Photo: Lynsey Addario/MSF Dollo Ado — Ethiopians would like to continue to be good Samaritans to the hundreds of thousands seeking refuge from drought and conflict in neighbouring Somalia, but massive camps in fragile environments have sparked concern among both the government and the people sharing space with the refugees.
"We have had a million refugees at one time," said Ayalew Awoke, Ethiopia's deputy director for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), the government's refugee agency. Ayalew helped establish ARRA more than two decades ago.
"But the environmental damage these camps have done to our environment is irreversible - wooded areas have turned into barren land, as happened in Hartisheikh near Jijiga [in the southern Somali region], which hosted more than 200,000 Somalis at one stage."
Massive influx
Hundreds of thousands of Somalis arrived in Hartisheik, located near the border with Somalia, amid the armed opposition to Siad Barre's government in 1988 and clan warfare in the early 1990s, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). They congregated in what became, for a time, the world's largest refugee camp. "The first refugees arrived in appalling conditions; many died of exhaustion, hunger and lack of water," said the agency.
"Since the influx of the Somali refugees in 1988, the areas around their camps have been severely eroded. Now, both refugees and Ethiopians have to travel miles in search of wood for fuel and shelter," UNHCR reported in 1996. "The long-term consequences are expected to be costly for the host community which will bear the burden long after the Somalis are gone."
The damage is still unfolding. Ethiopia's Somali region is now home to the world's second-largest refugee complex, Dollo Ado, and it saw the world's largest influx of Somali refugees this year.
The region's fragile environment is also one of the most vulnerable to climate change, with decreasing rains and soaring temperatures putting its predominantly agro-pastoralist population at great risk,according to climate scientist Chris Funk of the US Geological Survey.
Lasting changes
Melkadida, a rural settlement in southern Ethiopia, about 75km from Somalia and from Dollo Ado, offers a vivid illustration of these problems. Until last year, Melkadida's 20,000-odd residents led lives largely untouched by development, with few shops and no school or clinic.
Then drought struck the Horn of Africa in 2011, driving more than 40,000 Somali refugees into their 'kebele', or neighbourhood. Their arrival, and the subsequent attention of the international aid community, brought positive developments, including a school and medical facilities. But it also did considerable harm, destroying the environment and introducing a culture of consumerism and waste, says Ahmed Mohammed, the kebele's chair.
His tone is devoid of malice or accusation. Rather, he acknowledges the refugees' predicament: "They have lost a lot more than we have, and in times of need, we have to share with our brothers."
Still, the once pristine and wooded environment of the kebele has been destroyed, Mohammed said. "We have more than twice our number of people who also need wood to cook food, build houses, fences and beds - all our trees are gone within the 10km radius of our kebele."
Trees bring rain, he reckons, and without them the rains are becoming scarce. Melkadida residents were also affected by the drought in 2011, and they fear the diminishing rains will make things even worse in the future.
The newcomers also created a massive market that introduced plastic bags to the area; in the last two years, at least 200 cows and goats died from ingesting plastic bags. At least 600 animals, mostly goats, were also stolen, sometimes at gunpoint.
"The Somali refugees, who are mostly pastoralists, are used to eating meat, which they are not getting, so we understand," said Mohammed. "We do not like to raise these issues - you are asking so we are telling you."
These concerns were also recently raised by a team conducting an evaluation of the humanitarian response, funded by a variety of UN agencies and Save the Children.
How long will the camps remain?
Somalis continue to arrive in Dollo Ado, driven by poor rains and the threat of insurgent group Al-Shabab at home. Their numbers have fallen from the peak 2,000 per day in July 2011 to an average of 30 per day.
Nuria Mohamed Nur spent 15 days traveling to Dollo Ado from Boden, in southwestern Somalia. She, like others IRIN spoke to, said she would have come earlier, perhaps last year, if the money had been available. "We borrowed from family, relative and friends to pay drivers," she said.
By October this year, more than 25,000 Somalis had fled to Ethiopia - making it the largest recipient of Somali refugees in the region so far, according to UNHCR. There are five camps already full and a sixth camp is being planned.
The host community and Ethiopian officials have begun to voice concerns over the apparent long-term nature of the Somalis' displacement. "We understand the need, and we can have the camps here for two or three years, but not more than that," said an ARRA official in Dollo Ado.
Assistance at home
There have been reports that Somalia might be on its way to finding peace, and efforts are underway to provide assistance to Somalis within Somalia, said Russell Geekie, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Somalia.
"The number of IDPs [internally displaced people] heading toward Doolow [a Somali town across the border from Dollo Ado] or crossing into Dollo Ado has dropped dramatically," he said. Even so, insecurity in Somalia remains a concern, especially in areas that were affected by famine last year.
"Humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations working in Somalia continue to explore access to areas throughout southern and central Somalia to improve the provision of services to those in need in their areas of origin," he continued. "People are better served if we can limit their need to move far from home to seek assistance - be it toward one of Somalia's borders or urban areas such as Mogadishu [the Somali capital]."
Humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR and the World Food Programme (WFP), are providing assistance to people in need in Luuq, in Somalia's southern Gedo Region. But there is concern that aid provided in these centres could create more camps, drawing people from rural areas. Geekie said the aid agencies "are also very mindful of pull factors".
UNHCR's environmental guidelines (as well as the 2005 revised version) suggest the host community should play a leading role in minimizing the environmental impact of refugee camps. "The host government's openness to enter into a technical dialogue with the donors on this, and related issues, is thus considered important," it said.
ARRA's Awoke says he has raised the issue with donors and agencies but he is not satisfied with the response. "People and the media have already forgotten the famine in Somalia - we are still living the consequences."
Awoke says most people do not appreciate the impact the refugees have had. "Imagine if 200,000 or 300,000 people just showed up in a European country," he said.
This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.
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When one blames anybody and everybody, one blames nobody. It is sad what happened to the refugees on the human level. But, the comment above seems to be more interested in gratifying the delusional indulgences of the author than any diagnosis of the problem. So, it mouths off that Ethiopians and Eritreans are artificial people, blah blah, blah.. The author is not aware of his blindside. He blames the same westerners who put in his head the wrong information of Pun-t being Somalia, and yet blames the west scheming to destroy Somalia. First of all, the author would benefit from a cursory review of population genetics before he tries to indulge his delusions. There is a brave new world now. Information does not depend on speculation. One can start with haplogroups E1b1b, A, J, & T. Most Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis are in E1b1b, and aboriginal to their lands. There is no artficiality in Ethipians. BTW, Semitic is an African language group, not an import to the continent. That was his wrong underlying assumption. Also, Pun-t is a reference to the Ethiopian highlands. There is no Pun-t without highlands. not only does Language tells us so, Punt's location was determined scientifically three years ago. Perhaps the author can begin with the Nile, which is known by the same name in Ethiopia today as by ancient Egyptians. Last I checked, the Blue Nile flows out of the highlands, and the highlands supply 85% of the waters of the Nile. It helps to go through the list of Egypt's deities one by one to know what they were and where they came from. A blanket claim is hardly helpful. The Egyptians were offshoots of the central Cushitic people (Northern Ethiopia) not the southern cushitic people. They followed the river in settling Egypt. Geography would say as much. The comment is just shallow and choke full of errors.
there is no such thing as "good samaritans" when it comes to Somalia and Ethiopia. Somalia was destroyed by the west by using ethiopia as a proxy, this was a delibarate and a calculated mission at the highest level, without the exception of the UN, another proxy instrument widely employed for the destruction of Somalia. but why Somalia was such a target?? this simply comes down to the ancient pharaonic history of Somalis and given Somalia/Punt (land of gods) gave birth to the first god of egyptians, it became an obsession on the side of the west to erase that history and replace it with artificial countries with harvested population from yemen (the likes of ethiopia and eriteria) to be the preferred model of eroding an ancient civilization. this is evidently demonstrated at the creation of Al-Shabaab by saudis, yemenis, ethiopians and eriterians at the behest of western approval in invading the country under false pretext, afterall, al-shabaab was a project organized, deviced and financed by western nations for the sole purpose of re-writing the history of Somalis
I wonder why ethiopians can never come to terms with the truth about the genesis of their origin - you always like to come up with some fabricated DNA sequence pattern that has to justify the narrow view of packaging Somalis with ethiopians as one uniformized people. you can never feel at ease with the fact that Somalis are a different race from your yemenian inception. why? you are south-semitic (a subset of the south-arabic branch) yemenities and in fact you are black jews exiled by the North Semitics, which is why to this day you are segregated from the rest of Israeli society (the chosen people). biologically, culturally, historically and even linguistically we share nothing in common. Somalia, or as was known by the egyptians ( land of gods), was the birth place of pharaoh = Fircoon, a man professing to be god, moreover the hieroglyphics records were deciphered by Somali as well as Israeli experts. the reason we adopted the latin script was intertwined with distancing our history from arabs and ethiopians/xabasha on one hand and on the other preseving the Hamitic race of Somalis from your social engineering disease, a transgression designed to acquire land and history that is never going to be yours.
the other far more contrasting fact that exposes the artificial history of what is today called "ethiopia" goes not beyond the last pilgrimage made by the famous queen of Egypt to Somalia, if ethiopians don't recall her name, she was none other than Queen Hatshepsut. she took her fleet of ship via the red sea and not via the river nile. if it was through the nile route, then indeed the yemenite ethiopians can claim the entire history of pharaoh and punt without a shred of shame. the population of ethiopia emigrated from yemen and with time they have to accept their south-semetic origin, this far better than arrogantly plagarizing for they are known to be experts in claiming what is never theirs. it appears yemenite ethiopians are following a familiar pattern quite popular in election campaigns - say yes to what ever your opponent sees as no and claim yes to be whatever the imitated opponent affirms as yes. this is the truth about yemenite ethiopians.