Source: European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO)
Date: 22 Apr 2010
Daniel Dickinson
European Commission Humanitarian Aid department
Garowe, Somalia
Eight years of living in a tent made of old clothes, with little food, medical services and no sanitation facilities has taken its toll on Samira Timan Buulle, her six children and two grandchildren. She has the world-weary expression of someone who has had to put up with the harshest of conditions and for whom the future offers little escape.
Samira is one of around 2,000 people living in an impromptu settlement on a small patch of waste ground in the town of Garowe, in the autonomous region of Puntland, north of Somalia. She, like most of her neighbours, is a victim of the lawlessness that has engulfed Somalia over the last two decades.
She was forced to flee inter-clan fighting in her home town Baidoa in the south of the country to the relative security of Garowe, about 1,000 kilometres away.
'Many of my family were killed; the fighting made it impossible to stay in Baidoa. We had no life there,' she says. During the eight years she has spent in Garowe, she has been safe but has been living a desperately poor existence, earning perhaps US$1 for collecting rubbish and washing clothes.
'We have nothing here. No medical care, little food, no toilet. My children can get ill easily as everything is so dirty. Until the war is over in my country, I cannot see the situation improving,' she says.
This dusty and hot settlement which goes by the name Riiga, is desperately poor. The tents, densely lined up alongside each other, are stitched together with old material and some plastic sheeting. Most people go to the toilet in the dry riverbed just metres away where rubbish is also dumped.
In Garowe, there are 11 settlements like Riiga. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR estimates that the district hosts a population of around 6,000 internally displaced people. It's a tiny proportion of the number of IDPs across Somalia, a figure which is estimated to have reached 1.4 million people.
As the insecurity in the south of Somalia increases, there is a possibility of more people arriving in Puntland; however the most immediate reason for an increase in IDPs is a severe drought which occurred in 2009.
One hundred and twenty kilometres south of Garowe lies the small town of Burtinle. On the edge of the town are signs of internal displacement; the stitched tents made of clothes and other discarded materials. But it is not people who have fled due to conflict who inhabit these tents, rather it is pastoralists who have been forced to drop out of the pastoralist way of life. People like Ahmed Jamma, who saw his herd of 400 goats and sheep and 50 camels dwindle to 50 goats and sheep and one camel.
'We have given up being pastoralists and moved to the town because there was not enough rain last year. There was no pasture for our animals so they died. Without animals we cannot survive as pastoralists, so we came to the town for help.'
What Ahmed Jamma and Samira Timan Buulle have in common is not just the fact that they have left their homes, but also a shared pessimism about the future of their families and way of life in a country which appears almost daily to be falling deeper into a state of lawlessness.
A major challenge for international humanitarian agencies providing emergency relief to IDP communities is ensuring access to people in need. Philippe Royan is head of the Somalia country office of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid department which has a €35 million programme for 2010 in Somalia.
'The insecurity across Somalia makes it extremely difficult to provide humanitarian relief to the most needy. In Burtinle, we have been able to support pastoralists and help them return to their traditional way of life and in Garowe we want to make sure that the displaced people can lead a dignified life above the poverty line.'
While the fighting continues in the south of Somalia, humanitarian aid agencies will find it increasingly difficult to reach those in need; indeed many communities may be so inaccessible that agencies have little idea of whether they actually need humanitarian support.
After a long eight-year wait for people like Samira Timan Buulle in Garowe, humanitarian relief will hopefully arrive soon, providing her and her family a dignified life and the hope of one day being able to return to her home in Baidoa.
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