-Dahir Adan, 30, and his wife Fartun Muhumed, 26, are refugees from Somalia, resettled to the U.S. in February 2010 by Church World Service and Community Immigration and Refugee Services of Ohio.  They live in Columbus, with their four small children, but they worry for their drought-afflicted relatives back home in the Horn of Africa.

“They have no shelter, no food, no clothes,” Fartun says.  “In Somalia they depended on livestock and all the livestock they had perished due to the severe drought.”

Before coming to the U.S., Dahir and his immediate family were in Kenya’s sprawling Dadaab refugee camps for 17 years.  Designed for 90,000 people, the camps’ population has quadrupled to 420,000 and continues to grow by 1,500 people daily as people stream in from famine-stricken southern Somalia.

The UNHCR reports that some 116,000 Somali refugees have arrived in Dadaab so far this year. About 76,000 of them arrived in Dadaab in the last two months alone.   

Africa's drought affects more than 10 million people across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.  

CWS is helping 97,000 households in Kenya, providing emergency food, water and relief in addition to long-term support.  CWS is also supporting the efforts of ACT Alliance and other partners working in the Dadaab camp, in Kenya, as well as those assisting drought-affected families in Somalia and Ethiopia.