INTERVIEW: More than 2 million Somali children at risk

Monsters and Critics.com 
Saturday, July 23, 2011

People who can barely stay on their feet due to hunger walk for days or even weeks through parched wasteland to find a meal and water. Many of them also set out to seek help for their ailing children.

The drought in the Horn of Africa and the famine in Somalia has left more than two million children at risk of starvation.

Nearly 10,000 people from drought-ravaged Somalia are entering neighbouring Kenya every week, most making it to the Dadaab refugee camp complex some 100 kilometres from the border.

'It really breaks one's heart to see these children and their families,' says Christopher Tidey, emergency communications specialist for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told the German Press Agency dpa on Friday.

'This ia a children's emergency, as more than 2 million children under five are acutely malnourished, including 500,000 who are suffering from imminent, life-threatening severe acute malnutrition, he said.

'Nearly two-thirds of the new Dadaab arrivals are children - many of whom are malnourished, a potentially fatal condition which interferes with healthy development,' says Tidey.

Approximately 470,000 children in southern Somalia are malnourished, according to UNICEF.

The agency is offering support in the form of counsellors and teachers for children at eight sites in the Dadaab complex and in local host communities.

'A child-friendly space is usually in a specially designed tent or building where children have access to recreational activities,' says Tidey. Activities include games and drawing and painting supplies.

'To respond to the growing number of children in the camps here, we have provided an additional 314 kits which provides for approximately 31,000 children,' he says.

UNICEF is planning to train new teachers to assist with the growing number of children at Dadaab.

'In any emergency, children are the most vulnerable. Many children affected by this crisis will have experienced traumatic events, leading to an increase in stress and anxiety,' says Tidey.

'It is important to remember that families in this region have been experiencing the effects of the drought for years, ' he notes.

'For many, the struggle to survive has been ongoing for some time.