Francesco Zizola, NOOR, writes:

In 2009, when reporting from Southern Ethiopia, I promised myself never to cover another famine. Bearing witness to the death of thousands of people, children for the most part, had worn me out. It’s hard to look at pictures like these, but for me they are especially hard to take.

There’s always the risk of falling into the stereotype of an African body – of a child in most cases – worn out by hardship and despair. In the Western countries we are aware of what is happening in Africa, but our souls of privileged citizens are hardly touched by these photographs. For me it’s different, I bring those images and that suffering inside of me for a long time afterwards. They haunt me at night.

Francesco Zizola / NOOR via Redux

In the Lake Turkana area of Kenya, nomadic herdsmen are hit hard by a year-long drought that is creating famine in the area.

The alarm on famine launched this year pushed me to approach the subject once more. The causes of the present crisis have been ascribed in large part to climate change, a topic I have been working on for some time with my colleagues at NOOR.

I took the decision to give it a second try and set off for Northern Kenya, avoiding places besieged by the media circus, like the Dadaab refugee camp, near the border with Somalia. In North-western Kenya, between the Sudanese border and the Ethiopian border, the drought has been claiming many lives among the agro-pastoral communities of the Turkana people, who inhabit the region around Lake Turkana. As I am told, the drought is affecting only part of the region, but such unevenness has triggered another tragedy: livestock-rustling.

Communities badly affected by the drought start looking for new pastures for their goatherds, camels or cattle, attacking and trying to uproot the communities already settled in the occupied areas. It’s a desperate fight for resources, which respects no law and no border.

Luckily, I didn't witness any deaths in the central Turkana district, where I spent nearly two weeks. The drought is severe. Rainfalls have failed for over a year in some areas, in others for five.

Thanks to their nomadic character, the tribal communities living in the region are succeeding in rescuing their livestock, upon which their own survival depends. Unfortunately only the strong can flee from the drought, leaving the weak behind, like children – often malnourished – and the elderly. The survival of the weak is the real emergency. (Translated by Valentina Tordoni)

View more of Zizola's images from northern Kenya.

See more coverage of the drought and famine hitting the Horn of Africa.

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

Women start to clean streets in the neighborhoods vacated by Al-Shabab fighters in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Aug. 7. Islamist fighters withdrew from almost all their bases in the famine-struck Somali capital on Saturday, the most significant gain for the embattled U.N.-backed government in four years.

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

Women clean streets in Mogadishu on Sunday, Aug, 7.

Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP

Somalia Transitional Government soldiers prepare to take positions near a stadium in Mogadishu on Aug. 7, after a brief fight with Al-Shabab fighters.

NBC's Richard Engel sent this report from Mogadishu after Al-Shabab forces pulled out of many of their bases in the city on Saturday:

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.

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.

Related content:

• PhotoBlog: Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp
• World Blog: Rohit Kachroo of NBC News reports from Wajir, Kenya

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.

Related content:

• PhotoBlog: Ailing Somali girl receives medical treatment after arduous journey
• World Blog: Rohit Kachroo of NBC News reports from Wajir, Kenya
• UN: Famine breaks out as drought hits 10 million in Horn of Africa
• 800 Somali kids arrive in Kenyan camps daily
• Insufficient funds hit horn of Africa aid efforts
• Ann Curry: Remembering the plight of refugees