Kenya allows feeding centres for refugees

Following the deaths of 10 Somali refugees from malnutrition and disease, the local authorities in northeastern Kenya have allowed aid workers to set up three supplementary feeding centres, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported.

Construction work on the first centre, near the town of Mandera, is set to begin on Wednesday, and is expected to be completed within a week, a UNHCR spokesman said in Geneva. This centre will cater for refugees at a nearby makeshift camp - which hosts up to 5,000 Somali refugees - along the volatile Kenya-Somalia border area. The other two centres, to be set up in Mandera itself, will meet the supplementary feeding needs of the local population and refugees living with family and friends.

The spokesman, Kris Janowski, said health workers had reported that the number of severely malnourished children in Mandera Hospital had risen to 147, some 40 percent of whom are refugees, by the end of last week.

At the temporary camp, known as Border Point 1, some 800 of the 2,000 children there were moderately malnourished, while 400 pregnant or lactating mothers were in urgent need of supplementary feeding. The spokesman said the UN agency had flown in more than one tonne of medical supplies on Monday to support the local hospital.

The proximity of Border Point 1 to the border - 500 metres away - exposed it to danger, making it difficult for relief agencies to distribute aid to the refuges, Janowski added.

"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.

He noted that a relocation convoy, organised last week to move a first group of 150 refugees to a refugee camp some 500 km to the south, was called off after the government failed to give the final green light.

"UNHCR is 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," he said.

The refugees - estimated at between 3,500 and 5,000 - fled to Mandera in April to escape inter-clan fighting in Bulo Hawa, just across the border in Somalia.