Mourning in Mogadishu
Photographer Jared Moossy traveled to Somalia this September, photographing a country ravaged by famine. He visited two refugee camps, near Bald Hawa and Dolo, and the capital, Mogadishu. What he saw — and what he photographed — was a country ravaged by decades of war, drought, and terrorism.
Above, women in Bald Hawa, gather to express their frustration and tell their stories — where they had traveled from, why they had left — while waiting for a food aid to be delivered. Several people in the group had walked for days to reach the refugee camp; many had lost family members along the way. link
Famine over in Somalia but emergency remains: U.N.
Although Somalia is no longer battling famine, the Horn of Africa country remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis with four million people in need of aid, according to U.N. figures. (Reuters)
A Nation Starves – 2011pictures of the year fury by the Newsweek
Lynsey Addario / VII for Newsweek
Aug. 20
Dadaab, Kenya
First war, now starvation. A famine in Somalia could kill as many 750,000 people, while much-needed food is turned away by the Islamist Al-Shabab. Hundreds of thousands have fled to the world’s largest refugee camp at Dadaab, Kenya, where hunger and dehydration are also now rampant.
Somalis flee to Ethiopia’s refugee camps
Jan Grarup of Noor Images captured pictures of the influx of refugees arriving at Ethiopia’s Dollo Ado camp this October. In the area around the border city of Dollo Ado between Somalia and Ethiopia, four large refugee camps – Hilaweyn, Kobe, Malkadida and Bokomayo – are extremely overcrowded, hosting more than 120,000 refugees. A fifth camp is under construction to deal with the big influx of people arriving daily. ….LINK
CREDIT: JAN GRARUP | NOOR
TIME Picks the Top 10 Photos of 2011
Dominic Nahr. Mogadishu, Somalia. August 9, 2011
I have never watched children die in front of me before. Watching their last breath as their chest slowly and with long pauses slightly expand and then deflate again. Until, it suddenly stops. The children who arrived at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu were in bad shape, but they were the lucky ones. Some of them who made it to the hospital early enough managed to pull through, even with limited medical supplies and overworked, unpaid, and tired nurses. However, for most, it was a place they came to die.
Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2011/12/07/time-picks-the-top-10-photos-of-the-year/#ixzz1ftpeIhk0
Back story on a ‘haunting’ image of famine in Africa
- Posted By: Times Editors
- Posted On: 8:21 a.m. | August 6, 2011
By Barbara Davidson, Los Angeles Times
I was on assignment in Africa for six weeks. The famine was not a story that we had originally planned to cover, but when I arrived in Kenya and read about the plight of the Somalian refugees who walked some 200 miles looking for food and safety, I contacted my editors who agreed we needed to tell their story. After a couple of weeks of “permit”-gathering, a drill the Kenyan government makes all visiting journalists go through, I was on a plane to Dadaab, near the border of Kenya and Somali, home to the world’s largest refugee camp with 372,000 people, more than four times its original capacity.
The front page photo of Hawa Barre Osman looking for a signs of life from her 1-year-old severely malnourished child, Abdi Noor Ibrahim, was made inside the small Médecins Sans Frontières therapeutic feeding center at their Hospital in the Dagahaley refugee camp.
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/08/06/back-story-on-a-haunting-image-of-famine-in-africa/
SOMALIA: Al-Shabab ban on agencies threatens aid
NAIROBI, 28 November 2011 (IRIN) – The main Islamist insurgent group in Somalia, which is still in the throes of a major food crisis classified as famine in some regions, has banned 16 aid agencies, including several UN bodies, from operating in areas under its control, accusing them of “illicit activities and misconduct”.
Here is the full list of the agencies banned by Al-Shabab: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, World Health Organisation, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Population Fund, United Nations Office for Project Services, Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council, Concern, Norwegian Church Aid, Cooperazione Internazionale, Swedish African Welfare Alliance, German Agency For Technical Cooperation, Action Contre la Faim, Solidarity and Saacid.
Air strike hits Somali village, deadly bomb in capital
By Feisal Omar and Mohamed Ahmed
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – An unidentified fighter jet bombed the outskirts of a Somali rebel-controlled village in the south of the Horn of Africa country on Tuesday, killing at least one civilian, residents and members of the al Shabaab militant group said.
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Mother holds her child
Halima Hassan holds her severely malnourished son Abdulrahman Abshir, 7 months, at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu on Aug. 14.
Collecting donation in Riyadh
Men make donations to help the people of Somalia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Aug. 22. A famine has swept across the Horn of Africa, leaving at least 3.7 million Somalis at risk of starvation.
Doctors try to save lives in famine-stricken Somalia
Doctor Amith Ramcharan examines a child at the Banadir Hospital on September 7, 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia. This is the Gift Of The Givers Foundation’s second mercy mission to Somalia, where they will provide medical services and food aid to the famine stricken Somalia. This delegation includes doctors, nurses, dieticians and other medical personnel.
Horn of Africa Crisis: What We’re Doing in Somalia
ACF is carrying out emergency food distributions in the Bakool and Benadir regions, the epicenter of the catastrophe in Somalia
http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/blog/horn-africa-crisis-what-were-doing-somalia
The elusive enemy: Looking back at the “war on terror’s” visual culture
Last week The Guardian published an extraordinary report on how Al Qaeda is using aid to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of displaced Somalis in East Africa’s zone of food insecurity. Jamal Osman’s investigation – including a compelling eleven minute video – reveals how aid workers and medical units, including American and British citizens, are making food and money available in a refugee camp in southern Somalia…
http://www.david-campbell.org/2011/11/10/the-elusive-enemy-war-on-terror-visual-culture/
Kenya versus al-Shabab
The intervention of external forces in Somalia has consistently plunged Somalia into greater destruction. Is it even possible to compound the suffering of a famine-stricken population? Once again, we find ourselves at a familiar junction: Destructive, illegal intervention, the continuation of internal chaotic violence and a new indignation.This situation need not deteriorate further.
As far as Somalia is concerned, this time calls for a new solution – that is, one that comes from neither foreign forces invading the country, nor from violent factions within Somalia terrorising the population. For those who don’t yet know, Somalia is experiencing a quiet, yet significant, change: The Somali people have found a third way; one that is a civic-minded, progressive political movement. And this effort is gaining enthusiastic support amongst Somalis inside and outside the country….
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111584756956993.html
hunger in the horn of africa | jan grarup
The droughts affecting the Horn of Africa since July 2011 are labelled by the UN as the worst ones in over half a century, they put an estimated 12 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in need of relief.
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Dominic Nahr: Somalia: The Catastrophic Famine (Magnum: September 2011)
There is no children’s laughter here. Most are too weak to even cry out. Almost all of the patients in the children’s wing of the Banadir hospital die within hours of their arrival of malnutrition related illnesses and diseases.
Over 2.8 million people are at risk of starvation and hundreds of thousands of Somalis are on the verge of dying, while the UN declares that large swathes of the country are in a crisis.
Dominic Nahr: Somalia: The Catastrophic Famine (Magnum: September 2011)
Somalia: Inside the Land of the Bandits
Peter Greste is the first Western journalist to truly penetrate Somalia’s badlands. Here he describes a country on the brink – and why he felt he had to return there, despite the fact his producer, Kate Peyton, was killed on his last visit.
The children of Dadaab: Life through the lens
Through my video “The children of Dadaab: Life through the Lens” I wanted to tell the story of the Somali children living in Kenya’s Dadaab. Living in the world’s largest refugee camp, they are the ones bearing the brunt of Africa’s worst famine in sixty years.
I wanted to see if I could tell their story through a different lens, showing their daily lives instead of just glaring down at their ribbed bodies and swollen eyes.
http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2011/10/25/the-children-of-dadaab-life-through-the-lens/
A truck bombing in Somalia
A truck bombing in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu kills more than 50 people, Occupy Wall Street demonstrators continue their protest in New York and professional tennis players take the court at the China Open in Beijing and more in today’s Pictures in the News.
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/10/04/pictures-in-the-news-281/#/2
Somalis flee north after Kenyan incursion
The number of Somali famine refugees flowing into Kenya has slowed to a trickle since Kenyan troops moved into Somalia in pursuit of Islamist al-Shabab militants. As a result, many thousands of people are displaced within Somalia.
Somalis seek refuge in Ethiopian camps – in pictures
by Samuel Hauenstein Swan – sambronx-photo.ch
Families fleeing drought in Somalia cross the border into Ethiopia and seek help in the Dollo Ado refugee camps
Families from Somalia walk for days, and even weeks, to reach the Dollo Ado refugee complex in Ethiopia, and arrive exhausted and dehydrated. Hundreds of children and pregnant women are malnourished and need special therapeutic foods to help them to recover
see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/gallery/2011/oct/08/ethiopia-somalia-refugee-camps?newsfeed=true#/?picture=379837249&index=0
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