EU 'failed' on Libya's refugees

19 September 2011 Last updated at 23:42 GMT Many refugees live in "harsh conditions", Amnesty International says European Union countries have "shamefully failed" to help thousands of refugees stranded near Libya's borders, Amnesty International says.

It says the EU has failed to resettle some 5,000 mainly sub-Saharan Africans who face persecution in their nations.

Amnesty says the EU - some of whose member states have taken part in Nato's operations in Libya - must "urgently address the resettlement issue".

Britain rejected the criticism, while other EU nations have made no comment.

Fighting is still continuing in Libya, with forces loyal to the country's interim leaders now controlling most of the country.

The troops have been advancing towards the coastal town of Sirte, Col Muammar Gaddafi's birthplace and a stronghold of his loyalists.

'Driven by desperation'

In its report - Europe, Now It Is Your Turn to Act - Amnesty strongly criticises EU governments over their failure to act on the refugee issue.

"We have witnessed an abysmal response to the plight of displaced refugees on Europe's doorstep," said Nicolas Beger, director of Amnesty's European Institutions Office.

"This failure is particularly glaring given that some European countries, by participating in Nato operations in Libya, have been party to the very conflict that has been one of the main causes of the involuntary movement of people."

The human rights group says that about 1,000 people are still stranded in Egypt's Saloum camp and another 3,800 people in Tunisia's Choucha camp.

The refugees are living in "harsh conditions", it says, and cannot go back to their home countries because they face "a real risk of persecution".

"Neither is returning to Libya - a country currently unable to offer adequate protection to refugees - an option," the reports adds.

It says that "driven by desperation, more and more refugees are resorting to returning to Libya to try to board boats for Europe on a perilous sea journey which is believed to have claimed more than 1,500 lives" since the start of the conflict in Libya.

Amnesty says that so far only eight nations of the 27-member EU - Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Sweden - have offered to help.

But those nations offered "fewer than 700 slots", the report adds.

In response, a British government spokesperson told the BBC that London "was one of the first to provide vital humanitarian support to those affected by the conflict in Libya".

"Our early action in providing emergency shelter supplies and flying people home from the border camps helped prevent a logistical problem from developing into a humanitarian crisis. We have repatriated over 12,700 third country nationals from the border camps, and also provided tents and blankets for emergency shelter."

However, the spokesperson added: "We are under no international obligation to bring asylum seekers or refugees to the UK from Libya and do not believe it would be desirable to do so.

"In our view humanitarian and refugee issues are best dealt with in the region of origin, or by asylum seekers claiming protection in the first safe country they reach."

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Somali refugees pack capital after rebels quit (Reuters)

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Thousands of Somali refugees, fleeing famine and years of violence, streamed into Mogadishu on Monday searching for food after Islamist rebels withdrew from the capital.

The al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab insurgents began pulling their fighters out of Mogadishu over the weekend, raising hopes that humanitarian groups would be able to step up aid deliveries after years of blockages by the militant group.

Locals told Reuters long lines of refugees were now heading to the battle-scarred city to escape the region's worst drought in decades, and existing supplies were already running low.

The United Nations says about 3.6 million people are at risk of starvation in Somalia and about 12 million people across the Horn of Africa region, including in Ethiopia and Kenya.

"Now thousands ... are on the way from Bakool and Bay (regions) to Mogadishu," Sherif Isak, 58, a refugee in Badbaado camp on the outskirts of the capital, told Reuters.

"I cannot say it will rain but I am sure life will improve if al Shabaab melts away. More agencies will come and people will get food and jobs," he said.

Al Shabaab withdrew four years into their battle to overthrow Somalia's Western-backed government, an insurgency that has driven the chaotic country deeper into anarchy.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre 20 years ago, and peace is a distinct prospect.

The militants, hostile to any Western intervention, have blocked humanitarian deliveries in the past, saying aid creates dependency. Aid agencies say they have been unable to reach more than 2 million Somalis facing starvation in rebel-held territories.

Days after al Shabaab's departure, the first of three flights from the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR landed in Mogadishu Monday, carrying more than 31 tons of shelter material, including blankets and jerricans for water.

Local officials said they were cautiously hopeful.

"If ongoing aid flights keep coming to Mogadishu, we are optimistic that people will survive," Fartun Abdisalan Adam, a local rights group official told Reuters in Mogadishu.

But existing supplies were running low. "The refugees are still storming the capital in search of food and there is not enough food for them to survive in the capital," she added.

Somalia's struggling government hailed the rebels' exit as a major victory but al Shabaab said their withdrawal was just tactical and promised to return, and analysts said the exit could herald a wave of al Qaeda-style suicide attacks.

CAR BLAST

Monday afternoon, a suicide car bomb detonated prematurely 13 km (8 miles) south of Mogadishu, officials said.

"We understand a car full of explosives detonated unexpectedly. Only the driver died, but two civilians were also injured," said Captain Ndayiragije Come, a spokesman for the African Union (AU) peace keeping force, AMISOM.

"The suicide car bomb was heading to Mogadishu. Al Shabaab has not given up war. They are masterminding more blasts but we are very alert."

Mogadishu residents said they still felt far from secure. Many feared fresh fighting between government troops and remnants of the rebel force hiding out in the capital.

Militants have threatened to behead anyone who betrayed their fighters to the police.

"I think this is one of the riskiest operating environments of any humanitarian operation in the world right now so I think sure, there's risk of an uptick in the fighting, there are all sorts of risks," a senior U.S. official traveling with the delegation of Jill Biden, the wife of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden was visiting Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp just over Somalia's border in neighboring Kenya. Dadaab, declared full in 2008, has seen an influx of about 1,500 Somali refugees a day since late July.

"There's such a great influx every single day ... coming in here that I think it's just getting overwhelming for them to handle it all. We need to stay ahead of it," Biden told reporters.

(Additional reporting and writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Macharia)

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Jill Biden visits East Africa famine refugees

DADAAB, Kenya — A U.S. aid official warned Monday that hundreds of thousands of Somalis could die as famine spreads, amid a visit to Kenyan refugee camps by the wife of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.

Jill Biden on Monday visited the world's largest refugee camp, Dadaab, where tens of thousands of Somali famine refugees have arrived in recent weeks.

Biden's trip is the highest-profile U.S. visit to drought-stricken East Africa since the numbers of refugees began dramatically increasing in June. Biden said the aim of her visit was to raise awareness and convince donors to give more.

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"What I'm asking is for Americans to reach out and help because the situation is dire," said Biden, who met with two Somali mothers and their eight children during her visit to the camp. "There is hope if people start to pay attention to this."

More than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, suggesting the death toll of small children will rise in the coming weeks.

USAID administrator Raj Shah said models predict that hundreds of thousands of people could die from famine.

More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid, including nearly half the Somali population. The U.N. has declared five famine zones in Somalia, including the camps for displaced people in Mogadishu.

Aid not reaching everyone in need
Aid was only reaching about 20 percent of the 2.6 million Somalis who needed it, said Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official for Somalia. The situation was better in the Somali capital, where about half the city's 600,000 inhabitants were receiving aid, he said.

US aid begins to trickle into Somalia

Transport and security were the two main problems, he said, and it was unclear what the effect would be of the Islamist withdrawal from their bases in the capital Saturday. There have been several serious gunfights at aid distributions recently, and at least 10 people have been killed.

"An absence of conflict does not mean that there is security here," he said. "There's always been factions and militias."

Kiki Ghebo, another top U.N. humanitarian official, said different kinds of aid were needed: food for the starving, vaccines and medical help to prevent disease outbreaks, and things like plastic sheeting and cooking utensils for those who had been forced to flee their homes because of the war and famine.

The United States is giving an additional $105 million in humanitarian aid for the Horn of Africa, where famine is spreading in Somalia, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday.

The money, from U.S. President Barack Obama's Emergency Relief and Migration Assistance Fund, will provide "urgently needed food, health, shelter, water and sanitation assistance to those who desperately need help," Carney said.

The United States has provided about $565 million in humanitarian aid so far this year, he said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Somali refugees: No food to break Ramadan fast

DADAAB, Kenya — As the Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins, Faduma Aden is fasting all day even though she doesn't have enough food to celebrate with a sundown feast. The Somali mother of three, who fled starvation in her homeland, says she fasts because she fears God.

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Muslims around the world mark sundown during Ramadan with extravagant dinners after not eating from sunrise to sundown. That kind of nighttime celebration is unthinkable this year for most Somalis, who are enduring the worst famine in a generation.

And even though Islam allows the ailing to eat, for many Somalis it's a matter of faith to participate in Ramadan's fast.

Story: Somalis fleeing famine preyed on by rapists

"It hard for me to fast, but I did fast for fear of God," said Aden, who is among tens of thousands who have made the arduous journey, often on foot, to this refugee camp in neighboring Kenya.

Others, like Mohamed Mohamud Abdulle, are ashamed they don't have food "to console the soul" at sundown after fasting all day.

"How will I fast when I don't have something to break it?" asked Abdulle. "All my family are hungry and I have nothing to feed them. I feel the hunger that forced me from my home has doubled here."

Story: U.N. flies food into Somali capital

Ramadan at a time of political upheaval
For much of the Muslim world, Ramadan this year falls at a time of political upheaval. Food prices typically spike during the Muslim religious month, and the elaborate dinners many in the Middle East put on to break the daily fast drive a deep hole in household budgets.

Fleeing Somalis say they have already been forced by famine to fast for weeks or months, without the end-of-day meal to regain their strength.

"I cannot fast because I cannot get food to break it and eat before the morning," said Nur Ahmed, a father of six at a camp for displaced people in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, whose wife died last year during childbirth.

Sheik Ali Sheik Hussein, a mosque leader in Mogadishu, called it "worrying" that many Somalis cannot fast because they are already weak from hunger and don't have food to regain their strength after sundown.

"We have asked all Muslims to donate to help those dying from hunger," he said. "Muslims should not be silent on this situation, so we shall help if Allah wills."

At a hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Dadaab camp, clinician Muhammed Hussein breaks away from examining a patient to note that his Ramadan fast gives him greater understanding of the suffering of famine victims.

"It gives you a lot of sympathy when you yourself feel hungry, you will understand the pain of someone who has not eaten... With this kind of severe malnutrition, people have no energy to walk, they have been walking from Kismayo in Somalia to this place. It gives you that heart to feel mercy for the people who are suffering."

In a Ramadan statement Monday, President Barack Obama said fasting can be used to "increase spirituality, discipline, and consciousness of God's mercy." Obama said now is a time for the world to come together to support famine relief efforts.

"The heartbreaking accounts of lost lives and the images of families and children in Somalia and the Horn of Africa struggling to survive remind us of our common humanity and compel us to act," Obama said.

Some in the communities around the Dadaab refugee camp are stepping forward to help. At the Dagahaley refugee camp, part of the larger Dadaab camps, three distribution centers run by local elders provide food and money each day for more than 1,000 families and individuals.

Haggard mothers and emaciated children
Moved by tragic scenes of haggard mothers and emaciated children, Somalis in the diaspora are wiring hundreds of dollars to community leaders so they can buy food and clothes for the new arrivals.

"The hunger and suffering faced by the new arrivals have moved us into action," said Hussein Sheik Mohamed, part of a team of volunteers who accepts donations from Somalis around the world and distributes aid.

The Dadaab initiative started with people at nearby mosques who wanted to respond to the needs of refugees pouring into the camp. They called former refugees to help new arrivals with whatever they can find: Food, money, clothing and mattresses were donated.

The U.N. says more than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa need food aid, but 2.2 million are in peril in a region of south-central Somalia controlled by the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab that is largely inaccessible to aid groups.

In a bit of good news, however, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday it was now distributing food to 162,000 people in south-central Somalia — the first large-scale distribution in the region since the beginning of the year.

"This operation demonstrates the ICRC's ability to deliver emergency aid directly to the people affected in southern Somalia," said Andrea Heath. "But this distribution assists only a small percentage of those in need. More aid will be required to help the population bridge the gap until the next harvest in December."

Salad Salah is one of those still in need. He fled to a refugee camp in Mogadishu, and said that participating in Ramadan this year would be a form of "suicide."

"We wouldn't like to miss Ramadan but the conditions here say we must," he said.

___

How to help: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-respond-drought-crisis-horn-africa

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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