UN camps feel strain from African drought

UN refugee camps in north-east Kenya now host more than 380,000 people who have fled drought-hit areas of the Horn of Africa.

It is the region’s worst drought in six decades and UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres has described it as the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.

An estimated 12 million people face famine in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia where a prolonged dry season has killed crops and left a huge food shortage.

Medics say deaths of children under five increased six-fold in May, compared to the previous year.

Three camps in Dadaab have become the largest refugee camps in the world. Since 1991, they have been home to thousands of people who fled the Somalian civil war. The camps were designed to house 90,000 but now host four times that number.

There are currently about 1,400 people arriving and trying to get in every day.

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