CRS: don't forget the humanitarian emergency in the Horn of Africa

Catholic Relief Services is providing help to thousands of Somali refugees in northeast Kenya by providing critical services in Kenya’s Dadaab region refugee camps.

CRS has recently made a five-year commitment to work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide 25,000 people with water and sanitation infrastructure in the new camp called Kambioos, while also aiding the surrounding communities affected by the influx of refugees.

Linda Bordoni spoke to LeeAnn Hager, acting emergency coordinator for Catholic Relief Services “Kenya Drought Reponse Programme”.


Speaking from the CRS Nairobi office, Hager who has recently returned from Dadaab and is due to travel back there this week, describes the camps and the conditions there.

She says the Dadaab region hosts six camps in which some 450.000 people live. It is estimated that about 550.00 refugees will settle in the area. Every day some 1300 people arrive from drought-stricken Somalia.

That is only one of the countries in East Africa where hunger and the threat of malnutrition are the daily reality for more than 11 million people.

The refugees come – Hager says – with the clothes on their backs and with their families, after having walked for hundreds of kilometers in the sand and in the heat, not to mention the dangers posed by crossing territory controlled by Al Shahab militias.

The most vulnerable people are the children, especially those under five years old. Hager explains that the ones that make it often arrive in conditions of acute malnutrition and it takes months of careful medical care and monitoring so that they return to health.

LeAnn also explains the role of CRS in the camps, which focuses first of all in getting life-saving assistance to the new arrivals, but also in helping cope with the impact that these arrivals have on the host communities surrounding the camps.


The CRS has built latrines and hand-washing stations playing a crucial role in public health in the camps. Its commitment also includes training solid waste managers, latrine attendants, community mobilizers and water and sanitation service providers.


Asked whether she feels as if the international community is turning a blind eye, Hager speaks of her disappointment at the fact that the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is fast disappearing from front page news.


She appeals to all to remember the situation in the Horn of Africa “it is extreme, it is dire” – Dadaab she says – has become the third largest town in Kenya so attention for the situation must not falter.

The United Nations officially declared a famine in parts of Somalia, the first such declaration in two decades, signaling the particular severity of the situation in which many are dying from a lack of food. The famine-struck areas are plagued by violence, which severely limits humanitarian assistance.

Listen to the full interview…