Situation in Somalia Briefing at the United Nations Office at Geneva

Elena Ponomareva-Piquier, Officer-in-charge of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired today's press briefing.

Ron Redmond of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that as the number of Somali civilians driven out of their homes by the conflict in Mogadishu raised, growing insecurity was making it increasingly difficult for aid workers to gain access and provide assistance to the latest victims of the Somali civil war.UNHCR now estimated that some 223,000 people had fled Mogadishu since the7 May, when Al-Shabaab and Hisb-ul-Islam militia groups had jointly launched attacks against government forces in several districts of Mogadishu. Mr. Redmond said that about 20,000 had fled in the last two weeks alone.UNHCR was greatly concerned about the plight of the large number of internally displaced people who had found refuge in the makeshift sites in the Afgooye Corridor, southwest of the capital. That place had more than 400,000 internally displace people from previous conflicts. They were congested in a small strip of land with little or no basic facilities, said Mr. Redmond.
UNHCR local partners in Somalia reported that domestic humanitarian organizations were overstretched and struggling to meet the basic needs of the newly arrived. There was a lack of adequate shelter, sanitation facilities and clean drinking water. The situation had grown worse following recent torrential rains. Mr. Redmond said that the lack of sufficient latrines posed a major health risk.
The continued fighting and worsening of the security situation in Somalia was hampering the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance from the port of Mogadishu to Afgooye and other parts of Somalia, said Mr. Redmond, exacerbating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
This week’s scheduled distribution of 4,000 UNHCR aid kits in Mogadishu and outlying areas, for example, had had to be postponed due to security concerns, said Mr. Redmond. In addition, due to the latest incidents in Baidoa and Wajid, where militants had occupied and looted two UN compounds yesterday, UNHCR assistance efforts in the adjacent region had virtually grounded to a halt.
UNHCR had again appealed to the warring parties in Somalia to respect basic international humanitarian and human rights principles and to guarantee the safety and security of the civilian population as well as the humanitarian workers who were trying to help the victims, said Mr. Redmond.
In north-eastern Kenya, meanwhile, UNHCR continued to experience a major influx of new arrivals from Somalia in the UNHCR-run Dadaab camp complex, said Mr. Redmond. Since January, they had received 39,000 refugees from Somalia despite the fact that the Kenya-Somalia border officially remained closed. The majority of the refugees were from the Lower and Middle Juba regions and Mogadishu. Some 7,000 new arrivals had been registered at the camps in June; that was up from 5,000 in May.
UNHCR was deeply concerned about the massive congestion in the three adjacent Kenyan sites that made up the Dadaab complex, and about the major health risks that this overcrowding might pose to refugees. Initially thos camps had been designed to accommodate 90,000 people, said Mr. Redmond, they had now swelled to more than 286,000.
A journalist wondered what the status of the process of land allocation was in order to expand the overcrowded camp of Dadaab and Mr. Redmond said that they had gotten assurances from the Kenyan Government for a plot of land not too far from Dadaab but that work had not yet started on that camp site. This was frustrating for UNHCR as there were health and other risks growing worse by the month in the Dadaab camp. It remained urgent that work started on that new site.Emilia Casella of the World Food Program (WFP), answering to a journalist which said that news reports were saying that WFP had been one of three agencies that had been forced to shutdown by the Shabaab group, said that WFP was not located in the Baidoa compound that was entered by the rebel group and that it had not been asked to cease operations. WFP was continuing its operations and was currently feeding 3.5 million people in Somalia. WFP was present in the Wajid compound, which has also been entered, but not WFP equipment had been taken and no WFP staff had been asked to leave. Despite the violence, WFP was committed to maintaining its presence in Somalia and delivering food to those who needed it.
Ms. Ponomareva-Piquier said that the operations in Baidoa were suspended. The UN Office in Somalia had said that it deeply regretted having to relocate staff and to temporarily suspend its operations in Baidoa. At the same time, the UN continued its operations in Wajid.