Somalia's Crisis: Not Piracy, but Its People's Plight

A warning this week from the British aid group Oxfam that the humanitarian crisis in Somalia is the worst in Africa is not new. Last year, the U.N. called the situation in the Horn of Africa nation the world's worst. But Oxfam's is a much needed reminder of the scale of the catastrophe. One million Somalis are refugees. Two million need food. For most of these, malnutrition rates are beyond the U.N. threshold definition of an emergency. Around 400,000 refugees are in a single sprawling camp at Afgooye outside Mogadishu; 70,000 have arrived in the last month after fleeing the latest round of fighting in the capital. A further 275,000 have fled south to Kenya and live in three camps at Dadaab in the north of the country originally meant for 90,000; the U.N. High Commission for Refugees says 7,000 more Somalis also arrive there each month...more..http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1902866,00.html