Somalia: the martyrdom of the innocents

After twenty years of civil war, nearly 260,000 people died during the famine that hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012. Half of them were children under the age of five, says a report by the UN and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net). Thousands other Somalians, most of them children and babies, suffered from severe malnutrition and dehydration. Victims flooded hospitals and camps in Mogadishu. In fact, the city itself looked like a giant refugee camp.
Yet those who made it to Mogadishu were the fortunate ones. Many more others lived in regions controlled by al-Shabab, the Islamist insurgents, who imposed draconian restrictions to aid delivery and moved starving families back into famine zones they had fled. Mogadishu was far from being a safe haven. Camps and hospitals, where foreign aid workers provided medical care, were at permanent risk of being attacked.
  • Thousands of starving families like this one have found refuge in Mogadishu, where camps get bigger and farther away from the city center every day. (29.08.2011, Mogadishu).
  • Internally displaced Somalis build tents from wood and fabric they find. These small tents often provide shelter to six people or more. (30.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Among dozens of sick children and exhausted mothers, this young child fights for his life at the Banadir hospital. Like him, many children arrive at the hospital with burn scars on their body and head, a local tradition supposed to cure them but that only weakens them more. This child died three days later from severe dehydration. (21.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Kolasey Devaho, 70 and blind, has been living alone for two years in Mogadishu. (23.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Mogadishu’s hospitals are overwhelmed with patients as the famine deepens. Thousands of people are treated on the floor, in the corridors or in rooms conceived for four or five patients only. (27.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Somali soldiers guard the camps against attacks from al-Shabab, the Islamist insurgents. Besides security problems, refugees also suffer from a total lack of privacy as tents are often less than 50 centimeters away from each other. (01.09.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Around 6 p.m., adults and children join the line to receive their daily meal: rice with small pieces of meat. (23.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Fatma Ali quenches her thirst in her mother’s arms. As Somalia faces one of the worst famines of its history, hundreds of thousands of children are at risk of death. (21.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • In the capital's hospitals, most of the patients are less than 10 years old, suspended between life and death as they arrive. (26.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • As often happens, this child, who suffers from dehydration and a serious mouth infection, has had to wait for days before doctors could finally take care of him at the Banadir hospital. (31.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Halime walked 150 kilometers to bring her son Mahmud to a hospital. She lost a baby, Mahmud’s youngest brother, on the road to Mogadishu. (25.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Osman Ali Galib buries his two-year-old son Fartun. The child died of watery diarrhea one month after his arrival at the al-Hidaya refugee camp. (23.08.2011, Mogadishu)
  • Father Osman Ali Galib says he is worried for the life of his five other children, as most of them are sick and dangerously weak. (23.08.2011, Mogadishu)