As part of his “solidarity visit” to Somalia on Tuesday in the midst of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, UN Secretary- General Antonio Guterres calls for massive international support to Somalia.
Guterres’s appeal came as the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, warned about the ongoing crisis faced by people displaced by violence from Somalia to Ethiopia, the UN Said on Wednesday in a statement.
Relocation for the most vulnerable has begun, said UNHCR, after an uptick in violence in northern Somalia’s Lascanood city pushed close to 100,000 people to flee to a remote area of Ethiopia’s Somali region in the past two months.
“Since clashes started in mid-February, thousands of people have arrived in the Somali region of Ethiopia seeking safety,” said UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado. “As of last week, 91,000 people had been registered by the Ethiopian authorities.”
Sarrado added that although the pace of arrivals had slowed, refugees continue to show up, fleeing ongoing violence in Somalia.
Ethiopia currently hosts a total of nearly 990,000 refugees from neighbouring countries including South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan.
According to UNHCR, most of the refugees arriving from Somalia are women, children and older people, including “more than 3,400 unaccompanied and separated children and adolescents”.
Sarrado said that these young refugees had told UNHCR “harrowing stories” of how they became separated from their families when clashes began and have since been unable to re-establish contact with their family members.
MG/abj/APA