Heavy rains displace thousands of refugees in East Africa

By James Tasamba

KIGALI, Rwanda (AA) – Thousands of refugees are among those affected by heavy rains and severe flooding sweeping across the East Africa region, the UN Refugee Agency reported on Friday.

The rains triggered by El Niño have affected about 32,000 refugees in Burundi, nearly half of the refugee population in the country, with 500 of them requiring urgent assistance, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

In the capital, Bujumbura, refugee families along with many Burundians, including elderly people, have been displaced multiple times due to rising water levels.

“Access to food and other necessities is increasingly difficult as prices have risen due to high fees to use canoes to move goods. Education has ground to a halt as classrooms are flooded and learning materials destroyed,” it said.

The UNHCR said beyond Bujumbura, rent prices have reportedly doubled, making it unaffordable for many refugee families to relocate which has forced them to remain in their water-logged homes.

Elsewhere in the region, 46,000 internally displaced people in five locations in the south of Somalia have been forced to evacuate due to flash floods.

In Tanzania, over 200,000 refugees mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi have been impacted while in Kenya, nearly 20,000 people in the Dadaab refugee camps have been displaced due to the rising water levels.

The Dadaab refugee camps host over 380,000 refugees.

“These floods show the gaps in preparedness and early action. Funding available to address the impacts of climate change is not reaching those forcibly displaced, nor the communities hosting them,” UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado Mur said.

“Without help to prepare for, withstand and recover from climate-related shocks, they face an increased risk of further displacement,” Mur said.