In Kenya’s refugee camps, the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says humanitarian aid organizations are “about to be unmanaged.” Dagahal ey is expanding child malnutrition in one of Kenya’s largest refugee camps: by 2022, 33% more malnourished patients were treated than the previous year, most of whom were children. The malnutrition rate has increased by 45% in the last six months of 2022. The NGO has concluded that the causes of the deterioration are cholera plagues, drought and armed conflicts in the region.

MSF calls for immediate assistance to the Kenyan refugee complex Daadab, a local camp. Before 2022 the situation was not good in the camps, but last year it stopped causing the interaction of several factors. In fact, Kenya, in the horn of Africa, is among the hottest areas of conflict on the continent. In Somalia and Ethiopia, in neighbouring countries, the conflict is on and the number of refugees escaping is high. In fact, the SPS has explained that the number of refugees attending camps has increased considerably: currently, about 800 families live outside the camp without access to basic food and water.

On the other hand, they are also suffering in the territory the hardest face of climate change. The UN expects that drought will prevail for the sixth consecutive time during the rainy season between March and May. So the situation may get even worse: millions of people in Kenya and Somalia are hungry and thirsty. The NGO has indeed denounced that this is the case, but that the budgets of international humanitarian aid organisations have fallen and that aid operations will be reduced.

Old wounds

The camp area has been built in 1991 for three decades. At first it was built to give refuge to refugees fleeing the civil war in Somalia, but the conflicting situation in the territory has led them to chronify their situation and several years of them are in the same situation. Currently, according to the latest reports of September last year, 233,000 refugees are welcomed, three times more than the original plan. In addition, there are 80,000 unregistered people, of whom 50,000 arrived last year.