KENYA-POPULATION: Thirsty Nomads Flee to Somalia, Ethiopia

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 19 1996 (IPS) - Thousands of nomads hit by a severe drought in northeast Kenya, are fleeing to neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia in search of water and pasturage for their livestock, according to NGO and community leaders here.

“The situation is very, very desparate,” Abddullahi Abdi, who heads ‘Northern Aid’, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that operates in the area, told IPS on Monday.

He added that Kenyan towns like Rhamu and Mandera, both located more than 900 kilometres northeast of Nairobi, were filled with old people, women and children who are too weak to follow the herdsmen. “Most of them have now become beggars,” he said.

Last week, East Mandera member of parliament Shaaban Ali said watering holes in the region had dried up, forcing able-bodied men and women to cross over into Somalia and Ethiopia to save their cattle, camels and children.

“The situation is very grave,” he told journalists.

Community leaders are wondering why it is hard to get food for their people in a country where over 500 registered aid agencies and international NGOs operate. “We don’t understand it at all. We have appealed to them, and have only received negative responses,” said Abdi.

“I think the international agencies don’t see the situation our way. Perhaps they first want to see people dying on the TV before they come in with relief aid. It’s very very frustrating,” he added.

Most major international NGOs and donor agencies that operated in the region at the height of the civil war in Somalia and the 1992/1993 drought have either pulled out or drastically reduced their operations since 1994.

These organisations, which include Concern Ireland, Medicins Sans Frontieres, Africa Muslim Agency and the World Food Programme, seem to have handed over the responsibility of feeding the nomads to the Kenya government, which appears unable to fill the gap they have left.

“Kenya’s government is giving 6,000 bags of maize (400 tonnes) per month for a population of 250,000 people. This is a drop in the ocean,” said Abdi.

Drought and famine are chronic in northeast Kenya, dating back to pre-colonial times. In recent years, however, they have become more frequent and more widespread.

The 1992/1993 drought had forced thousands of people, many of them ethnic Somalis, to abandon their pasturelands to take advantage of food distributed to refugees from Somalia in relief centres in towns like Mandera, Wajir and Garissa.

Many of them are still there. The population of Mandera, for example, increased from around 30,000 in 1992 to about 100,000 during the height of the clan war in Somalia. However, although the Somalis have left, it still has about 50,000 people, many of them Kenyan nomads camped in and around it.

Experts say at least 50 mn of rain is needed per month in the wet season to ensure adequate growth of range plants. Most parts of northeast Kenya did not receive that amount last season and this year promises to be similar.

Community leaders say that unless the structural problems affecting the region are tackled, its people will remain extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of climate.

“I think what we need is the will to address the question of land, the question of marginalisation, the lack of education and bad policies which are keeping this region backward,” Abdi Omer, co-ordinator of Kenya Pastoralist Forum, told IPS on Monday.

He said relief aid would not solve the problem of the recurrent droughts in the northeast. “The thing is, the period between drought is becoming shorter each year,” he said. “Last year we had drought and this year we are having another”.

A quarter of the estimated 27 million Kenyans are pastoral nomads who live on some 80 percent of the country’s territory.

“In fact, we are dealing with a very significant portion of the population of Kenya,” says Omer.