Schalk Van Zuydam / AP
A child stands in front of her home at a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, on Thursday, Aug 4. Dadaab, a camp designed for 90,000 people now houses around 440,000 refugees. Almost all are from war-ravaged Somalia. Some have been here for more than 20 years, when the country first collapsed into anarchy. But now more than 1,000 are arriving daily, fleeing fighting or hunger.
Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images
A Somali father with his daughter sits at the head of a line of refugees at a registration center at Dagahaley refugee site within the Dadaab complex in Kenya on August 2. They were displaced from their home in southern Somalia by the famine that is ravaging the horn of Africa region.
See more images of the famine in our slideshow and watch the video below.
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell talks to the President of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, Caryl Stern, about the dire situation in east Africa, and mentions ways to help.
Schalk van Zuydam / AP
An elderly woman waits inside a food distribution center after being registered as a refugee in Dadaab, Kenya, Monday, Aug 1. Dadaab, a camp designed for 90,000 people now houses around 440,000 refugees. Almost all are from war-ravaged Somalia, with some having been here for more than 20 years, when the country first collapsed into anarchy.
Associated Press photographer Schalk van Zuydam writes:
I’m covering a famine for the second time in my career — the first one was in 2005 in Niger — and I’ve found this to be a very emotional assignment, especially when the most affected are children and the elderly. The woman in this photo is sitting on the ground at a food distribution center mostly populated by Somalis in the town of Dadaab, Kenya, after being registered as a refugee. Her hands tell the story of a woman who has worked hard and suffered in her life. Most Western women of her age would be looking forward to retirement and would have access to good medical treatment. This woman’s reality is very different, as she waits with others for food handouts in the hot African sun.
Previous Outside the Frame posts.
Schalk Van Zuydam / AP
A doctor examines Mihag Gedi Farah, a seven-month-old child with a weight of 7.5lbs (3.4kg), in a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee, IRC, in the town of Dadaab, Kenya, Tuesday, July 26, 2011. The U.N. will airlift emergency rations this week to parts of drought-ravaged Somalia to keep hungry refugees from dying along what an official calls the "roads of death." Tens of thousands already have trekked to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, hoping to get aid in refugee camps.
Do photos like this have any effect?
Barry Malone / Reuters
An aid worker using an iPad films the rotting carcass of a cow in Wajir, near the Kenya-Somalia border, on July 23.
Barry Malone of Reuters reports from El Adow, Kenya:
A besuited U.N. official wearing well-buffed shoes crouches in the orange dust near a cluster of huts in northern Kenyan, and, as his tie wafts in the breeze, raises an iPad and carefully films the rotting carcass of a cow.
Since drought gripped the Horn of Africa, and especially since famine was declared in parts of Somalia, the international aid industry has swept in and out of refugee camps and remote hamlets in branded planes and snaking lines of white 4X4s.
Barry Malone / Reuters
A television crew conducts an interview beside a malnourished child at a hospital at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya on July 23.
This humanitarian, diplomatic and media circus is necessary every time people go hungry in Africa, analysts say, because governments -- both African and foreign -- rarely respond early enough to looming catastrophes.
Combine that with an often simplistic explanation of the causes of famine, and a growing band of aid critics say parts of Africa are doomed to a never-ending cycle of ignored early warnings, media appeals and emergency U.N. feeding -- rather than a transition to lasting self-sufficiency.
"Although humanitarian agencies are gearing themselves up to mount a response, it is far too late to address anything but the worst symptoms," Simon Levine, an analyst at the Overseas Development Institute think-tank, wrote on its website.
"Measures that could have kept animals alive -- and providing milk, and income to buy food -- would have been much cheaper than feeding malnourished children, but the time for those passed with very little investment," Levine said.
Schalk Van Zuydam / AP
Used food tins are stacked at a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee in the town of Dadaab, Kenya, on July 26.
The drought gripping the region straddling Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is the worst for 60 years, some aid groups say, and is affecting more than 12 million people. In the worst-hit area in Somalia, 3.7 million people are at risk of starvation.
"It seems once again that slow onset disasters don't get attention until they become critical," said a senior humanitarian adviser at a U.N agency in the region
"One can understand this with rapid onset disasters as they come out of the blue, but drought ... we've seen it before and we will again," said the official, who declined to be named. Continue reading.
Feisal Omar / Reuters
A Somali doctor treats a malnourished child, as the child's mother, left, looks on at Banadir hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia, on July 21. The mother's faint smile of hope was extinguished as doctors were unable to save her child.
Reuters photo editor Gilraj Singh wrote a moving article about a series of photos Feisal Omar took of the mother and child pictured above. Read it here.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
AFP reports:
Abshira Abdukadir, a four-year-old Somali girl suffering from severe diarrhea and having trouble breathing, is looked after by her parents hours after they finally reached the Dadaab refugee camp in northeast Kenya and were able to get medical assistance for their ailing daughter on July 6.
Abshira's parents, who etched a living as farmers in Baradhere, Somalia, say that their daughter became sick 10 days ago and they finally decided to leave their home in Somalia, where, they say "for the last six months nothing was growing".
Dadaab, a complex of three settlements, is the world's largest refugee camp. Built to house 90,000 people and home to more than four times that number, it was already well over its maximum capacity before an influx of 30,000 refugees in June.
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The United Nations says malnutrition among child refugees fleeing the drought in Somalia has reached alarming rates. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports.
Serious drought in the Horn of Africa has forced thousands of Somalis to cross into Kenya in recent weeks in search of food and water. Many have ended up at Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp with a population of 370,000, AFP reports.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
Somali refugees wait in line to recieve aid at a food distribution point at Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya, on July 4.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
Sarura Ali covers her eyes from dust as she stands with her six children outside a food distribution point in the Dadaab refugee camp on July 5. Sarura, her husband and their children arrived at the camp early on July 5 after having trekked for eight days from their home in Sakow, Somalia.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
A Somali refugee patiently waits in line with her daughter in the early morning outside a food distribution point in Dadaab refugee camp on July 5.
Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images
A Somali man who fled violence and drought in Somalia with his family sits on the ground outside a food distribution point in the Dadaab refugee camp on July 5.
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