Struggling to cope with drought

Sirad Mohammed sits outside her newly constructed shelter adjacent to the exclusive Gabode suburb of the capital, Djiboutiville, and watches her six children at play. "I came here from Gestir [in the southeastern district of Ali Sadieh, 100 km from Djiboutiville] after my livestock died because of drought," she said. "The situation in Gestir is getting worse by the day." Sirad is one of 150,000 people in Djibouti, population 700,000, who have been displaced as a result of consecutive years of drought. The humanitarian crisis has forced rural people to move to the city in search of food and water. The new informal settlement, located near the airport, lacks sanitary and other basic facilities, but the displaced families are determined to stay. "A government official told us to leave the area, but we have nowhere to go," Sirad said. "We are near rich houses and they are kind to us. We get food and they supply us water from their own pumping systems." In a recent interview with IRIN, President Ismail Omar Guelleh said the hardest hit areas were the coastal, the north and the northwest regions. "Many people have already lost their livestock and moved to towns," he said. Humanitarian workers in Djibouti confirmed that drought had caused particular hardship to pastoral populations, whose livestock were dying from lack of water and pasture. "For many who depend on livestock for their food and income, this means the loss of their livelihood," said Aloys Kamuragiye, the acting United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Djibouti. "There has been an influx of rural people, who have lost everything, into towns," he noted. "We are definitely in an emergency situation." Dire circumstances "The lack of rain has hit the pastoral herders particularly hard, since they depend on watering holes and prairie grasses to keep their livestock healthy," said Caritas International in a statement on Tuesday. The Catholic charity had appealed for US $45,000 to bring food aid to those affected. "They sell their milk and meat, and in turn would normally be able to buy food," Caritas said. "[But] the skinny animals can no longer provide any such income, and people have begun moving toward town centres in search of food." The long-awaited rains that normally fall between October and February have yet to appear in the Horn of Africa country. Caritas said that even if some rain were to fall in the coming months, it would not be enough to avoid an impending humanitarian crisis. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said in its January alert that significant food deficits ranging from 20 percent to 70 percent of minimum food requirements existed in all pastoral livelihood zones in Djibouti. The next recovery period is not expected until November. "The consequences of these deficits are evidenced by the presence of pre-famine indicators in most pastoral zones, including distress migration, livestock deaths, concentration in permanent deep-water points, increase in supplementary feeding for dairy herds, malnutrition and diarrhoeal diseases," FEWS Net said. A 40 percent increase in the number of drought victims - of which one-third are children - is expected during the coming months, the agency noted. Response Djiboutian officials said increased livestock deaths in various communities had prompted the government and aid agencies to conduct a rapid assessment of the situation. Mohamed Ali, the focalpoint officer for disasters in the interior ministry, said on 6 February that although the results of the assessment had not yet been finalised, some efforts were already underway to provide aid to those most affected. The Japanese government pledged $700,000 to Djibouti following an appeal for international assistance issued on 16 January by Interior Minister Yacin Elmi Bouh. Kuwait is also expected to announce a contribution. The UN World Food Programme's emergency operation currently assists more than 47,000 people in Djibouti, according to a WFP statement issued on 13 January. Djibouti officials said that ordinary citizens had joined a grassroots effort to help each other. Led by First Lady Kadra Mahamoud Haid, an NGO called the Union of Djiboutian Women (French abbreviation - UNFD) has taken the lead in collecting donations from well-wishers across the country. "For example, the Ministry of Education invited all children and teachers to bring one kilogramme of cereal," said Degmo Mohamed, deputy head of UNFD. "We have started distributing [what we have received]." Hassan Darar, a local chief in the district of Arta, near Djiboutiville, said that UNFD had sent food, clothes and water-supply equipment to people living in the area. "We began distributing [the items] to the affected people today [on Wednesday]," Hassan said. "They had waited so long. But this will not be enough, so we hope that the international community will supplement this effort." President Guelleh said the idea of mobilising Djiboutians to contribute something had created solidarity and taught people that they can help each other. "Instead of waiting until people start dying, we decided to mobilise our own people, from school children to businessmen. Every family should give what it can," he said. "This has been very, very successful. Now we are trying to dispatch what has been collected to the affected areas with the help of our armed forces." According to the president, the government has drawn up a long-term strategy to address the problem of recurrent drought, which involves harvesting water during rainy seasons, building water catchments, irrigating land around water wells in order to produce animal feed, and planting trees.