For over a decade this nation has been wracked by drought. internal unrest. a war waged with the encouragement of superpowers. and now a punishing famine. Last April. I visited Somalia with the Armed Services Committee and toured a refugee camp there with our colleague. Representative SCHROEDER. I can personally testify to the immense human suffering there. The United Nations High Command for Refugees worldwide refugee statistics record a staggering 1.49 million refugees in a country with a normal population of 4.5 million people. These hungry and homeless individuals are virtually all ethnic Somalis displaced from Ethiopias Ogaden Desert region. This flood of humanity represents 25 percent of all refugees in the world today. This is more than the UNHCR is reporting in all of Southeast Asia combined. Although I saw the deprivation at one camp in Jalalaqsi. the conditions in all of Somalias 26 refugee camps appear to be the same or worse. Malnutrition and dehydration is common among new arrivals. 15 percent of the children in the camps suffer from malnutrition. Medical and health care facilities where available are insufficient. The Somali population has only one doctor per 12.000 individuals. These problems are unfortunately typical of those regions of the world suffering from starvation. refugee situations. and conflict. But they are exacerbated by the unusual age and sex distribution which creates relatively high requirement for international aid. Approximately 61 percent of the refugees are children. aged 15 or younger. and approximately 30 percent are women. Thus. only 9 percent of the population within the camps are men and most of them are elderly. injured. or sick. This makes the design of selfhelp programs. of the kind usually put into place in refugee camps. extremely difficult for this type of camp population. Our resolution calls upon the Congress and charitable organizations to play the role our Nation has honorably chosen to play time and again. We call upon the United States to do everything possible to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to Somalia.
Keywords matched
Refugees refugee refugees