Nick Freundlich
The article
An estimated 90,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, due to fighting between insurgent groups and the Ethiopian army. More than half of these refugees have gone to live in the nearby city of Afgooye, others have settled in makeshift towns between Mogadishu and Afgooye, and others have relocated to safer neighborhoods of Mogadishu. The populations of these refugee settlements have been spiking, and it appears that there are currently far more people than can live healthily in them. Large families live in small huts. There is widespread malnourishment, the water distribution system is not effective, and the poor hygiene in the towns is causing fears that there may be an outbreak of cholera. These settlements are so populous that they are beginning to negatively affect the towns around them as well. There have also been reports of rape, resulting in calls for better security within the settlements.
This may just be ignorance on my part, but when I read this article, I was wondering why refugees couldn’t establish themselves somewhere else, or why AU or UN peacekeeping officials could not distribute refugees around to different settlements. Nobody expects a refugee settlement to be a nice place to live, but it seems as if many of these problems can be partially avoided by spacing out the population of refugees.
