Other than basic shelters drought
displaced families have very little. Credit: IRIN |
Abyan
Abdinur has a roof over her head. Other than that she has nothing. She has seen
two of her children die, lost the few possessions she owned and all her livestock
- her most valuable asset - have perished.
Abyan is an internally
displaced person (IDP), someone who has been forced to flee their home due to
war, ethnic cleansing, or natural disasters like famine.
It
was severe drought that forced her and her young family - she has been married
eight years - to flee their home in 1999. Now, although they would like to return,
they cannot. They are dependent on erratic government food handouts and are stuck
in a downward cycle.
"We don’t have any income," she says
wearily. "We only get food from the government so we have to stay for that. But
even that is not regular; it arrives every three or four months.
"If
we tried to leave we would die because we have nothing to feed our children with.
I have lost two children, and that is enough for any mother."
Like
her two surviving children, Abyan has now developed TB - a disease that is rife
among the 124,000 displaced in Somali Regional State and the area's biggest killer.
"In
the last three years all I have seen is disease and suffering," she added, weakened
from TB. "I just want to go back to my home."
In Ethiopia
there are currently some 235,000 people like her, displaced by war, famine and
drought - each synonymous with this fragile country. Most are women and children.
Along
the disputed 1,000-km border with Eritrea, a million people were displaced during
their two-year border war which broke out in 1998. About 76,000 people still have
not returned to their homes.
Abyan, 26, began her journey
over three years ago after the severe famine that hit southeastern Ethiopia, claiming
thousands of lives.
With her husband Sheik Osman and four
children - two died on the way - she travelled the arduous 400-km passage from
Garbo, in Fik Zone in Somali Regional State. It took them a month of walking in
searing heat.
If she crossed an international border she
would have become a refugee, had legal status and rights as well as an entire
United Nations agency devoted to her well-being.
Now her
home is in Fafan, a makeshift camp of plastic and straw, on the outskirts of Jijiga
and filled with some 1,300 families like hers. Almost all fled the 2000 famine.
Each month they should receive around 50 kg of maize to eat a handout from the
government.
Her children, who are both stunted, do not receive
education, thwarting what little hopes they may have clinged to. Health care is
effectively non-existent and like many makeshift camps for the homeless the sanitation
facilities are appalling.
[ENDS]
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