East Africa’s refugee crisis compounds Djibouti’s drought crisis

Source: British Red Cross Society - UK

Any views expressed in this article are those author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Driving out of , the capital of this small country in the , we join a huge convey of trucks heading south towards the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

The trucks are so heavily loaded that they hardly move along the steep, winding road through the barren countryside. The containers on their trailers are full of goods for the Ethiopian market. Much of these supplies and merchandise will be taken to shops and retailers in the Ethiopian capital, , having found their way into Africa through the port of Djibouti.

Part of the cargo that has landed on the port is fresh food and aid for Djiboutians, who this year face yet another .

A combination of drought and high food prices has affected at least 120,000 people in Djibouti, according to a joint rapid assessment of the impact of drought in rural areas by the government of Djibouti, UN agencies and FEWS Net.

This is worrying news for the country’s rural poor who make 30 per cent of Djibouti’s 800,000 people population. Many rural Djiboutians have lost livestock and their coping mechanisms have progressively deteriorated due to recurring droughts in the past four to five years.

A desolate place

As I have witnessed during a visit to the township of Balabala on the outskirts of Djibouti City, many people in rural areas have had enough of the countryside woes and are moving to the capital. The lights in the city may be powered by imported electricity, but they still provide a glow that seems to offer an escape from the hardship of the village. Sadly, in most cases they only exchange one form of hardship for another.

Balabala is home to many of those who have come from rural areas. Most people are living in shacks made of anything they can get their hands on: cardboard, cloth, plastic sheeting, sticks and metal poles. Yet this burgeoning shanty town is patched dry due to water scarcity.

As the emigrants soon find out, water here is a bigger problem for many than it is back in their villages. The only source of water in Balabala is a government tanker that comes once a week with everyone’s ration.

The Djibouti Red Crescent this week distributed plastic barrels and other water storage equipment to the most vulnerable people in the township. The exercise was part of a joint effort between the organisation and the British Red Cross to support to this very vulnerable community.

Those receiving the equipment were selected by themselves including the elderly, the sick and the unemployed.

Refugees

Considered a least-developed, low-income food-deficit country and ranked 147th out of 169 countries in the 2010 UN Human Development Index, Djibouti also has top shoulder effects having instable neighbours.

The town of Ali Sabieh, about fifty miles South of Djibouti City is home to around 16,000 refugees mainly from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

According to official from the Djibouti Red Crescent society, some of the residents at the Ali Addeh have been here for more than twenty years. The organisation is trying - in an important way - to help people overcome the psycho-social problems of isolation and loneliness, which come with being refugees.

Through the Red Cross movement’s Restoring Family Links programme, refugees here are being provided a to help them contact their families around the world. The day I arrive at the camp, we witnessed someone from the camp speak to their family in America while another person spoke to family members in Sweden for the first time in a long while.

Together with other aid organisations, the Red Cross movement is also providing water, food and health care to refugees at Ali Addeh.


As we leave the camp, we hear news of the European Union agreeing the drilling of water boreholes in six different sites across the country, and hope for better times for Djibouti’s poor.