Alarm as violence displaces hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia

Aid organisations voiced alarm today over a displacement crisis in southern Ethiopia, warning that many of the hundreds of thousands who have fled inter-communal violence were living in places "unfit for human habitation".

More than 800,000 people fled violence along the Oromia and Somali regions' border in the country's southeast last month alone, according the UN humanitarian agency.

That followed a first wave of people fleeing after fighting in the area first flared up in April, the agency said, adding that it remained unclear how many people in total had been displaced.

"The situation is extremely fluid," spokeswoman Vanessa Huguenin told AFP.

The UN migration agency, IOM, said today that most of the freshly displaced were living without adequate shelter or safe sanitation, and warned the situation was being exacerbated by the onset of the rainy season.

"Walking for days to find safety, many sleeping out in the open along the way, the displaced communities have few if any possessions beyond the clothes they left in, and no food or money," IOM said in a statement.

Those who have recently fled their homes join nearly 1.8 million people already internally displaced within Ethiopia, it said.

Ethiopia's government and aid organisations are racing to provide aid and services to those gathered at the numerous displacement sites in the West Guji Zone of Oromia and Gedeo Zone of SNNPR.

IOM said many of the displaced were staying with relatives or had sought shelter in schools, government buildings or disused factories.

"Thousands of people are crammed into overcrowded collective centres unfit for human habitation," it said, adding that "others sleep outside on dirt floors with nothing more than a tarpaulin to shield them from the cold and rain."
"If humanitarian assistance is not scaled up quickly, people will be at-risk of malnutrition and disease outbreaks, especially as the rainy season sets in," she said, warning that "people are struggling to live in anything resembling basic dignity."