an open-air factory making mud bricks for the houses the new refugees will soon start building and make their permanent presence in this strange city.

22:36

Livestock

It’s a city they’re forbidden to leave, but Somalis are natural entrepreneurs and thanks to the money that’s sent from Somali relatives around the world, they’ve managed to create their own self-contained economy.

“Would most of the long term

22:49

Knight walks with Regina thought market

refugees be involved in some kind of business?”

REGINA MUCHAI: “Yes most of them are”.

KNIGHT: Regina Muchai took me to a central market, which sells the items the aid agencies don’t provide – like vegetables, meat and clothes.

“Now people aren’t supposed to leave the camp, yet here in the market you have

23:05

all of this merchandise. It’s not from donors is it? So where does it come from?”

REGINA MUCHAI: “People are in business and in business you have to look at where the goods can come from so clearly most of these items are coming from Kenya, Garissa and Nairobi.

23:22

They operate with phones. The mobile phone is very active in Kenya”.

23:37

KNIGHT: “These are new clothes, these are not necessarily second hand, because we’ve seen a few second hand clothes shops but this is new material”.

REGINA MUCHAI: “In fact second hand clothing here is very unpopular. They prefer cheap new clothes and also tailor-made. They buy material and we have a lot of tailors making these clothes. These are tailor-made. They’re made by tailors on the ground”.

23:42

Camp shots

Music

24:04

KNIGHT: We’re going to be hearing much more about Dadaab over the next few months as the world’s biggest camp struggles with ever more refugees and the hot weather arrives in the Horn of Africa.

24:13

Children in camp

Music

24:23

KNIGHT: And the fear is that as more of Somalia falls into famine, the physical condition of future arrivals will be even worse than those who are struggling in now. As ever there’ll be more disease in an already over crowded camp.

24:31

The challenge for the aid workers here is to resist being overwhelmed as more than a thousand new refugees arrive every day to still find a way to help one individual at a time.

24:51

Further information
UNHCR Operations in Kenya
Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit - Kenya
ACT Alliance
International Rescue Committee

25:11

Credits

Reporter Ben Knight

Camera Geoffrey Lye

Producer Greg Wilesmith

Editor Simon Brynjolffssen