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afrol News, 5 June - Following reports of the deaths of 10 Somali refugees in Kenya, including eight children, from disease and malnutrition over the past 10 days, supplementary feeding has finally been ordered. Local authorities in the north-eastern Kenya town of Mandera have "allowed" aid workers to set up three supplementary feeding centres. According to a press briefing by Kris Janowski, spokesman of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the failure of the Kenyan government to authorise a transfer of Somali refugees from the troubled border area to safer camps is starting to cost refugees lives. Several have been killed by stray gunfire from the Somali side of the frontier, and now, refugees are dying of malnutrition because aid workers cannot reach the temporary camps in the volatile border area. Construction work on the first feeding centre begins today, Janowski said and "is expected to be completed within a week." He added that the first centre will cater for refugees at a nearby, makeshift camp along the volatile Kenya/Somalia border area. The camp hosts up to 5,000 Somali refugees. The other two centres, to be set up in Mandera town itself, will meet the supplementary feeding needs of the local population and refugees living with family and friends. Health workers had reported that the number of severely malnourished children in the overstretched Mandera Hospital had risen to 147 by the end of last week. Some 40 per cent of them were refugees. At Border Point 1, some 800 of the 2,000 children there are moderately malnourished while 400 pregnant or lactating mothers are in urgent need of supplementary feeding. UNHCR on Monday flew in more than a ton of medical supplies to support the local hospital. According to Janowski, relief agencies had been unable to distribute aid to refugees at the temporary Border Point 1 encampment "due to its close proximity to the border and the fear of attacks by armed militia from across the border," a mere 500 metres away. The Kenyan government is yet to authorise the transfer of the refugees to safer locations inside the country, "despite weeks of negotiations with UNHCR," Janowski said, with a clear address to the Kenyan government to take responsibility for the Somali refugees' welfare. A relocation convoy had organised to move the first group of 150 refugees to Dadaab refugee camp - some 500 kilometres further south - but was called off on 24 May after the government failed to give the final green light. UNHCR was "still pressing for government authorisation to either move the refugees to a more secure location in the Mandera area or to existing refugee camps in Dadaab." - Maybe they think that if these people move deeper inside the Kenya the situation will become permanent, Janowski told reporters. But the refugees are "desperate," he added. Several had also been killed by stray gunfire from the Somali side of the frontier. Some 10,000 Somali refugees fled to Kenya following clan fighting in the Somali town of Bula Hawa, across the border, in April and May. Roughly half of them have returned to Somalia, allegedly under pressure from Kenyan and Somali officials. Kenya is however already host to some 250,000 refugees, an estimated 140,000 of them being from Somalia. Meanwhile, Janowski says "UNHCR is very worried about reports that the local authorities in the Somali town of Bula Hawa, across the border from Mandera, told refugees at Border Point 1 that they had three days from last Sunday to return home or be forced back." Tensions in the border area remain high amid fears of renewed fighting in and around refugees' home villages.
Sources: Based on UNHCR and afrol archives
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