The Bur Amino camp in Ethiopia’s Dollo Ado region was opened on Nov. 30 and has received the first group of some 400 Somali refugees so far, Andrej Mahecic, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), announced in Geneva on December 2.

The relocation to Bur Amino will decongest the transit centre, said Mahecic. For weeks, 7,500 recent arrivals from Somalia had been living in the centre, built to host one third of that population for a few days only.

Rain and poor shelter conditions exacerbated the already low nutritional and health status of the refugees there, especially the children, he added.

**Health and Nutrition Screening**

On arrival at the new camp, the refugees underwent health and nutrition screening before being shown to their tents and given hot meals.

Those being relocated to Bur Amino will benefit from food distribution, supplementary feeding for malnourished children, water, health and sanitation facilities.

UNHCR and Ethiopian authorities are continuing with the gradual relocation, moving 500 refugees every four days as parts of the new camp are still being developed.

Ethiopia has received more than 98,000 Somali refugees since the start of this year, adding to an existing refugee population of some 41,000 in older camps.

Another 163,000 Somalis have arrived in Kenya and over 4,800 in Djibouti, bringing the total number of Somali refugees in the region to more than 950,000, according to UNHCR.

**Tens of Thousands Died, Over 3.2 Million Starving**

Health and nutrition rates have deteriorated for famine-wracked Somalis displaced within their own country, the UN had already reported on mid September.

In Mogadishu, the capital, the incidence of diarrhoea and measles among internally displaced persons (IDPs) remains a concern and the estimated mortality rates among children under the age of five continue to be alarmingly high at 15.43 per 10,000 a day.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have already died and more than 3.2 million others are on the brink of starvation in a country that has been torn apart by factional and Islamic militant conflicts for the past two decades during which it has had no functioning central government.

****

Source: [www.un.org](http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40599&Cr=somalia&Cr1=) | 2011 [Human Wrongs Watch](http://human-wrongs-watch.net/)