Title: Somalia: Emergency relief for victims of the drought
Date & location: Bakool region, Somalia, Nairobi, 16-20 February 2006.
Natural with Somali speech and local dialect
Duration: 9'35''
Produced and realized by Pedram Yazdi, Nicole Engelbrecht, Virginie Miranda.
Source: ICRC – Access all
Somalia-icrc-newscut_270206

This report will be distributed free-to-air and rights free on Eurovision World Feed satellites at 14.00 to 14.10 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2006.

For full details of the World feed, go to the EBU website and/or see below for timings and technical specification:


For broadcast tapes and information on footage: Virginie Miranda, ICRC, Geneva,

Shows:

Start at first frame
Bakool region, Somalia (16-20 February 2006)

00:00 Bush in El Berde district, Bakool region, Somalia
00:11 Pastoralists with cattle on the road between El Berde and Hudur town, Bakool region
00:23 Dried up rain water catchment in Hudur town
00:40 Pastoralist with his wife in front of their hut in El Berde town. They walked from Daraye to El Berde, a distance of 20 kilometres.

00:52 INTERVIEW (Soundbite – 28") (Somali) saying

"We have five children. We are a group coming from Daraye. Before we had ten cows and thirty goats and sheep. We lost all of them in the drought. We came here to get food and water from organizations and ICRC. We don't have anything. As long as the situation does not change we will stay here."

01:22 dead goat in El Berde town, background women assembling and waiting for food distribution (19.02.2006)
01:29 same women waiting
01:35 ICRC personnel unloading bags with beans and maize from truck
01:45 close up of women and children waiting
01:49 various close ups of women
02:07 more women arriving, ICRC employee (Abshir Omar Jama) gathers the crowd around the food and explains procedure of distribution
02:28 close up of smiling young woman
02:32 close up of children and babies drinking from breast while mothers are standing in line
02:42 women loading food bags onto donkeys, Red Crescent volunteer supervising the scene
03:05 donkey trolly leaving

03:11 near Hudur town, ICRC personnel and one hunter unloading food bags from truck (19.02.2006)
03:19 woman belonging to a group of nomadic hunters in front of her hut, hunter brings a bag of maize
03:26 close up of three children watching the scene
03:30 different woman with her children takes bag of maize and carries it into her hut
03:40 herd of goats and group of women and children in Hudur town

03:59 Red Crescent volunteers slaughtering goats in El Berde (18.02.2006)
04:12 meat on plastic sheet, women and children waiting in line for distribution, El Berde
04:17 close up child with mother
04:23 women standing in line waiting for meat
04:32 local elders, ICRC personnel and Red Crescent volunteers distributing meat
04:40 different shots of women receiving meat
04:50 close up of women sitting, with meat in their hands

04:57 Wadjid town, ICRC personnel filling truck with water from borehole (17.02.2006)
05:18 ICRC personnel driving two trucks from borehole to Bara Brio village and El Berde, transporting water
05:53 Bara Brio, ICRC employees organizing water distribution
06:00 pastoralists and agro pastoralists from the region taking water from the water reservoir
06:18 nomad pastoralist woman in front of her camel
06:32 same woman carrying her two water buckets to water reservoir
06:46 same woman filling the buckets with water
07:01 close up woman, name: Habiba Abdurahman

07:03 INTERVIEW Habiba Abdurahman (Soundbite: 50" ) (local dialect)

"I came here to get water (from Bare area). I left at 3:00 am and arrived now (10:00 am). It is a long distance just to find water. The water is for the family consummation for one night and one morning. I came here with the camel carrying two water pots. It is the first time that I come to this water point. We need water near our pastures. I give water only to the weak animals. We don't have food. The situation of food and water in Bare area is very bad."

07:54 women loading camel
08:02 camels near Hudur town walking away

INTERVIEW Pascal Hundt, Head of Operation for Somalia (18'')

"The Somali people are today forced to leave the area and try to fetch water along the rivers, they have to move, they have to migrate they don't have access to food, to water and therefore
they are really in need of urgent assistance today"

INTERVIEW Pascal Hundt, Head of Operation for Somalia (12'')
"The ICRC assistance is done in close cooperation with all the actors and the efforts of all humanitarian actors in Somalia are required today to address this crisis"

07:13 Truck arriving at Nairobi international Airport
Loading of box of medicine and food on the plane
Plane leaving for Somalia.

09:35 Ends

Story Line:

The Horn of Africa is in the grip of a severe drought. One of the most affected areas is southern Somalia. Two to four (depending on the region) consecutive poor rain seasons, have caused acute shortages of water and food and destroyed crops and grazing lands in the predominantly agro-pastoralists and pastoralists regions. Many rain water catchments such as in Hudur town, Bakool region are completely dried up. As a result tens of thousands of people are in urgent need of assistance.

Somalis are used to a harsh and unpredictable environment and they engage in a range of coping strategies to mitigate the impact of the drought. One strategy is to migrate. The reason the threat is more ominous this year than in previous years, is that the failure of rains is widespread and consequently prevents pastoralists from finding grazing lands elsewhere.

"Our situation is desperate", explains this pastoralist who walked 20 kilometres from Daraye to El Berde hoping to find water and food.

"We have five children. We are a group coming from Daraye. Before we had ten cows and thirty goats and sheep. We lost all of them in the drought. We came here to get food and water from organizations and the ICRC. We don't have anything. As long as the situation does not change we will stay here."

In order to avoid that the situation deteriorates and the crisis turns into famine the International Committee of the Red Cross stepped up its emergency operations. In the Bakool region alone the organization distributed food to 48.000 people. Women in charge of the household are the ones that come to pick up rations of beans, maize and vegetable oil. Each family receives enough food (108 kg) to last for two months. This help will continue until the next harvest in July, although the success of the crop will depend on the results of the rainy season due to begin in April.

The drought makes an already dire situation worse for the majority of the people in southern Somalia. It takes a heavy toll on children under five years old, the group most vulnerable to malnutrition and diseases.

The ICRC closely cooperates with the Somali Red Crescent to bring assistance to the most vulnerable people even in isolated rural areas such as to a group of nomadic hunters who temporarily installed their huts a few kilometres away from Hudur town.

One of the hunters helps the ICRC personnel unload the food bags (maize and beans) from the truck and brings it to a woman.

Nomads are especially affected by the prolonged dry spell. Their capital consists of livestock. The animals are becoming weak and have quickly lost value over the last few weeks. At the same time grains become increasingly expensive and scarce. Entire families are in search of pasture all over the region.

In several districts of the Gedo and Bakool region such as in El Berde (Bakool) the ICRC launched de-stocking projects. De-stocking means, to buy animals (mainly goats and sheep) from pastoralists while they are still in fair condition. The animals are slaughtered immediately and the meat is distributed fresh to vulnerable people in the area or air-dried to transport to areas where a lack of protein has been observed.

In El Berde and other districts of Bakool Red Crescent volunteers slaughtered 5000 goats and sheep. ICRC personnel and the volunteers distributed the meat to 5000 families, many of which are internally displaced persons that fled their homes due to armed confrontations.

With temperatures of up to 50 degrees the lack of water is unbearable for people in the affected areas. Another priority for the ICRC is to increase communities' access to water. The organization repairs dozens of boreholes, wells and rainwater catchments and trucks water to more than 80.000 people. The water is taken from boreholes that still contain enough water such as in Wadjid and transported to people in need.

In Bara Brio village (Bakool region) hundreds of pastoralists gather every day to collect water from the ICRC reservoir. Many have left their homes early in the morning to get there, like Habiba Abdurahman, a nomad pastoralist woman:

"I came here to get water (from Bare area). I left at 3:00 am and arrived now (10:00 am). It is a long distance just to find water. The water is for the family consume for one night and one morning. I came here with the camel carrying two water pots. It is the first time that I come to this water point. We need water near our pastures. I give water only to the weak animals. We don't have food. The situation of food and water in Bare area is very bad."

Pascal Hundt, ICRC head of operations for Somalia says " "The Somali people are today forced to leave the area and try to fetch water along the rivers, they have to move, they have to migrate they don't have access to food, to water and therefore they are really in need of urgent assistance today"

Chronic insecurity and the absence of basic services such as health and education increase the negative effects of the drought in Somalia. Armed conflict and lawlessness have led to massive displacements of families and claim the highest number of weapon wounded casualties in the whole of Africa.

Contacts:

Nicole Engelbrecht, regional media delegate, ICRC Nairobi, tel. +254 20 2723 963 or mob. +254 722 51 27 28
Pédram Yazdi, communication delegate for Somalia, ICRC Nairobi, tel. +254 20 2723 963 mob. +254 722 51 81 42
Virginie Miranda, ICRC video news producer, ICRC Geneva, tel. +41 22 730 2511 or mob. +41 79 251 93 14

Information on the transmission available from Eurovision Control Center in Geneva, Tel: ++41 22 717 27 90