The UN and Ethiopian refugee agencies reported on Tuesday that over 100,000 people had sought safety in a remote part of Ethiopia in the past month after escaping hostilities in Somaliland, the country of Somalia’s self-declared separate province.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 98,000 people have arrived in three woredas (districts) bordering Somaliland since February 6, citing sources in the Doolo administrative zone, which is a part of Ethiopia’s Somali region and is situated at the country’s southernmost point, more than 1,300 km off the bad road from Addis Ababa.
At a news briefing in Addis Ababa with Mamadou Dian Balde, the UNHCR representative in Ethiopia, Tesfahun Gobezay, director general of the Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS), an Ethiopian government body, said, “We will validate these figures” with the registration that has begun.
He said that the migrants were “primarily women and children” and that “29,000 refugees have already been registered and the numbers are increasing” according to the most recent data that was made available on Monday.
If their number is confirmed, their presence will increase the population of the three woredas in question by 40%, or around 236,000 people, who are already suffering greatly from the drought that is afflicting the Horn of Africa as a whole.
Tesfahun said, “It is a region that lacks infrastructure and has minimal socio-economic development and has been battling a drought for four years. But even before we got there, the locals, who were “struck by the drought and many hardships,” welcomed the migrants into their houses and shared what little food they had.
Housing, food, water, medical aid: the requirements are vast and “very urgent”, stressed Mr. Dian Balde, believing “extremely crucial that our support does not just take into consideration the refugees, but also their hosts”.
Also, the refugees “”We want to go home,” say to us. They are advocating for measures to address the current issue (in Somaliland) so that people can return home since they do not want to stay refugees “He was adamant.
Somaliland, a former British colony, unilaterally declared its independence from Somalia in 1991 as the nation was descended into instability from which it has yet to escape. Although having its own institutions, Somaliland’s independence has never been acknowledged by the international world.
Until hostilities broke out on February 6 between Somaliland forces and militias from the neighboring Somali territory of Puntland, political tensions in the country had been developing rather calmly.
According to the UNHCR, Ethiopia, which has a population of around 120 million, was already sheltering more than 880,000 refugees before the arrival of the Somaliland migrants, the majority of whom were fleeing South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan.
