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UNHCR Chief calls for scaled-up aid effort inside Somalia
by UNICEF, UNHCR & agencies
3:30pm 1st Sep, 2011
 
16 September 2011
  
Somalia has the world’s highest child mortality rate. (Unicef)
  
Nairobi, Kenya – Somalia now has the world’s highest mortality rate for children under the age of five, according to the latest data released by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
  
The group’s report, ‘Levels and Trends in Child Mortality,’ finds Somalia’s child mortality rate in 2010, stood at 180 deaths per 1,000 live births which now ranks worst in the world.
  
“Even before this current crisis, one in six children was dying before their fifth birthday. Now we anticipate this number of deaths will be even greater,” said Rozanne Chorlton, UNICEF Representative in Somalia. “There is no doubt that Somalia is one of the toughest places for a child to survive.
  
” Six areas in southern Somalia have been declared famine zones by the UN: Lower Shabelle region, parts of Bakool and Middle Shabelle, Bay region and the IDP settlements in the Afgoye corridor and Mogadishu. In central and south Somalia, 750,000 people are at imminent risk of death and 1.5 million children need immediate humanitarian assistance – including 336,000 children under the age of five who are acutely malnourished.
  
The highest rate of global acute malnutrition is in Bay region, at 58 per cent, nearly four times the emergency threshold of 15 per cent set by the World Health Organization. With the onset of rains in the coming months, the risk of disease outbreaks, like malaria and pneumonia, is likely to increase mortality even further.
  
High prevalence of acute malnutrition dramatically increases a child’s risk of getting infections and can lead to death. Already during August in South and Central Somalia, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of reported cases of measles, pneumonia and acute water diarrhea. These, as well as malaria, are expected to increase in October during the deyr rains.
  
Children in Somalia have faced an on-going crisis long before the recent famine declaration. As of last year, less than a third of one-year-olds were immunized against deadly vaccine-preventable diseases, over 70 per cent of the population lacked access to safe water, and just 3 out of 10 children of primary school age were enrolled in school. Somali children require greater global support to meet their urgent needs.
  
“To make sure we save children’s lives, we need a serious investment in Somalia’s future to make sure that anything like the current crisis never happens again. Such investment needs to begin with children, who are always the first to suffer during times of famine and hardship”.
  
http://www.unicef.org/
  
Sep 2011
  
UNHCR Chief calls for scaled-up aid effort inside Somalia. (UNHCR)
  
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres urged the international community to rapidly increase aid to displaced Somalis during a visit to the capital, Mogadishu.
  
"We are seeing here a deadly combination of conflict and drought and the misery is out of proportion to what is being done," the High Commissioner said on Wednesday during a visit to a settlement for internally displaced people (IDP) located on the grounds of the city"s crumbling cathedral. They have fled drought, famine and fighting.
  
"The whole humanitarian community needs to scale up assistance to reach people wherever they are in Somalia," added Guterres, who was making the first visit to Mogadishu by a UNHCR chief since the 1990s.
  
For most of the approximately 400,000 displaced people in and around Mogadishu, aid is hard to come by and survival is a daily struggle. In the past two months, more than 100,000 Somalis, mostly livestock farmers, have fled to the capital from the drought-scorched regions of Bay, Bakool and Lower Shabelle.
  
During his visit, Guterres saw large numbers of Somalis camped in different parts of the city and in urgent need of lifesaving aid. At the cathedral site he met families who had been waiting for days or weeks to receive assistance. Surviving on donations from the local population, they live a hand-to-mouth existence and many are in poor health.
  
At the Maajo settlement on the city outskirts, the High Commissioner visited during a UNHCR distribution of plastic sheeting and cooking utensils. One visibly exhausted woman said she had left her land in Lower Shabelle nine days earlier to seek aid in the capital after all her livestock had died because of the drought.
  
Clutching a two-year-old boy, she told Guterres that she had left her five other children behind with her mother. "I am very worried about them," she said, "I left our last bit of food behind, but I think now it is finished."
  
Speaking to journalists who accompanied him to Mogadishu, Guterres pointed to the "enormous difficulties of access and capacity" for humanitarian aid workers trying to help the needy amid insecurity. "My main worry is if there is not enough assistance the humanitarian tragedy we are witnessing will get worse," he said.
  
The UN estimates that one in three Somalis is in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and a third of all children living in south-central Somalia are malnourished.
  
Dollow, Somalia, August 30
  
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres visited Somalia on Tuesday and called for greater efforts to provide life-saving aid to tens of thousands of displaced Somalis inside their country.
  
Noting that UNHCR is assisting around 850,000 Somali refugees in neighbouring countries, with at least 1,500 still fleeing Somalia every day, Guterres, who heads UNHCR, said: "We should not aim at emptying Somalia, but rather at making every effort to provide aid inside [the country]."
  
The High Commissioner made his call while visiting Dollow, a dusty town on southern Somalia"s border with Ethiopia. Thousands of people fleeing drought, famine and violence in other parts of Somalia have flocked here, with many crossing into Ethiopia.
  
Guterres, accompanied by Sweden"s Minister for International Development and Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson, came to Dollow to show solidarity with the displaced population at a time of extreme suffering and to mark the Eid al Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.
  
The visit represented the start of a major new effort by UNHCR and its partners to step up humanitarian aid inside Somalia, where huge numbers of people are in need of urgent assistance. UNHCR has had only intermittent access to many areas due to extreme insecurity.
  
Many of the displaced Somalis who talked to Guterres in Dollow had harrowing tales of loss and starvation during their flight across harsh desert terrain. He said it would be better if the international community could bring the aid to them, rather than have vast numbers of people risking their lives in search of food, water, shelter and other vital assistance.
  
"I am always fighting to make sure Somalis have the right to seek asylum," Guterres said before adding: "Somalis should have the right to choose to stay in their own country." He called on all parties to cease violence, respect humanitarian law and to allow unfettered access to all people in need.
  
Carlsson added that it was critical for the international community to "not only help in an emergency, but to address the root causes."
  
The displaced in Dollow are camped in makeshift shelters of sticks and tattered cloth. Many say they will remain there until the rains come and the fighting between government troops and the Al Shabaab militia eases.
  
One woman, Hado Sugow, told the delegation she lost four of her children to starvation and thirst during the 15-day trek from her home to Dollow. "I will go back when there is rain," she insisted. Somalia has been suffering its worst drought in more than half-a-century.
  
Dollow also serves as a major transit point for Somalis headed for the four UNHCR-run refugee camps in Ethiopia"s Dollo Ado district, which is a two-hour walk across the border. But increasing numbers, particularly farmers, are reluctant to leave Somalia, waiting instead to return to their land if the rains return as predicted in October.
  
The UN refugee agency continues to have indirect access to populations in Al Shabaab-controlled areas of Somalia through its NGO partners, who employ hundreds of Somali staff to distribute international aid.
  
UNHCR is significantly scaling up its distribution of emergency assistance packages in a bid to reach at least 400,000 people by mid-September. UNHCR is also enhancing its staff presence in Dollow and Dobley, also near the border, as well as in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
  
"This famine should be a turning point and we are determined to make a real difference to Somalis where they are, so that they don"t feel compelled to move to another country," said Bruno Geddo, UNHCR"s representative to Somalia. "Humanitarian access in Somalia is gradually opening up and we are moving in to help step-by-step."
  
* The World Food Programme has produced an online interactive map featuring operational data collected from organizations responding to the humanitarian emergency in Horn of Africa. The featured data was provided by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit-Somalia (FSNAU) visit the link below to access more details.
  
http://horn.wfp.org/main.html

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