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72–393 PDF 2012

S. HRG. 112–200

RESPONDING TO DROUGHT AND

FAMINE IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

AUGUST 3, 2011

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman

BARBARA BOXER, California 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

FRANK G. LOWENSTEIN, Staff Director

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director

——————

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS

CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware, Chairman

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Brigety, Dr. Reuben, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC .. 13

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15

Responses to questions submitted for the record by Senator Benjamin 

L. Cardin ........................................................................................................ 60

Coons, Hon. Christopher A., U.S. Senator from Delaware, opening statement . 1

Isakson, Hon. Johnny, U.S. Senator from Georgia, opening statement .............. 4

Konyndyk, Jeremy, director of policy and advocacy, Mercy Corps, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 26

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28

Lindborg, Hon. Nancy, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington, DC ......................................................................... 8

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10

Responses to questions submitted for the record by Senator Benjamin 

L. Cardin ........................................................................................................ 58

Pham, Dr. J. Peter, director, Michael S. Ansari Africa Center, Atlantic Council, Washington, DC ............................................................................................. 35

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 37

Schaap, Wouter, assistant country director, Care International Somalia, 

Nairobi, Kenya ..................................................................................................... 41

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 43

Yamamoto, Hon. Donald, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, 

Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC ......... 4

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), prepared statement ....................... 57

(III)

(1)

RESPONDING TO DROUGHT AND FAMINE IN 

THE HORN OF AFRICA 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2011

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Christopher A. 

Coons (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Coons and Isakson. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER A. COONS,

U.S. SENATOR FROM DELAWARE 

Senator COONS. I would like to call to order today’s hearing 

focusing on one of the most critical issues in the world today, responding to the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. 

As always, I’m privileged to serve with my friend, Senator 

Isakson, and want to thank him for staying with me here in Washington after the Senate has adjourned in order to help convene and 

preside over today’s hearing. 

This is a children’s crisis. There are hundreds of thousands of 

children on the verge of death suffering from severe malnutrition 

in the Horn of Africa. And Senator Isakson and I agreed that this 

hearing could not wait. So, even while many of our colleagues have 

understandably returned to their home States and districts, we 

both believed it was crucial that we go ahead with this hearing 

today and not let another month go by. 

Senator Isakson has been a true and good partner in highlighting a range of compelling issues and shared concerns in Africa, 

and I greatly appreciate his leadership on this subcommittee. 

As everyone is well aware, the U.S. Congress has been almost 

entirely focused on the deficit and debt crisis in recent weeks, and 

while that issue was rightfully at the top of the agenda of the 

United States, we must also consider global issues of greater 

humanitarian concern, especially when millions of lives are at risk 

and tens of thousands have already died. 

Today we have displayed in the front of the hearing room images 

of the crisis in the Horn of Africa in order to demonstrate the rising 

human toll of the drought and famine, including on children who 

are facing unspeakable deprivation and hardship. In today’s hearing, we will list numbers that quantify the impact of the drought, 

but it is these images that help convey powerfully the true impact 

on human lives. 

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I want to thank at the outset UNICEF for its vital work on behalf of children worldwide and providing the photographs we’ve 

displayed at today’s hearing. UNICEF has also submitted a statement detailing its efforts in the Horn of Africa that I will submit 

for the record. 

The crisis in the Horn of Africa has been caused by the worst 

drought in the region in more than 60 years, resulting in severe 

malnutrition, acute hunger, rising levels of starvation, and famine 

in Somalia. It is the most severe humanitarian crisis in a generation, affecting food security for more than 12 million people across 

Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and surrounding areas. 

According to UNICEF, an estimated 2.3 million children in the 

region are acutely malnourished, half a million of whom are at risk 

of imminent death. Unfortunately, this crisis is expected to worsen 

in the coming months, eclipsing the famine in Ethiopia in the mid1980s that elicited first global public outcry and then a great response, as demonstrated by memorable events, such as Live Aid. 

The broad public awareness of that crisis in the 1980s appears to 

be absent today, despite a worsening humanitarian situation and 

increasing need for aid. 

The situation is the most severe in Somalia where rising food 

prices and failures of governance and regional security have exacerbated an already dire situation, given the ongoing conflict, poor 

governance, and obstructed humanitarian access by the group

al-Shabaab. 

Aid organizations and U.S. Government officials estimate more 

than 1,500 refugees every day are leaving Somalia for Kenya, flooding the world’s largest refugee campaign in Dadaab, which is well 

over capacity, nearing half a million refugees, or a population comparable to Tucson, AZ. Hundreds of Somalis are also fleeing every 

day for the Dolo Ado camp and other camps in Ethiopia, also well 

over its capacity with more than 100,000 refugees. 

The international community and the United States are working 

closely with the Governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti to 

address this massive transnational influx of refugees, and I praise 

their efforts to accommodate these displaced populations while 

their own people and their own countries also face severe challenges from the drought. 

The countries impacted by this drought and famine are among 

the world’s poorest, suffering from high rates of poverty and unemployment. And while the failure of two consecutive rainy seasons 

contributed to the scale of this disaster, the humanitarian crisis 

and famine that has resulted highlights broader capacity, governance, infrastructure, and security problems and needs in the 

region. 

This drought was not a surprise. USAID, through its famine 

early warning system, or FEWS NET, predicted an impending crisis last year and worked closely with the Kenyan and Ethiopian 

Governments as well as our own to enhance their ability to respond 

and preposition emergency relief supplies. 

As the United States joins with its partners in the international 

community to provide emergency assistance, we must also consider 

the lessons learned in order to avert the next famine, to improve 

3

food security globally, to build sustainable capacity, and mitigate 

the impact of this crisis on future generations. 

In response to the drought, the United States has been the largest international donor, providing more than $450 million in food 

aid, critically needed treatment for malnourished children, health 

care, and other assistance. But the responsibility cannot rest on 

our shoulders alone. Especially in difficult budgetary times, the 

humanitarian response to this crisis must be a shared transnational obligation. 

According to the United Nations, more than $2 billion will be 

needed to provide emergency assistance, and only a billion has so 

far been committed. The international community must join the 

United States and many others in providing this critical aid in the 

near term in order to save lives, especially those of malnourished 

children and others in desperate need. 

As we consider the international response to this crisis, we must 

also examine restrictions on access given the volatile security environment in Somalia where the United Nations recently declared a 

famine in southern areas controlled by al-Shabaab. Just yesterday 

the U.S. Government announced an easing of restrictions on 

humanitarian organizations operating in Somalia in order to facilitate the delivery of aid. I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses about this new policy, which aims to provide additional 

guidance and assurances to U.S. partner organizations’ operation 

in southern Somalia. 

To hear more about the scope, impact, and response to the crisis, 

we are privileged to be joined by two distinguished panels. First, 

we will hear from Nancy Lindborg, Assistant Administrator for the 

Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance for 

USAID, and former president of Mercy Corps. Ms. Lindborg will 

also be joined on this panel by Ambassador Donald Yamamoto, 

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, 

and former Ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti. We will finally 

hear from Dr. Reuben Brigety, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of 

State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, and a former fellow 

at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has just returned from a 

visit to the region. 

On the second panel, we will hear from Mr. Jeremy Konyndyk, 

director of policy and advocacy for Mercy Corps, who has led 

humanitarian and post-conflict recovery operations throughout the 

region. Next will be Dr. Peter Pham, director of the Michael Ansari 

Africa Center of the Atlantic Council, and a former professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University. Finally, we will hear from Mr. Wouter Schaap, the 

assistant country director for CARE International Somalia, who is 

based in Nairobi and recently returned from a visit to droughtaffected areas of Somalia. 

I am privileged to chair this hearing and highlight the growing 

urgency of this grave humanitarian crisis. Americans have demonstrated great leadership, helping those in need both domestically 

and abroad. And I am confident we can continue to partner with 

the international community to save lives and protect future generations in the Horn of Africa. 

4

I appreciate each of our witnesses being here today and look forward to your testimony. 

Senator Isakson. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHNNY ISAKSON,

U.S. SENATOR FROM GEORGIA 

Senator ISAKSON. Well, thank you, Chairman Coons, and I want 

to welcome all those who will testify today. I want to particularly 

thank Wouter Schaap from CARE USA, headquartered in my 

hometown of Atlanta, GA, for being here, as well as so many of the 

other CARE people that are here. 

I have had the privilege of being on site with CARE in Kenya, 

Tanzania, Ethiopia, and in Darfur in the Sudan, and seen firsthand what our NGOs do to deliver humanitarian aid, as well as in 

the case of CARE, life-sustaining techniques that people can learn 

to be self-sustaining amongst themselves, which is so critical in 

areas of bad poverty and poor education. So, I appreciate CARE 

being here and testifying today. I am always proud to have my 

home team here talking about the good things that they do. 

And for Dr. Peter Pham, who is also on the second panel, I am 

particularly delighted that he is here because he can provide insights as an informed observer of the regional anarchical, political, 

and security dynamic without the constraints an NGO must maintain in describing the situation, given the exposure of the staff. He 

will be able to examine the persistent extremist vein that runs 

through Somalia, and the perverse impact it has on the region and 

international donors. 

The severity of this crisis and the complexity of the geopolitical 

situation in the region, coupled with the U.N. and the United 

States own challenging history dealing with hunger and conflict in 

Somalia make this a particularly challenging humanitarian response. It is in such places that the principles of our policies are 

tested, both our humanitarian impulse as well as our hard-nosed 

realism regarding the purveyors of violence who impose illegitimate 

and moral control over the people and the region. 

I am delighted that the chairman called this hearing today. This 

is one of the main humanitarian crises before the world today, and 

we need to work together to see to it that we bring humanitarian 

relief to a people struggling in a terrible part of the world. 

So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today, and 

I look forward to hearing the testimony of all our witnesses. 

Senator COONS. Thank you, Senator Isakson. 

We will begin with the opening statement of Ambassador Yamamoto, and then Ms. Nancy Lindborg, and then Dr. Brigety, in that 

order, and then we will proceed to questions, if we might. 

Ambassador. 

STATEMENT OF HON. DONALD YAMAMOTO, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF AFRICAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Thank you very much. I have a longer 

version for submission for the record, so I will read a short version, 

sir. 

5

Senator COONS. Thank you. I would encourage 5-minute statements, if that is possible. And without objection, we will submit 

your full statements for the record. Thank you. 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Chairman Coons, and Ranking Member 

Isakson, and members of the committee, the worst humanitarian 

crisis in the Horn of Africa in 60 years has its roots in the brutal 

force of al-Shabaab, which has until now prevented humanitarian 

assistance from reaching those most in need, persistent instability 

in Somalia and changing regional climate pattern that impact vulnerable pastoral populations. 

We are working hard with our international and regional partners to deliver quickly the life-saving, short-term relief critical to 

those suffering the effects of this crisis. U.S. Government and U.S.-

funded assistance has prevented the loss of millions of lives. At the 

same time, we cannot rely on emergency assistance alone to resolve 

the underlying long-term problems in the region. Therefore, we are 

working with those governments in the region to support long-term 

political and food security in the region. 

Let me be clear. The response to the drought has been complicated by the continuing instability in Somalia, especially due to the 

actions al-Shabaab. Those most seriously affected by the current 

famine are the more than the 2 million Somalis trapped in alShabaab-controlled areas in South Central Somalia. 

Since January 2010, al-Shabaab has largely prohibited international humanitarian workers and organizations from operating 

in the areas it controls. Al-Shabaab continues to refuse to grant 

humanitarian access, and has prevented the international community from responding quickly inside Somalia. 

As we seek to take advantage of any current openings to expand 

aid distribution, we are also working with our partners in the 

international community to counter al-Shabaab’s ability to threaten 

our interests or continue to hold the Somalia people hostage. At the 

same time, we are taking the necessary steps to support the flow 

of urgently needed humanitarian aid to those who need it in South 

Central Somalia, while working to minimize any risk of diversion 

to al-Shabaab. 

We have worked closely with the Department of Treasury to ensure that aid workers, who are partnering with the U.S. Government to help saves lives under difficult and dangerous conditions, 

are not in conflict with U.S. laws and regulations. However, the 

United States sanctions against al-Shabaab do not and never have 

prohibited the delivery of assistance to Somalia, including to those 

areas under the de facto control of Shabaab. 

In the long term, regional security in the Horn of Africa requires 

political stability in Somalia. The United States already has placed 

a long-term process to stabilize Somalia. Last year, we announced 

our dual track approach to broaden our efforts by taking into 

account the complex nature of Somali society and politics, as well 

as to be more flexible and adaptable to our engagement. 

On track one, we continue to support the Djibouti peace process, 

the TFG, the transitional government, Amazon, as the first line of 

efforts to stabilize Somalia and expel Shabaab from Mogadishu. 

Since 2007, the United States has supported stabilization efforts 

by obligating $258 million to support Amazon training, logistical 

6

needs, and approximately $85 million to support and build capacity 

to the TFG forces. 

On track two, we are deepening our engagement with the regional government and administrations throughout the Central and 

South Somali area, and those who are close to Shabaab, but who 

are not affiliated with the TFG. In fiscal year 2011, the United 

States plans to provide approximately $21 million to support development efforts in our dual track policy. 

We have further information as we go on to the Q&As, and I 

want to leave room for my colleagues to speak. So, thank you very 

much, Senator. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Yamamoto follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY DON YAMAMOTO

Good morning, Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, and members of the 

committee. Thank you for holding this hearing on the drought and famine in the 

Horn of Africa. We share your grave concern about the ongoing humanitarian crisis 

in the Horn of Africa. The eastern Horn of Africa is currently experiencing one of 

the worst droughts since the 1950s. More than 12 million people—mainly in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia—are severely affected and in need of humanitarian assistance. In Somalia, drought conditions have exacerbated a complex emergency that 

has continued since 1991. The information coming out of the Horn of Africa, especially the dire situation of refugees from Somalia, is devastating. In cooperation 

with our international and regional partners, we will continue to work to address 

this humanitarian crisis while continuing to support long-term political and food 

security in the region. 

Somalia is at the center of the crisis, but the crisis is affecting the entire Horn 

of Africa. Ethiopia has issued an appeal indicating 4.5 million Ethiopians need food 

assistance. In Kenya, the government and a consortium of NGOs have placed 10 districts in the north and east under alert for increased food insecurity and malnutrition. The crisis has hit hardest in Somalia, where failed or poor rains combined with 

conflict have left 3.7 million people in need of immediate, lifesaving assistance. Two 

areas of southern Somalia, the Lower Shabelle Region and areas of the Bakool region, are currently facing famine conditions, and the remaining regions of southern 

Somalia are projected to meet the threshold for famine unless humanitarian assistance is significantly increased. 

The number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) across the region 

has increased the challenges of drought response. There are approximately 620,000 

Somali refugees in the eastern Horn region, according the U.N. High Commissioner 

for Refugees (UNHCR), with 200,000 of these fleeing in the past year alone. Reports 

from inside Somalia indicate the combined arrival rate of 2,000 new refugees per 

day in Ethiopia and Kenya could rise dramatically as the situation in Somalia grows 

increasingly desperate. The current flows threaten to overwhelm the existing refugee assistance structure in Kenya and Ethiopia. Moreover, there are reports of 

over 400,000 IDPs in Mogadishu alone. 

A large-scale multidonor intervention—my colleagues will go into greater depth 

on this is underway to prevent the further decline of an already dire situation, but 

there will be no quick fix. The United States is one of the largest donors of emergency assistance to the region, helping more than 4.5 million of those in need in 

Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti and providing nearly $459 million in humanitarian assistance to date. Our assistance includes food, treatment for severely 

malnourished people, health care, clean water, proper sanitation, and hygiene education and supplies. Our assistance also includes $69 million for refugee assistance 

in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. The U.S. Government has previously supported 

the expansion of the Dadaab camps, and we understand that the Government of 

Kenya has agreed to allow new refugees to begin occupying the new areas. Our 

Embassy in Nairobi is actively engaged with the Kenyans to ensure the best possible emergency response. I know my colleagues Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Reuben Brigety and Assistant Administrator Nancy Lindborg will go into 

greater detail about these conditions in their testimony. I would like to turn now 

to the political complications of the drought in Somalia. 

The response to the drought has been complicated by the continuing instability 

in Somalia—especially due to the actions of al-Shabaab. Those most seriously 

affected by the current drought are the more than 2 million Somalis trapped in

7

al-Shabaab-controlled areas in south central Somalia. Since January 2010, alShabaab has largely prohibited international humanitarian workers and organizations from operating in the areas it controls. Al-Shabaab’s continued refusal to grant 

humanitarian access has prevented the international community from responding to 

the drought in south central Somalia, which precipitated the famine we are seeing 

now. The United States is pressing all parties to immediately restore unimpeded humanitarian access to all parts of Somalia. 

During the last week of July, major fighting began again in Mogadishu between 

the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces against al-Shabaab and its affiliates. With more than 400,000 

IDPs now residing in and around Mogadishu, this renewed fighting is an area of 

concern. We are confident that AMISOM and the TFG understand the threat this 

fighting places on the civilian population and call on all parties to do everything in 

their power to protect civilians, particularly those displaced due to recent famine 

and drought conditions. We continue to support AMISOM and the TFG in their 

efforts to bring stability to Mogadishu in the face of continuing threats from

al-Shabaab. 

Al-Shabaab is a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and has also been 

sanctioned by the United Nations for its role in threatening the peace, security, and 

stability of Somalia including disrupting the Djibouti Peace Process; and for obstructing humanitarian assistance into Somalia. As we seek to take advantage of 

any current openings to expand aid distribution, we are also working with our partners in the international community to counter al-Shabaab’s ability to threaten our 

interests or continue to hold the Somali people hostage. At the same time, we are 

taking the necessary steps to support the flow of urgently needed humanitarian aid 

to those who need it in south central Somalia while working to minimize any risk 

of diversion to al-Shabaab. We have worked closely with the Department of Treasury to ensure that aid workers who are partnering with the U.S. Government to 

help save lives under difficult and dangerous conditions are not in conflict with U.S. 

laws and regulations. To be clear, however, the U.S. sanctions against al-Shabaab 

do not and never have prohibited the delivery of assistance to Somalia, including 

to those areas under the de facto control of al-Shabaab. The presence of al-Shabaab 

means that U.S. persons must adhere to U.S. legal requirements in the course of 

providing assistance in Somalia. 

In the long term, regional security in the Horn of Africa requires political stability 

in Somalia. The United States already has in place a long-term process to stabilize 

Somalia. Last year we announced the Dual Track approach to broaden our efforts 

by taking into account the complex nature of Somali society and politics, as well as 

to be more flexible and adaptable in our engagement. On Track One, we continue 

support for the Djibouti Peace Process, the TFG, and AMISOM as a first line of 

effort to stabilize Somalia and expel al-Shabaab from Mogadishu. Since 2007, the 

United States has supported stabilization efforts by obligating approximately $258 

million to support AMISOM’s training and logistical needs, as well as approximately 

$85 million to support and build the capacity of TFG forces. Recent security advances by AMISOM and the TFG in Mogadishu have taken back significant portions 

of the city from al-Shabaab control. 

On Track Two, we are deepening our engagement with the regional governments 

of Somaliland and Puntland, as well as with local and regional administrations 

throughout south central Somalia who are opposed to al-Shabaab, but who are not 

affiliated with the TFG. In FY11, the United States plans to provide approximately 

$21 million to support development efforts in support of the Dual Track policy. We 

are reviewing how best to adapt our travel policy for Somalia to execute our Dual 

Track approach most effectively without compromising on our obligation to protect 

the security of U.S. personnel when they travel inside Somalia. Our long-term 

efforts will continue to focus on security, governance, and humanitarian and development assistance. 

In addition to working toward political stability in Somalia, the U.S. Government 

is also focusing its efforts to help provide long-term food security in the eastern 

Horn of Africa region. We recognize that emergency assistance alone cannot solve 

the underlying long-term problems in the region. That is why President Obama’s 

innovative and forward-looking Feed the Future initiative is so critical. Feed the 

Future is already at work in the region with local, regional, and multilateral partners improving agricultural production, improving markets, building infrastructure, 

bringing innovation, and addressing the entire value chain from seed to market. 

As I noted when I began, we are extremely concerned about the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. We are working hard with our interagency and international partners to deliver quickly the life-saving short-term relief critical to those 

suffering its effects. U.S. Government and U.S.-funded assistance has prevented the 

8

loss of millions of lives. We recognize that both the food security problem in the 

region and the political instability problem in Somalia are linked, and that both 

demand long-term solutions. Our Dual Track approach to Somalia provides an 

effective mechanism for us to grapple with the challenges of political stability in 

Somalia. Our Feed the Future initiative will help create food security in the eastern 

Horn of Africa region. The United States will continue to monitor and respond to 

the humanitarian crisis and work with host governments on long-term solutions. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome your questions.

Senator COONS. Thank you very much, Ambassador. 

Ms. Lindborg. 

STATEMENT OF HON. NANCY LINDBORG, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU FOR DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, AND 

HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (USAID), WASHINGTON, DC 

Ms. LINDBORG. Thank you, Chairman Coons and Ranking Member Isakson. I really appreciate your taking this time to hold the 

hearing and raise the level of attention. Even as we meet today, 

the situation is deteriorating, and I think we all share significant 

concern. 

As you noted, the Horn of Africa has long been plagued by cyclical drought, and what we are seeing now is the worst in 60 years. 

What used to be 10-year drought cycles are now happening literally 

every other year, and the current drought is now affecting 12.4 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. 

The crisis is both a humanitarian and a security one. The famine, as you noted, has been declared in only the most difficult to 

access areas of Somalia. We will hear more from Dr. Brigety about 

the refugees who are pouring across the border into the already 

drought-stressed areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. 

Internally, more than 11⁄2 million displaced Somalis are crowding 

into the northern cities of Somalia that are ill equipped to handle 

this increase in population. 

The July 20 U.N. Declaration of Famine in the two regions of

Somalia was not made lightly, and truly reflects the dire conditions 

of the people in Somalia. It is based on nutrition and mortality surveys, data that has been verified by the CDC. And on the basis of 

that, we estimate that in the last 90 days, 29,000 Somali children 

have died. This is nearly 4 percent of the children in southern 

Somalia. 

Our fear and the fear of the international community and the 

governments in the Horn of Africa is that the famine conditions in 

those two regions of Somalia will spread to encompass the entire 

eight regions of southern Somalia. The next rains are September/

October, and even if they’re good, we could bear witness to another 

wave of mortality in the south due to water borne diseases. 

In Ethiopia and in Kenya, the situation is grave, but we do not 

expect it to deteriorate into famine or result in the level of needs 

as severe as we are witnessing in the south. 

Ethiopia and Kenya have large areas of arid lands, populated 

primarily by pastoralists. In partnership with local governments 

and international donors, USAID has worked extensively in both 

countries to increase the resilience and the food security of these 

communities in drought affected areas. We have strengthened early 

warning systems. We have supported an ongoing safety net and 

9

community protection programs, and have increased productivity in 

arid lands. 

And just in—for example, in partnership with the Ethiopian Government, with the World Bank and other donors, the United States 

Government has supported the Ethiopia Productive Safety Net Program. As a result, 7.6 million people have been removed from the 

emergency case load. 

In the drought of 2002–03, the Government of Ethiopia stated 

that 13.2 million people in Ethiopia were drought affected. By contrast, today only 4.8 million are stated to be in need. 

The needs in Ethiopia and Kenya are serious. They will require 

sustained focus and attention. But the results of our preparedness 

and development programs are paying off. We are seeing results. 

As you noted, Senator Coons, the FEWS NET famine early warning system alerted us in August that a drought was on the horizon. 

At that time, we began prepositioning food stocks, food aid, stockpiling food in Djibouti, Kenya, and South Africa. We have since, 

just for this fiscal year, provided $459 million of aid in the Horn. 

This includes food assistance, treatment for malnourished children, 

water sanitation, hygiene education, and assistance in the refugee 

camps. 

We are now focused aggressively on working to abate the potential for mass starvation in southern Somalia. We learned in the 

drought of 1992 in Somalia that the leading cause of death for children under 5 was disease. We are focusing on three key areas 

therefore—first, the availability of food, including those therapeutic 

foods so essential for children under 5, access to food, and integrated health programs. 

In terms of key challenges, we identify three. First, time; it is not 

on our side. We have a small window to reach those in need or risk 

the additional deaths of several hundred thousand. We are looking 

at about a 6-to-8-week window. 

Access. Access in the worst affected areas of south Somalia remain the primary obstacle to relief efforts. As you noted, the World 

Food Programme and most international organizations suspended 

operations in early 2010. And since 2008, WFP has lost 14 staff 

members. Until now, al-Shabaab has restricted access, and they 

have given mixed signals on whether it will lift its ban. 

We, along with the international community, are working to explore all avenues to safely provide assistance where there is access. 

In the face of these extreme needs, we have issued new guidance 

on the provision of assistance to allow more flexibility to a wider 

range of aid to those areas in need. And we have clarified that aid 

workers who are partnering with the U.S. Government to help save 

lives are not in conflict. 

The third challenge is scale. The emergency will outstrip the resources currently available in the international community, in the 

traditional donor community. So, we are working aggressively to 

encourage all donors, all nations, to step forward with assistance. 

I will conclude by saying we cannot stop drought from happening, specifically in this region, but what we can do is strengthen 

communities and their ability to withstand these natural calamities. 

10

President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative is focused precisely 

on addressing these root causes of hunger and undernutrition and 

working to strengthen the resilience of communities. It shores up 

the ability of these populations to withstand drought through commercial availability, access of staple foods, reducing the trade and 

transport barriers that impede the movement and sale of livestock, 

and harnessing science and technology. 

We are seeing right now how these investments in the future can 

make a critical difference. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Isakson. And I 

would like this testimony to signal to the people of the Horn, as 

well as the Somali-Americans I recently met in Minnesota and 

Ohio, that the American people are very much with them in this 

time of need. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lindborg follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR NANCY E. LINDBORG

Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, and distinguished members of the 

committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today on the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa. Your attention and concern is critical, as the situation continues to deteriorate daily, with millions of individuals affected. 

In scale and severity, the current drought in the Horn of Africa is the worst in 

60 years and, according to the U.N. Office of the Coordination for Humanitarian 

Affairs, it is now affecting an estimated 12.4 million people in Somalia, Kenya, 

Ethiopia, and Djibouti. It is both a humanitarian and a security crisis, as famine 

has been declared in the difficult to access areas of Somalia and refugees are pouring across the borders into already drought-stressed areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. 

I will discuss today the current situation, our immediate response, the challenges 

we face, and our long-term plans to address the chronic food insecurity in the Horn 

of Africa. 

CURRENT SITUATION

The Horn of Africa is experiencing the lowest rains in 60 years, in a region long 

plagued by cyclical drought. However, what used to be a 10-year drought cycle is 

now occurring every other year and is combined with rising food prices and a 20-

year conflict in Somalia. 

Twenty five years ago, USAID invested in the Famine Early Warning System, or 

FEWSNET, precisely because of the recurring droughts in the region. FEWSNET, 

along with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU), maintains a strong presence in the Horn and enables 

the humanitarian community to identify conditions based on an extensive analysis 

of historical and current rainfall, cropping patterns, livestock health, market prices 

and malnutrition rates. USAID is the largest supporter of these vital early warning 

systems, and the entire international humanitarian and donor community relies on 

their information to provide appropriate assistance to those who need it most and 

to target assistance that might be needed in the future. 

In Ethiopia and Kenya, the situation is grave but we do not expect it to deteriorate into famine. Both countries have large areas of arid lands populated primarily 

by pastoralists. Ethiopia has declared 4.8 million in need of urgent assistance, and 

in Kenya, 3.7 million are at risk. USAID has worked extensively in both countries, 

in partnership with international donors and local governments; to increase the resilience and food security of communities in these drought-affected areas. We have 

focused better on early warning systems, ongoing safety-net and community protection programs, and increased productivity in arid lands and pastoralist livelihoods. 

For example, in partnership with the Ethiopian Government, the World Bank and 

other donors, the United States supported the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net program, which has effectively removed approximately 7.6 million people from the 

emergency caseload. In the drought of 2002–3, the Government of Ethiopia stated 

that 13.2 million people in Ethiopia were drought-affected and in need of emergency 

assistance. By contrast, that number to date is 4.8 million. The needs in these countries are still serious and require sustained focus and attention, but the results of 

preparedness and development investments are having a positive impact. 

11

In Somalia, however, the situation is stark. Consecutive seasons of failed or poor 

rainfall, coupled with two decades of conflict and lack of governance, have resulted 

in rising food prices, livestock mortality, crop failure, denial of reliable humanitarian access by al-Shabaab, and consequent severe malnutrition and massive population displacement. The U.N. estimates that a total of 3.2 million people in Somalia 

now require immediate, life-saving humanitarian assistance. Of those in urgent 

need, 2.8 million people reside in southern Somalia. On July 20, the U.N. declared 

a famine in two regions of Somalia: Lower Shabelle Region and areas of Bakool Region in southern Somalia. A famine determination is never made lightly and reflects 

the truly dire circumstances facing the people of southern Somalia. Based on nutrition and mortality surveys verified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we estimate that more than 29,000 children under 5—nearly 4 percent 

of children—have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia. 

Somalis are leaving the south in great numbers, either for the more stable areas 

in the north or into neighboring countries—in all cases adding great strain to already drought-stressed environments. More specifically, 1.5 million internally displaced Somalis are concentrated in Mogadishu and the regions of Lower Shabelle 

and Galgaduud, with increasing numbers in Puntland and Somaliland. In May, I 

traveled to Hargeysa, in the semiautonomous region of Somaliland, where I met 

with President Sulanyo, as well as U.N. and local and international nongovernmental organizations. They noted rising concerns about the numbers of internally 

displaced persons who are now arriving in their cities, ill-equipped to meet the 

needs of a rising population. Farmers and pastoralists, with no remaining assets, 

are swelling the outskirts of cities throughout northern Somalia, including many 

youth with no evident future. 

The refugees who cross into Ethiopia and Kenya describe a grueling trip, often 

on foot for 3 to 4 or more weeks. My colleague, Deputy Assistant Secretary Reuben 

Brigety, will describe in more detail the deeply distressing stories of families arriving in refugee camps in near-death shape. Tragically, we also know that in these 

crisis situations, those who leave are the ones with the strength and resources to 

do so. The weakest and most vulnerable are often left behind. 

CURRENT U.S. GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO THE HORN DROUGHT AND FAMINE

FEWSNET warned us of the increased probabilities of drought in August 2010. 

Because of these early warnings, USAID began prepositioning additional emergency 

relief supplies and food aid in the region last fall, stockpiling food aid supplies in 

Djibouti, South Africa, and Kenya. As a result, the U.S. Government was able to 

help jump-start relief efforts and is now reaching more than 4.6 million in need 

throughout the Horn and providing approximately $459 million in humanitarian assistance to date (in FY 2011). U.S. assistance provides critically needed food aid, 

treatment for severely malnourished children, health care, clean water, proper sanitation, and hygiene education and supplies. The United States is providing approximately $217 million in Ethiopia, $156 million in Kenya, $80 million in Somalia, and 

$6 million in Djibouti. Since the drought began, for example, USAID assisted the 

Government of Ethiopia to vaccinate nearly 300,000 livestock, critical for the survival of 25,000 households. 

Our strategy is focused on providing emergency assistance for those most at-risk, 

while also continuing to build greater food security and resilience in the droughtaffected communities of Kenya, Ethiopia, and northern parts of Somalia so they can 

better withstand future droughts and shocks. 

We have been responding since last fall with prepositioning of supplies and increasing programs. Last spring, we created a Horn of Africa Drought Task Force 

in Nairobi, and on July 6, USAID activated a regional Disaster Assistance Response 

Team (DART) in Nairobi, Kenya, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to monitor regional 

drought conditions, identify anticipated response needs, and coordinate response activities with other donors. USAID also stood up a Response Management Team in 

Washington, DC, to support the DART and coordinate U.S. Government humanitarian efforts. The DART continues to conduct assessments in the field to evaluate 

ongoing humanitarian needs and coordinates daily with other major donors to ensure a multilateral response. 

In FY 2011 to date, USAID has provided more than 360,200 metric tons (MT) of 

Title II food relief and emergency food assistance through the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) and nongovernmental organizations for drought- and conflictaffected populations in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia—supporting approximately 10.7 million people. 

Given the urgency of reaching the people in southern Somalia, we have a special 

focus on aggressively working to abate the potential for mass starvation. We have 

12

learned from the Somalia drought of 1992 that disease was a leading cause of death 

for children under 5, so we are stressing a multisector response with a focus on 

three key areas: availability of food, access to food, and integrated public health 

interventions—including therapeutic feeding focused on the children under 5, vaccinations, and access to clean water and sanitation. 

Based on FEWSNET data, we do not expect a significant harvest in the south for 

another 6 months. The next potential rains are in September or October in the 

south, and even if there are good rains, we could experience another wave of mortality due to water-borne disease and livestock death. 

We are working closely with other donors and U.N. and NGO partners to mount 

an effective response to save lives. We have three key challenges: time, access, and 

scale. As noted earlier, time is not on our side. Unfortunately, the situation is going 

to worsen before it gets better. However, we know we have a small window over 

the next 6 weeks in which to provide life-saving assistance to prevent additional and 

potential significant deaths from occurring. The fear is that without immediate and 

significant assistance, famine conditions will spread from the two regions in southern Somalia to encompass the entire eight regions of the south with several hundred 

thousand additional deaths. 

Access remains difficult in the worst affected areas of southern Somalia. The 

World Food Programme and most international NGOs had suspended operations in 

the south due to deteriorating security and bans imposed by al-Shabaab. Since 2008, 

WFP has lost 14 staff members in attacks. However, we are in lockstep with other 

donors and the humanitarian community in our determination to test aggressively 

all options for delivering assistance in previously inaccessible areas to the people in 

southern Somalia. 

Finally, the scale of this emergency outstrips the resources currently offered by 

the international community to meet the needs. We are working to encourage the 

broader international community to step forward with additional assistance as we 

seek to address this sobering challenge. 

LOOKING AHEAD: FEED THE FUTURE

We can’t stop drought from happening, but we can strengthen communities and 

their ability to prepare for and withstand these kinds of natural calamities. President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative (FTF) is focused precisely on addressing 

these root causes of hunger and under nutrition. It seeks to increase longer term 

resilience among vulnerable populations by increasing the commercial availability 

and accessibility of staple foods, reducing trade and transport barriers that impede 

the movement and sale of livestock and staple foods, harnessing science and technology to assist populations in increasing crop yields, and supporting national and 

regional efforts to reduce years of marginalization of certain populations. USAID is 

focusing its investments, both geographically and programmatically, to have the 

greatest sustainable impacts on reducing hunger and poverty. By linking vulnerable 

populations to market opportunities in more productive areas, our efforts are helping increase labor opportunities and strengthen value chains. 

In the Somali, Oromiya and Afar National regional States of Ethiopia for example, FTF investments are helping vulnerable pastoralists and ex-pastoralists and 

Afar to improve their incomes and increase their ability to survive climate and economic shocks. USAID is helping these pastoralists to improve the health of their 

animals through strengthening community veterinary services and accessing affordable vaccinations and other medicine. In addition, we are working to help pastoralists earn more money from their animals by linking them to markets where they 

can sell their animals for a significant profit. We help producers organize into marketing cooperatives and access much-needed credit, improve their business skills 

and provide them access to market information. Stronger linkages between traders, 

feed lot operator, processors and exporters also help to expand livestock trade and 

provide better access to lucrative markets in the region. 

We are seeing with this drought the critical and positive impact of investing in 

the future. When countries have the governance structures, the policies and productive capacity to withstand drought and when communities have the resilience to 

withstand the inevitable shocks of droughts and crisis, the need for large-scale international emergency assistance is diminished. Even as we focus on the heart-breaking tragedy of Somalia, we are also committed to helping to build sustainable 

futures where communities feed themselves. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

Senator COONS. Thank you, Ms. Lindborg. 

Dr. Brigety. 

13

STATEMENT OF DR. REUBEN BRIGETY, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY OF STATE, BUREAU OF POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. BRIGETY. Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, good 

morning, and thank you very much for this opportunity to testify 

before you today on the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa. 

Let me also say that we appreciate the support and attention 

that Congress has given to this crisis in the midst of so many other 

issues that you have been grappling with this summer. 

I will discuss today the current situation facing refugees, our immediate response, the challenges we face in meeting their needs as 

more famine survivors reach the borders of Kenya, Ethiopia, and 

Djibouti, and our plans to work with the world community to meet 

those challenges and save as many lives as we possibly can in the 

coming months ahead. 

I traveled to Ethiopia in Kenya in July to evaluate the emerging 

refugee crisis in the region where hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled drought and famine in Somalia. During my trip, I visited refugee camps in each country, along with representatives 

from donor countries. I met with senior government officials, I 

talked with officials from U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and I also spoke obviously with many refugees. 

It was clear that this situation is developing into the worst

humanitarian emergency the region has seen in a generation, at 

least since the great famine of 1991 and 1992. 

We now must confront a refugee emergency within a protracted 

refugee situation. Years of hard work by the host governments and 

their international partners to address just the basic needs within 

established camps quickly are being overshadowed by the need to 

add new border-crossing facilities, new camps, and additional emergency services. 

Both Ethiopia and Kenya are receiving record inflows of refugees 

from Somalia, and in both countries, refugees are arriving in appalling physical health. Every refugee family with whom I spoke in 

both Ethiopia and Kenya said that they had walked for days from 

Somalia with virtually no food and no water. Brief visits to the 

health clinics in the refugee camps revealed dozens of malnourished children, so emaciated and so weak that, to the untrained 

eye, they appeared close to death. 

Among new arrivals in the refugee camps in Ethiopia, we are 

seeing up to 50 percent global acute malnutrition, reflecting the 

even more grim state of affairs for children inside Somalia. Camps 

in Ethiopia and Kenya are strained far beyond their capacity in 

every way with regard to space, staff, food, and essential services, 

as they try to cope with the record influx of refugees which continues unabated. 

Somalis represent the largest refugee population in all of Africa. 

According to UNHCR, Somalis neighbors in the eastern Horn of 

Africa now host more than 620,000 Somalia refugees. Some 

159,000 Somalis have sought refuge in Ethiopia, with over 75,000 

arriving just since January of this year. Kenya hosts more than 

448,000 Somali refugees, with nearly 100,000 arriving since the

beginning of this year. Even Djibouti has seen an almost 20-perVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:18 Jan 27, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 S:\HEARIN~1\112THC~1\2011IS~1\080311~1.TXT BETTY
14

cent increase in the number of refugees since the beginning of 

2011. 

We commend the Governments of Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia 

for their generous support for refugee populations in the region, 

even as they themselves are currently struggling with the drought 

that, as you say, may be the worst in some 60 years. 

While the current crisis is taxing an already stressed system, I 

am confident that the Governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, 

and their international partners, to include the United States, have 

the ability to confront this crisis head on, and will be able to find 

new solutions to address the needs, not only within the camps, but 

also for those within Somalia. 

Let me give you just two examples of what I saw during my trip 

and how we are responding to those in need. 

First, the United States and our regional and international partners have helped ramp up emergency assistance. I traveled to the 

refugee camp complex in Dolo Ado on the Ethiopian/Somali border, 

accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, Donald Booth, 

USAID Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg, Ethiopian Government officials, UNHCR’s Ethiopia country representatives, and senior representatives from several donor embassies. 

As we wandered through the refugee camp talking with people 

who had been there for several days or who had only just arrived 

hours earlier, we heard versions of the same story over and over 

again. 

One man I met had come all the way from Mogadishu, traveling 

9 days with his wife and six children with very little to eat along 

the way. I talked with him as he sat on the hospital cot with his 

youngest child, a 3-year-old girl whom I shall call Aisha. As we 

spoke, Aisha never stopped moaning. She could not get comfortable 

amidst the heat and the flies as her tiny bones threatened to pierce 

her paper-thin skin. 

We saw many families in the same desperate situation during a 

separate visit to Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In Dadaab, I 

spoke to one mother who had carried her polio stricken 7-year-old 

daughter on her back for 9 days with little food and water as her 

other six children trailed behind. 

It was clear that a number of recent interventions, such as the 

provision of hot meals at the transit center, are vital steps needed 

beyond just basic camp services to assist those making this heartbreaking journey. I commend Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High 

Commissioner for Refugees, for finding ways to add these additional programs around Dolo Ado after he visited the area just a 

few days before I had. 

Still, we know that more must be done. 

The second example is how the United States has increased overall refugee assistance throughout the region. The United States has 

long been a partner to governments and people in the Horn of 

Africa as they host hundreds of thousands of Somalia refugees, providing approximately $459 million in humanitarian assistance just 

this fiscal year to those in need. This funding supports refugees, internally displaced persons, and other drought-affected populations. 

15

Out of this overall funding, the United States is providing approximately $69 million specifically to refugees through the 

State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. 

Maintaining access to first asylum for Somalis in neighboring 

countries is critical to savings lives. The United States has previously supported the expansion of the Dadaab camps, and UNHCR 

is now moving refugees into the new space following the Government of Kenya’s agreement to allow the opening of a new site. We 

are also urging Kenya to open quickly more reception center capacities so that incoming refugees can be properly screened and 

registered. 

We will continue to support the Horn countries’ efforts to provide 

asylum to vulnerable Somalis, including through our support to the 

office UNHCR, the World Food Programme, and other international organizations and NGOs in the region. 

Representatives from other donor countries who accompanied me 

were also moved by the gravity of the situation, and they said that 

they would work with their own governments to support the efforts 

of aid groups. Rigorous and sustained diplomacy will be required, 

both in the region and with other donor capitals to ensure that the 

international community and host countries take necessary measures to save lives in the coming months. 

We are also committed to addressing the humanitarian needs

inside Somalia as my colleagues, Ms. Lindborg, spoke. There is an 

immediate need to reach vulnerable populations inside Somalia so 

that they don’t have to travel long distances to save lives. 

Let me also say that unless we find ways to provide assistance 

to people inside Somalia, we will continue to see refugees arrive in 

appalling states of health in Kenya and Ethiopia, and we will continue to see mortality rates in the refugee camps rise unabated. 

And this brings us to the security situation. Al-Shabaab activities 

have clearly made the current situation worse, as Ambassador 

Yamamoto noted. We expect the situation in Somalia to continue 

to decline, especially in southern Somalia, where the U.N. has 

declared famine in two regions to date and where conditions continue to worsen. 

There is not a single solution to this regional crisis. We are working to tackle it through a variety of means and mechanisms,

including addressing underlying causes as addressed by my colleague, Assistant Administrator Lindborg. 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, thank you very much for 

your time and attention. I look forward to any questions you may 

have. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Brigety follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY REUBEN E. BRIGETY II 

Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, and distinguished members of the 

committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today on the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa. We appreciate the support and attention Congress has given to this crisis in the midst of so many other issues you have been 

grappling with this summer. 

I will discuss today the current situation facing refugees, our immediate response, 

the challenges we face in meeting their needs as more famine survivors reach the 

borders of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, and our plans to work with the world community to meet those challenges and save as many lives as we possibly can in the 

coming months ahead. 

16

REFUGEE OVERVIEW

I traveled to Ethiopia and Kenya in July to evaluate the emerging refugee crisis 

in the region where hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled drought and famine 

in Somalia. During my trip, I visited refugee camps in each country along with representatives from donor countries, met with senior government officials, talked with 

officials from U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and spoke with refugees. It was clear that this is developing into the worst humanitarian emergency 

that the region has seen in a generation, at least since the great famine of 1991–

1992. We now must confront a refugee emergency within a protracted refugee situation. Years of hard work by the host governments and their international partners 

to address just the basic needs within established camps quickly are being overshadowed by the need to add new border-crossing facilities, new camps, and emergency services. 

Both Ethiopia and Kenya are receiving record inflows of refugees from Somalia, 

and in both countries refugees are arriving in appalling physical health. Every refugee family with whom I spoke in both Ethiopia and Kenya said that they had 

walked for days from Somalia with virtually no food and water. Brief visits to the 

health clinics in the refugee camps revealed dozens of malnourished children, so 

emaciated and weak that they appeared to the untrained eye to be close to death. 

Among new arrivals in the refugee camps in Ethiopia, we are seeing up to 50 percent global acute malnutrition—reflecting the even more grim state of affairs for 

children inside Somalia. Camps in Ethiopia and Kenya are strained far beyond capacity in every way—with regard to space, staff, food, and essential services—trying 

to cope with the record influx of refugees, which continues unabated. 

Somalis represent the largest refugee population in Africa. According to UNHCR, 

Somalia’s neighbors in the eastern Horn of Africa now host more than 620,000 

Somali refugees. Some 159,000 Somalis have sought refuge in Ethiopia; over 75,000 

have arrived just since January 2011. Kenya hosts more than 448,000 Somali refugees with nearly 100,000 since the beginning of the year. Even Djibouti has seen 

an almost 20 percent increase in the number of refugees since the beginning of the 

year. We commend the Governments of Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia for their generous support for refugee populations in the region, even as they themselves are 

currently struggling with a drought that may be the worst in 60 years. 

While the current crisis is taxing an already stressed system, I am confident Governments of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and their international partners, including 

the United States, have the ability to confront this crisis head on and will be able 

to find new solutions to address the needs not only within the camps but also for 

those within Somalia. Let me give you just two examples of what I saw during my 

trip and how we are responding to those in need. 

THE LONG JOURNEY OF THE SURVIVORS

First, the United States and our regional and international partners have helped 

ramp up emergency assistance. I traveled to the refugee camp complex at Dolo Ado 

on the Ethiopian-Somali border accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Booth, USAID Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg, Ethiopian Government officials, UNHCR’s Ethiopia Country Representative, and senior representatives from 

several embassies, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, and 

the European Union. As we wandered through the refugee camp, talking with people who had been there for several days or who had just crossed the border a few 

hours earlier, we heard versions of the same story over and over again. 

One man I met had come all the way from Mogadishu, traveling for 9 days with 

his wife and six children with very little to eat along the way. I talked with him 

as he sat on the hospital cot of his youngest child—a three-year-old girl I’ll call 

Aisha. As we spoke, Aisha never stopped moaning. She could not get comfortable 

amidst the heat and flies as her tiny bones threatened to pierce her paper-thin skin. 

We saw many families in the same desperate situation during a separate visit to 

Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In Dadaab, I spoke to one mother who had carried 

her polio-stricken 7-year-old daughter on her back for 9 days with little food and 

water as her other six children trailed behind. 

It was clear that a number of recent interventions—such as the provision of hot 

meals at the transit center or the establishment of blanket feeding programs—are 

vital steps needed beyond just basic camp services to assist those making this heartbreaking journey. I commend Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for 

Refugees, for finding ways to add these additional programs around Dolo Ado after 

he himself visited the area and found ways to move resources and personnel into 

place more quickly. Still more is needed and we in the international community cannot slacken our efforts. 

17

CURRENT U.S. GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO REFUGEES

Second, the United States has increased overall refugee assistance throughout the 

region. The United States has long been a partner to the governments and people 

of the Horn of Africa as they host hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees, providing approximately $459 million in humanitarian assistance this fiscal year to 

help those in need. This funding supports refugees, internally displaced persons 

(IDPs), and other drought-affected populations, and helps build resiliency and food 

security beyond the immediate crisis. Out of this overall funding, the United States 

is providing approximately $69 million, specifically for refugee assistance in the 

region through the Department of State’s Population, Refugees, and Migration 

Bureau. 

Maintaining access to safe asylum for Somalis in neighboring countries is critical 

to saving lives. The United States has previously supported the expansion of the 

Dadaab camps and UNHCR is now moving refugees into the new space following 

the Government of Kenya’s agreement to allow the opening of the new site. We are 

also urging Kenya to quickly open more reception center capacity so that incoming 

refugees can be properly screened and registered. We will continue to support the 

Horn countries’ efforts to provide asylum to vulnerable Somalis, including through 

our support for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the World 

Food Programme, and other international organizations and NGOs working in the 

region. 

Representatives from other donor countries who accompanied me were moved by 

the gravity of the situation and said they would work with their governments to 

support the efforts of aid groups. Rigorous and sustained diplomacy will be required 

both in the region and with other donor capitals to ensure that the international 

community and host countries take necessary measures to save lives in the coming 

months. We need to ensure that insecurity from Somalia does not spill over into the 

neighboring countries. 

We are also committed to addressing the humanitarian needs inside Somalia so 

that lives are saved and fewer people need to flee to the neighboring countries. 

There is an immediate need to reach vulnerable populations inside Somalia who 

may be unable to travel long distances to seek life-saving assistance. Ideally drought 

victims would not have to leave their homes in order to receive life-saving assistance, but in conflicted Somalia, that is not currently possible in all instances. 

That brings us to the security situation. Al-Shabaab’s activities have clearly made 

the current situation much worse. We expect the situation in Somalia to continue 

to decline, especially in southern Somalia where the U.N. has declared famine in 

two regions to date and where conditions continue to worsen. The international community is calling on al-Shabaab to allow unimpeded assistance in these areas of 

Somalia, including allowing aid groups access to the direst areas to directly assist 

those in greatest need. 

There is not a single solution—to this regional crisis. We are working to tackle 

it through a variety of mechanisms and responses, including addressing the underlying causes, as noted by my colleague, Assistant Administrator Lindborg. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

Senator COONS. Thank you, Dr. Brigety. 

Ambassador Yamamoto, if I might pick up where Dr. Brigety’s 

testimony left off, clearly being able to deliver humanitarian assistance within Somalia, particularly southern Somalia, is vital to preventing refugees from having to make day-long or week-long treks 

across the desert that are so difficult and so stressful on them and 

their children. 

My understanding is in the past day the administration has 

eased restrictions on humanitarian groups providing assistance in 

southern Somalia. Could you just explain in a little more detail the 

modified policy, the extent to which it will increase the flow of aid? 

And do you have confidence that there is enough time left for 

humanitarian assistance to be provided in southern Somalia, given 

the famine? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. That’s really a kind of multifaceted answer, and I will also refer to Dr. Lindborg for a comprehensive 

answer. 

18

But, you know, 60 percent of those in need are in Shabaab-held 

territory. And the question comes in is whether or not this U.S. 

policy or not has prevented, and the answer is, no, it has not. The 

issue is that it has been extremely difficult—impossible—to deliver 

food into these Shabaab-held territories. 

What the United States has taken has been to ease the OFAC 

licenses on NGO groups. They are required—a heightened due diligence procedures to avoid the diversion. But essentially it is to 

allow NGO groups and deliverers to enter al-Shabaab-held areas if 

they can, even if it means paying—what was it—fees or convoy fees 

or what have you, as long as they have done the due diligence, if 

there is no other alternative. 

But the bottom line is, even with these measures and the easing 

of the licensings and procedures, is really, is Shabaab going to 

allow the deliveries? Right now, as an example, if you see the internally displaced people right now, you are having about 100,000 or 

so south of Mogadishu. You are having, at a rate of 1,000 a day 

going into those areas. You have Shabaab troops and shooters 

going into the areas and targeting refugees and making it more difficult. Amazon has done a preemptive measure to try to keep the 

quarters of feeding open to these IDPs. 

So, the question comes in, is how are we going to stabilize the 

area? How are we going to allow free flow of food into these areas? 

And I guess I would refer to Dr. Lindborg for more information. 

Senator COONS. Please, if you would like to expand, Ms. 

Lindborg. 

Ms. LINDBORG. Yes, thanks. You know, I think time and access 

are the two critical challenges that we face. And we are working 

closely with the international community to explore a number of 

options that test the possibility of having greater access. 

There are air lifts bringing food into Mogadishu. We are hopeful 

that there will be an opportunity to move more vigorously into 

areas where there is a willingness by al-Shabaab and others to let 

assistance in. 

I think that the new guidance that was issued just over the last 

few days creates greater assurance and greater flexibility, but fundamentally this is a tough area to operate. It is probably one of the 

toughest operating environments globally right now. And it will 

take very seasoned humanitarian workers to be able to navigate 

through that environment. 

Senator COONS. Ambassador, how would you assess the international community’s response to this crisis compared to the 

United States? And what are we doing, and how successful are we 

being to encourage engagement by the African Union, the EU, the 

GCC, the Arab League, and other multilateral entities and groups 

that might be engaged? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Let me answer in two ways. First is 

that the response by the United States has always been there. It 

is not something that we have suddenly responded because of the 

effects of the famine. 

As you know, for the last several years, the United States is the 

primary food supplier to the region. In fact, the Horn of Africa is 

probably our No. 1 region for food recipients around the world, and 

Ethiopia is our No. 1 country for the last several years. 

19

The issue comes in is—another example, too, is—just to kind of 

give you the breadth or the depth of the problems, you know, on 

a good in Ethiopia you have something like 300 kids under the age 

of 5 dying each and every day from preventable diseases. And 

under this situation, the rates are much higher. 

And so, the response has been how to get, A, the more food into 

the pipeline, ensure deliveries. More important is working with 

Ethiopia and Kenya to, A, get better access, expand refugee camps. 

And then number three is to work with the Amazon forces up in 

Mogadishu to ensure that there’s more feeding capability to those 

IDPs, and also easing up procedures to make it easier for NGO 

groups to operate. And finally is really to confront the Shabaab and 

how they can, you know, either we can contain them or open up 

more corridors for feeding. 

Senator COONS. I would be interested—and, Ms. Lindborg, you 

mentioned in your testimony the important role of harnessing 

science and technology, the role that Feed the Future has played. 

I, in doing the background reading on this, was struck at the effectiveness of ready to use therapeutic foods, like plumpy nut and 

others, that are being deployed and have revolutionized our ability 

to revive children who have come to the very edge of starvation, 

and also the investments USAID has made on water drilling in 

Ethiopia and how it has allowed pastoralists to sustain their lifestyle, but still provided them with more reliable water supplies. 

Any brief comments you would like to add about how our strategic investments in advance of this particular crisis have changed 

the ground and made this different than previous drought cycles? 

Ms. LINDBORG. Yes, thank you. You know, I think the most striking is what I cited in my testimony in that because of our work 

with the World Bank and other donors and the Ethiopian Government on the community safety net, we have enabled 7.5 million 

Ethiopians to not go into a state of urgent need. And in addition, 

there has been significant work on increasing the ability of 

pastoralists to weather these kinds of serious droughts through 

improving the health of their livestock, improving their ability to 

trade. 

As we look ahead to the Feed the Future initiative, that is really 

I think at the heart of President Obama’s vision for how to truly 

enable us to not have to mobilize large emergency responses every 

time there is a drought. We want to couple that with the kind of 

trade reforms and policies that can enable vulnerable populations 

to have greater protection, for there to be greater productive capacity, and to use science and technology on issues like drought resistant seeds, or better productive techniques or livestock approaches. 

Senator COONS. Thank you. 

Senator Isakson. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you 

for testifying. 

Ambassador Yamamoto, you said, and I think I got this right, 

that sanctions do not inhibit delivery of humanitarian aid. And I 

think you were referring to Somalia and al-Shabaab. What do our 

sanctions say regarding humanitarian aid? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. You mean that this is the OFAC licensing? 

20

Senator ISAKSON. Yes. 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. When we debated the issue on deliveries into Shabaab-held territories, the debate was centered on the 

payment of convey fees to the Shabaabs in order to allow feeding 

into those areas. 

The second thing is, when was the Shabaab using those money 

and funding for? And so, that became a major concern is, is 

through this effort of feeding are we also contributing to greater 

instability? And so, that became a great debate. 

The problems comes in right now is that with the famine or the 

severe, acute malnutrition, is how do you liberalize and open up 

the capabilities of NGOs and explore opportunities to allow them 

procedurally to get into those areas faster, quicker and food deliveries? 

But the problem remains is that, even with all the procedural 

openness, is that will the Shabaabs allow them to enter? Now, as 

you know, Ethiopia and Kenya have tried to open corridors for 

feeding, or they pushed into Somalia. But even those are not sufficient enough given that those are still remain insecure areas and 

dangerous. And so, it becomes a big problem of how do you engage 

or how do you open corridors? How do you begin to feed in those 

areas where really 60 percent of those in need are in Shabaab-held 

territories? That becomes a real problem. 

Senator ISAKSON. So, the problem is the corruption at the checkpoints that the al-Shabaab would issue. They have payoff fees for 

safe passage, and they use those to help finance their organization. 

Is that what you are referring to? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Yes, sir. 

Senator ISAKSON. And so, the question is, is it—are we telling 

them—are we telling NGOs that are willing to travel and deliver 

humanitarian aid that it is OK to pay those fees? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. No. We are requiring through procedures that they do the due diligence to find any way possible to be 

able to feed and provide food to needed areas without paying those 

fees. But if it becomes necessary, obviously. 

Senator ISAKSON. Is there any security for NGOs provided either 

U.N.-wise or by the African Union in terms of getting the material 

into Somalia? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Well, actually I will refer to you. 

Senator ISAKSON. Ms. Lindborg. 

Ms. LINDBORG. Well, I know you have an NGO panel following 

us, so I would—I know they will have much to say on this. But, 

you know, I think most groups operating have a very principled approach to not paying taxes or tolls. And many are able to accomplish this. 

The easing of the legal restrictions simply removes any concern 

that an accidental or incidental payment will not jeopardize them 

with any legal action. And so, it is creating a greater sense of comfort with the partners that that is not a barrier to effective assistance delivery. 

Senator ISAKSON. In Somalia, after that issue, it is still a pretty 

dangerous place, and al-Shabaab has used violence and intimidation to carry out its intent. Do these NGOs have any degree of protection other than their own provided protection? 

21

Ms. LINDBORG. I believe most of them choose not to have any 

other protection other than the protection of the communities welcoming them in and hosting them in the provision of assistance. 

Ultimately, we all need the kind of access that comes from the 

communities wanting and understanding the importance of the 

international effort to help them at this critical hour. 

Senator ISAKSON. Well, I wanted to make a point. Chairman 

Coons and I have traveled to Africa together and seen the scourge 

that corruption causes throughout the continent. And this is not related to this issue, but the work that the United States is doing 

to get democratic institutions to tackle corruption in return for 

MCC compacts and other things of that nature, is changing Africa. 

This region struggles, and not necessarily only because of

al-Shabaab and some of the other organizations that are there, but 

that is the single biggest inhibitor I see to U.S. investment in businesses, as well as U.S. foreign aid going there through NGOs. 

Dr. Brigety, let me ask you about the Dadaab for a second. I was 

in Kenya 2 years ago, and at that time the Kenyans were expressing their frustration with the pressure being applied to them in 

Dadaab with the number of refugees they had then. Your flyer says 

they’re getting 1,295 new ones a day, and they have expanded that 

camp, and the camp has almost a half a million people in it now. 

Is that correct? Other than providing the additional land for the expansion, what pressure is being put on the Kenyans by this number of people to provide help, at what cost, and how is that cost 

being borne? 

Dr. BRIGETY. Thank you very much, Senator. You are correct 

that the Dadaab refugee camp is the largest in the world. It has 

been there since 1991. 

The issue of refugees inside Kenya frankly is a very sensitive one 

politically for them. They have been very patient in dealing with 

this refugee crisis for two decades now. 

Just to give you sort of a sense of an order of magnitude, earlier 

this year in January, Dadaab was getting about 1,200 new arrivals 

a week. It is now about 1,200, 1,300 a day. The international community has long asked them to open an additional camp. The three 

major camps there are Ifo, Hagadera, and Dagahaley. There was 

an expansion to Ifo called Ifo Two, which we have long asked them 

to expand. 

When I was in Dadaab 3 weeks ago, I was there on the ground 

with Prime Minister Odinga, who had a public press conference 

with the international media. And at that press conference he gave 

his word that the Government of Kenya would allow the Ifo expansion to be opened. And UNHCR has begun to move refugees there, 

and we look forward to the continued commitment of the Government of Kenya to support that. 

The cost for the camp is largely borne by the international community. The U.N. high commissioner for refugees is responsible for 

camp management and the World Food Programme, which is supported by USAID. It is responsible for feeding those refugees. 

The Government of Kenya obviously provides some financial support for the guard through the provision of security forces around 

the borders, but the United States has long been the leader in 

22

terms of supporting UNHCR. We work with our other international 

partners to do so. 

Senator ISAKSON. The reason I brought it up, is I think it is—

when we talk about tragedies like what is going on with the famine 

on the Horn, we also ought to give kudos to those countries who 

are trying to help. And the Kenyan Government and the Kenyan 

people have been supportive, as you said, for two decades and are 

bearing a tremendous amount of the burden now. And the cost of 

that security alone around Dadaab is a significant contribution by 

Kenya. So, we need to acknowledge and appreciate what they have 

done in that case. 

Dr. BRIGETY. Yes, sir. You are correct. And we do regularly. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COONS. Thank you, Senator. 

If I could just follow up, the other largest refugee camp that is 

receiving Somalis is Dolo Ado in Ethiopia. My understanding was 

there were nearly 2,000 Somali refugees arriving a day up until a 

few week ago, but that has recently dropped significantly. Do you 

have a sense of the cause of that, and how do you assess the Ethiopian Government’s increased willingness or capacity to provide 

support, and what the ongoing issues are at that camp? 

Dr. BRIGETY. Thank you for the question, Senator. You are correct. When I was in Dolo about 3 weeks ago, the arrival rate was 

about 2,000 a day; it has now dropped to about 250 a day. We 

frankly do not have a good answer for why that number has 

decreased by an order of magnitude, but we are continuing to work 

with our partners to try to understand what the nature of that 

dynamic is. 

When I was first in Dolo in February this year, the two major 

camps there had about—Bocamaya and Mokadida had about 

50,000 refugees combined. That number has now doubled, as you 

say, to about 100,000. 

At the rates that we were seeing in mid-July, it is conceivable 

that rate could double again by the end of the year. The Government of Ethiopia frankly has been a very, very good partner in 

terms of supporting this refugee population, particularly since the 

odds out of the current drought crisis earlier this summer. They 

have responded with alacrity in terms of providing additional staff 

from their refugee agency to deploy there to Dolo Ado. They have 

allowed NGOs to operate at the transit center near there. We engage regularly and repeatedly with the Government of Ethiopia 

both in their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also their refugee 

agency to ensure they know we are effective partners with them, 

and we are very pleased with the extent to which they have 

extended their hospitality to these people in need. 

Senator COONS. What is the medical situation in these two 

camps? It is hard for a Senator from a State the size of Delaware 

to grasp a camp of half a million people. That is the size of Kansas 

City. That would be five times larger than the largest city in my 

State. How are they managing the health pressures, the health 

concerns, and ensuring that we do not have, as Ms. Lindborg mentioned, with the onset of September rains, a follow-on humanitarian crisis from a rapid spread of disease? 

23

Dr. BRIGETY. Well, Senator, that is a very good question. To be 

frank, in Dadaab, which is not yet at 500,000, but certainly could 

be by the end of the year at current rates, the health pressures are 

enormous. Dadaab refugee camp complex, just the camp, is now the 

fourth-largest population center in Kenya beyond Mombassa, 

beyond Nairobi and others. 

Now having said that, there are a number of partners which help 

provide health services inside the camps. Doctors Without Borders 

is one of the more important. But frankly, with the new refugees 

that are arriving, there are about 44,000 refugees that are simply 

on the outskirts of Ifo Two because they were not allowed to settle 

in the Ifo camp expansion, and the other three camps were full. 

So, those that are settling on the outskirts where there were no 

services to speak of, there were no significant health services or 

others, were clearly suffering additional rates of all sorts of basic 

preventable diseases, to include, frankly, respiratory diseases, 

because these are very hot, dusty conditions. You are out without 

shelter, and it is very easy to develop those sort of problems. 

So, we are hoping that the addition of the opening of this Ifo 

camp expansion will give people shelter, will give them access to 

establish health clinics and other facilities, which, frankly, are 

already built, but simply have needed the permission of the Government of Ethiopia to support. And we will continue to support 

both UNHCR and these NGOs to providing these essential medical 

services, especially to treat these horrible rates of malnutrition 

amongst children under 5 years old that we are seeing. 

Senator COONS. A question for Ms. Lindborg, if I might. We were 

talking about science and technology earlier. These two nations, 

Ethiopia and Kenya, are bearing an enormous burden in terms of 

the refugee demand. Much of Kenya’s power is delivered by hydroelectric power, which, due to the record drought, has dropped by 

more than half. 

What is USAID doing to help deploy alternative power, whether 

solar or geothermal or other sources of power, that might help provide electricity, either in Ethiopia or Kenya, to these camps, or that 

might help reduce the strain on the rest of these host nations in 

terms of their electricity grid? And is there anything we are doing 

to sort of streamline or expedite the process of deploying alternative sources of power that are not so reliant on water? 

Ms. LINDBORG. Senator, I would like to get back to you with the 

specifics on that answer. I know that there are a number of conversations with both Kenya and Ethiopia about ways in which we 

can work closely with them to mitigate the impact of future 

drought. And so, there are conversations underway, and we would 

be delighted to get back to you with details. 

Senator COONS. Thank you. 

Let me ask just a final question, any member of the panel wants 

to speak to. What are we doing to avoid the significant security 

challenges facing Somalia spilling over into Kenya and Ethiopia? 

Both of these nations have supported and sustained very large refugee populations from Somalia for a long time, and would have 

understandable concerns about the possibility of it destabilizing

either of their nations. 

24

And then, last, is the investment that is being made sufficient 

from the United States, from the international community? And 

what additional resources might be needed, and how might we be 

more effective in engaging the NGO community and the international community on top of the commitments already made by 

the United States? 

Ambassador. 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Answer quickly. You know, the Somalia 

and that whole region is just so complex. I mean, for example, if 

you think about it, one out of every six Somali is an Ethiopian living in the Ogaden area. And then the refugee flows, and, of course, 

the IDPs within Somalia. 

The issue comes in is on security and stability. For Ethiopia and 

Kenya, Somalia is a strategic interest because of security concerns. 

During the time when I was there, for instance, in 1 year’s time 

we had 12 terrorist bombings in 1 year, and from groups emanating out of Somalia into Ethiopia. So, if it is a concern for the 

Ethiopians, just as it is a concern for Kenya, then it is a concern 

for us in the regional states. 

And so, how do you ease security concerns? And I think the dual 

track approach is one approach that we have worked not just with 

the regional states, but also with the transitional government, to 

stabilize that region. And that really is one area that to look at the 

security by the Somalis themselves addressing the Somali problems. And then, the Amazon troops from Uganda and Burundi 

have done a great job in taking back a lot of parts of Mogadishu. 

But, again, the bottom-line problem is that security is going to 

be a long-term problem. Do we have enough finances? No. But it 

is an issue that is going to be in partnership with the regional 

states and also the Somalis themselves. 

Dr. BRIGETY. Senator, if I may add one concrete example on the 

security aspect. One of the principal crossing points from Somalia 

into Kenya is a place called Lavoie, where the United States has 

long encouraged the Government of Kenya to open a screening 

center. 

As you know, the Government of Kenya has officially closed their 

border from Kenya and Ethiopia—Kenya to Somalia has for some 

years. We have encouraged the Government of Kenya to reopen the 

screening center at Lavoie, and we have committed some funds—

some considerable funds to help them pay for that opening. And 

that will be a means for them to help them know who is actually 

coming into their country. 

In addition, it would be a means to actually providing assistance 

to refugees at the first point of crossing before they have to make 

the additional 80 kilometer trek to Dadaab. So, we hope the Government of Kenya will continue to consider this favorably and will 

open the screening center in short order. 

Ms. LINDBORG. Well, I will just wrap that up by saying, we are 

very focused on ensuring that the host communities around the 

vicinities of the camps also receive assistance. There are large 

drought affected areas, as we have discussed, in both Ethiopia and 

Kenya, and it is important that we work to meet those very grave 

needs as well. 

25

On the awareness issue, it is critically important, I think, that 

we mobilize the resources of very generous private citizens as well 

as donors, including nontraditional donors. And there is a significant effort underway to do exactly that. 

Senator COONS. Great. Thank you very much. 

Senator. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question, 

and I guess, Ambassador, this might be directed to you, but, Ms. 

Lindborg, you might have something on it too. 

In our briefing memo from the committee, there is a reference to 

ethnic Somalis living in Ethiopia, and access given to NGOs to be 

able to provide with them food and humanitarian assistance, the 

inference being it was somewhat restricted. What is the case with 

ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, and is there a restriction in getting food 

and aid to those Somalis? 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. I think during the time that I was the 

Ambassador there, I spent most of my time traveling into the 

Ogaden/Somalia area to ensure that the U.S. food assistance was 

getting to the right people. And one of our problems—I will give 

you an example. 

Right now, during the last year that I was there, we had something like $600 million or 800,000 metric tons of food to deliver to 

the people, mostly into the Ogaden area. And we were able to 

verify through WFP and other NGO groups about a 70-percent 

accuracy rate of getting the food to distribution points. 

The problem was getting the distribution points to the beneficiaries, and we were only able to confirm about 20 percent. The 

reason is because of not only insecurity, but also the problems of 

delivery of food into areas of insecurity and conflict. 

So, we have been working very closely with the Ethiopians to 

open up access and also allow our NGO groups to go into areas to 

ensure that the food was getting to the right, appropriate people. 

And so, those are some of the, you know, essential problems. 

Senator ISAKSON. But there is still some difficulty of getting it 

there. 

Ambassador YAMAMOTO. Yes. Yes, sir, it is. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you very much. 

Senator COONS. We would like to thank all members of this 

panel, and thank you for your testimony, thank you for your service, and thank you for your work on this very important issue. We 

appreciate your testimony today. 

We now would like to turn to our second panel. We will take a 

moment here while they join us. 

We would like to welcome Mr. Konyndyk, Dr. Pham, and Mr. 

Schaap. And I encourage all three of you to correct my pronunciation of your name. We are grateful for your taking time out of your 

important work to join us here today and to add your testimony to 

the record, and to the attention that is being paid by the Senate 

and the international community to this concerning challenge in 

the Horn of Africa. 

Mr. Konyndyk, I would invite you to give an opening statement. 

And, again, I would encourage each of you to try and contain your 

comments to about five minutes, and we will submit for the record 

any additional statement that you might have. 

26

Please, sir. 

STATEMENT OF JEREMY KONYNDYK, DIRECTOR OF POLICY 

AND ADVOCACY, MERCY CORPS, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. KONYNDYK. Thank you, Chairman Coons, thank you, Senator 

Isakson, for the opportunity to testify before you today. It is an incredibly important issue, and we really appreciate the focus that 

you and the subcommittee are dedicating to this. It is very timely 

and very urgent. 

My name is Jeremy Konyndyk. I am director of policy and advocacy with Mercy Corps. I am here today representing a relief and 

development organization that works in over 40 countries, but particularly for today’s purposes, in three of the most affected countries in the region, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, where we are 

currently providing urgently needed drought relief throughout that 

region. 

I think that everyone has been shocked by some of the photos 

that have been coming out of the region, but particularly out of 

Dadaab and Mogadishu. In recent days, there was a very striking 

and shocking photo in yesterday’s New York Times, of an emaciated child. As horrific as some of these images are, I think it is important that we also recognize that for every image of a child who, 

however unfortunate, has at least made it to a treatment center in 

Mogadishu or Dadaab, there are many, many more children, and 

adults as well, who have not made it that far. And that is a growing tragedy. 

It is also critical to remember that even as much of the attention 

so far has focused on Somalia, the situation in Kenya, Ethiopia, 

and Djibouti is desperate as well. Our teams are doing assessments 

right now throughout Kenya and Ethiopia and initiating programs, 

and they are finding vast swathes of Ethiopia and Kenya that are 

in a state of extreme humanitarian emergency. Our teams are seeing landscapes full of dead and dying livestock, which normally 

would form the basis of the ability of people living there to feed 

themselves and support their families. They are seeing villages 

completely emptied by the drought because people simply cannot 

get water, and they have had to go elsewhere. They are seeing families and meeting families who are struggling to eat even one meal 

a day. It is a truly desperate situation. 

The superlatives that are now being used to describe the crisis 

in the Horn are not hyperbole. This does threaten to become one 

of the worst, perhaps the worst, humanitarian crisis that we have 

seen in a generation. 

The good news, if there is any, is that the aid community has a 

pretty good understanding of how to fight a crisis like this. We 

have learned a great deal since the famines of the 1980s and 1990s 

about how to respond effectively to hunger crises, and I have 

described this in much more detail in my written remarks that I 

have submitted for the record. 

The big question at this point is whether aid groups will actually 

have the opportunity to apply that understanding that we have developed. Our entire sector is facing a massive shortfall in funding 

for the response. The United States in particular has been very 

generous so far. The rest of the world has also, with some variance, 

27

put up a good amount of money. But it still falls far short of what 

we saw even a few years ago when a drought hit the region in 

2008. 

There does not seem to be yet a global recognition of how severe 

this crisis is. We are seeing just a fraction of the engagement and 

the level of resources that we saw after the Haiti earthquake, for 

example, despite the fact that the number of people at risk across 

the Horn now exceeds the total population of Haiti, much less the 

population that was affected by the earthquake there. 

The U.S. Government is working very, very hard to respond and 

to mobilize resources, and we are deeply appreciative of that. The 

teams that are working this issue at USAID and in the State 

Department’s Refugee Bureau really are the best in the business. 

And we deeply appreciate their commitment, their expertise, and 

their professionalism. 

But they need resources in order to combat this crisis. So far this 

year, the U.S. contribution, while extremely generous and we recognize it as such, remains under half of what the Bush administration contributed in 2008 to the last major drought in the region. 

And we are very concerned as we look at the upcoming fiscal year 

budget debate that there are proposals on the other side of the Hill 

to slash the very accounts that are providing the assistance that 

the U.S. Government is using for the response to this crisis, specifically the International Disaster Assistance Account, Migration and 

Refugee Assistance Account, and Food for Peace. Particularly Food 

for Peace should be highlighted here because that is our food aid 

account, and that has been—there is a proposed cut of 30 percent 

of that budget over fiscal year 2011 levels. That would be a 50-percent cut over what we had in 2008 during the last major crisis. So, 

that is a real concern. 

The other challenge to the USG response has been the legal restrictions, which were discussed a bit on the earlier panel. It does 

now appear that the U.S. Government has waived or is moving to 

waive these. That is a very positive step. We recognize it, and we 

commend the administration for taking it. 

We do, nonetheless, have some remaining concerns about how 

this will be implemented. I would be happy to address those in 

more detail during questioning. But even as we hopefully move 

past this impasse, it is important to recognize that the fact that the 

administration issued this license only several weeks after a famine was declared and several months after we knew that something 

very, very bad was coming, represents a real systemic problem. 

I do not think it makes sense to point at any particular part of 

the administration as bearing responsibility for this. I think that 

they were struggling to hash these things out the best that they 

could. But there is a systemic issue here that I think bears further 

exploration in terms of the interaction between some of our legal 

restrictions and our humanitarian priorities. 

Very quickly to the question of whether we can get into the south 

and how that is going to work, I would say we do not know yet. 

We are going to—the waiving of the legal restrictions takes an 

obstacle out of the way. But there are a lot of questions about what 

can be achieved in the south, what kind of access we are going to 

28

1FEWSNET/FSNAU: Evidence for a Famine Declaration (July 19, 2011). 

2 USAID FEWS-NET: East Africa: Past year one of the driest on record in the eastern Horn 

(June 14, 2011). 

see. I think Dr. Pham can talk a little bit more about the regional 

politics there. 

I think there are reason for optimism in terms of UNICEF and 

the Red Cross’ success so far in getting some aid shipments in 

without interference. That gives us hope, so we have, I think, a 

posture of hope and cautious optimism, but not naivete about that 

at this point. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Konyndyk follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JEREMY KONYNDYK

Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Isakson, thank you for inviting me to testify 

before the subcommittee today on the critically important issue of drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. I am here today in my capacity as Director of Policy and 

Advocacy for Mercy Corps, a global relief and development organization that responds to disasters and supports community development in more than 40 countries 

around the world. Mercy Corps has worked in the Horn for many years, and we currently manage relief and development programs in the three countries most affected 

by the drought: Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. In these countries we have hundreds 

of staff providing assistance to 900,000 drought victims. We are working in many 

of the areas most affected by the drought: North and Central Somalia, Eastern Ethiopia, and Northeastern Kenya. In these regions we are pursuing a range of droughtfocused interventions, including providing access to water; supporting livelihoods so 

that people can afford to feed themselves and protect their livestock; aiding communities to better manage the scarce water resources that they have; and providing 

supplemental nutrition to at-risk children and mothers. We are undertaking these 

programs with the generous support of public and private donors, including the important contributions of the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

With 12.4 million people across the Horn in already in a state of humanitarian 

crisis—a figure that has increased by $3 million in just the past month—this emergency threatens to become the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the past several 

decades. While most attention has focused on Somalia, this is truly a regional emergency: people in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti all face major shortfalls in access to 

food and water as well. The situation within southern Somalia is catastrophic, with 

death rates in the worst-affected regions, particularly among children, up to triple 

the threshold for declaring a famine and levels of malnutrition that are also well 

beyond the famine threshold.1 The situation in the rest of the region is less catastrophic, but still extremely dire. Across Kenya, Ethiopia, and central Somalia, 

Mercy Corps teams are seeing people’s livelihoods collapse in real time, pushing the 

affected populations closer and closer to calamity. The situation, while already desperate, promises to worsen in coming months as remaining water and food stocks 

are further depleted. The international response, though it has accelerated in recent 

weeks, remains inadequate. In the hardest-hit region, southern Somalia, security 

obstacles continue to impede the delivery of assistance and international legal restrictions have further compounded the challenges of operating there. Without swift 

action on all fronts, the drought will have devastating human and regional impacts 

that will be impossible to roll back. 

HOW IS THIS CRISIS DIFFERENT?

While drought is common in the Horn of Africa, the current situation is far graver 

than the normal cycles of drought that occasionally hit the region. Several factors 

contribute to this. First is the rainfall over the past year, which in most areas is 

among the lowest ever recorded. The region has two main rainy seasons per year, 

one in the fall and one in the late spring to early summer. Over the past year, both 

largely failed, leaving the driest conditions that most parts of the Horn have seen 

in 60 years. Seven districts across swaths of northeastern Kenya and southern Ethiopia have recorded the driest season since 1950.2 The broad area across which the 

rains failed is also unique: a typical drought in the region would be less uniform, 

enabling people to temporarily relocate to other areas to find water. This time, the 

broad coverage of the drought has meant that people’s normal ‘‘backup’’ locations 

are themselves in a state of drought. Finally, this drought comes on the heels of 

29

3 USAID FEWS-NET: East Africa Food Security Outlook Update (July 2011). 

4FSNAU, FEWS-NET: Somalia Dekadal Food Security and Nutrition Monitoring (July 25, 

2011). 5 Voice of America: African Refugee Children at High Risk for Kalaazar Malaria Viral Infections (July 27, 2011). 6FEWSNET/FSNAU: Evidence for a Famine Declaration (July 19, 2011). 

7 UNICEF ESARO: Horn of Africa Crisis: Situation Report #2 (July 28, 2011). 

another serious regional drought in 2008 which, though less severe than the current 

situation, left elevated vulnerability across the region. 

The result has been a progressive erosion of the capacity of people in the region 

to cope with economic and climatic shocks. Most rural and nomadic populations in 

the Horn depend on livestock herding or small-scale agriculture to support themselves. Both forms of livelihood are heavily dependent on water and vulnerable to 

drought. In a milder drought, people would rely on a variety of ‘‘coping mechanisms’’ 

to see themselves through: shifting herds to different areas in search of alternate 

water sources; selling off land holdings or parts of their herds to generate extra income; substituting for less expensive foods; reducing meals; and cutting back on 

household expenses. 

The severity of the current drought, coming on the heels of the 2008 drought, has 

exhausted these coping mechanisms and left people with no income and few options. 

The failure of the rains across the region has meant that there are few areas where 

livestock can be shifted to find alternate water sources. Those that exist are quickly 

depleted by the increased pressure. Selling livestock at market generates little to 

no income because the condition of most livestock is so poor that they can fetch little 

money. Livestock are a form of both income and savings for people in the region; 

as huge numbers of livestock have died off they have wiped out the savings and income potential of innumerable families. The poor rains have led to widespread crop 

failures across the region, greatly reducing the local supply of food both at a household level and in regional markets. The prices of locally produced staples accordingly reached record highs in June in most markets throughout the eastern Horn.3

In some parts of Somalia, prices of staple cereals like white maize have increased 

by as much as 350 percent above last year.4 This massive inflation has quickly 

wiped out what scant savings people may have. These factors, taken together, can 

quickly lead to a complete collapse in peoples’ ability to feed themselves. With their 

livestock assets depleted or deceased, no yield from their own agriculture, their savings spent, their land sold, and food in the market priced beyond reach, people find 

themselves without options. Aid or migration become their only possibilities for 

survival. 

In southern Somalia, as we are now vividly seeing, this process has fully run its 

course. The result is some of the most devastating human suffering that aid professionals have ever seen. The desperation and destitution of those who have fled to 

Kenya, central Somalia, and Ethiopia has been well-documented: ‘‘roads of death’’ 

on which mothers are forced to leave behind the children who die en route; cases 

of advanced malnutrition so severe that those lucky enough to obtain treatment still 

have only a 40-percent chance of survival 5; a torrent of refugees and internally displaced persons so large that camps and reception centers have been quickly overwhelmed. As disturbing as the refugee situation is, there are many more within 

Somalia who are too poor or too weak to even make the journey out. The slowdown 

in refugee arrival numbers in Ethiopia and Kenya over the past week may indicate, 

ominously, that the bulk of those who were capable of leaving have now done so. 

The numbers from FEWSNET suggest that those who remain in the south are now 

dying in astronomically large numbers. Child mortality in every district of southern 

Somalia now surpasses famine levels. In the worst-hit areas, children under 5 are 

dying at a rate five times the famine threshold.6 At this rate more than a tenth 

of the under-5 population in these areas is being wiped out every 2 months. Tens 

of thousands of people are estimated to have already died, a number that could 

reach into the hundreds of thousands if the situation continues to deteriorate as 

expected. 

In Kenya, central Somalia, and Ethiopia, the wider availability of aid and the existence of government safety net programs have slowed the process of livelihood collapse. But existing aid flows are not keeping up with the growing challenges, and 

safety net programs are not built to handle such massive levels of need. UNICEF 

estimates that over a quarter of the more than 2 million acutely malnourished children across the drought-affected Horn are at risk of death.7 The humanitarian 

needs in Kenya and Ethiopia are important to address in their own right, but they 

have added significance given the growing refugee populations in both countries. It 

is well-established that provision of aid to refugees can provoke resentment and 

30

8 UNOCHA: Humanitarian Requirements for the Horn of Africa Drought (July 28, 2011). 

9 USAID FEWS-NET: Kenya Enhanced Food Security Monitoring (July 22, 2011). 

10 USAID, WFP, FEWS-NET Special Report: Kenya Food Security (June 2011). 11 UNOCHA: Humanitarian Requirements for the Horn of Africa Drought (July 28, 2011). 12 UNOCHA Financial Tracking System: Somalia Emergencies for 2008—Total Humanitarian 

Funding per Donor; UNOCHA Financial Tracking System: Somalia Emergencies for 2011—Total 

Humanitarian Funding per Donor.

backlash from host communities, ultimately endangering the refugees, if the needs 

of those host communities are not also met. 

Mercy Corps teams in Ethiopia and Kenya report mounting needs that are approaching critical levels in many areas. In Kenya, while most international attention has focused on the Dadaab refugee camp, the Kenyan population in the northeast of the country is entering a critical phase. The current dry spell is expected 

to last through at least October and food insecurity will get worse over the next few 

months.8 Livestock are dying in large numbers due to lack of water, and this crop 

cycle will be a near-total failure in many parts of the country due to the drought.9

The situation is so desperate that our assessments have found instances of herders 

braving security challenges to take their remaining livestock into riverine parts of 

Somalia to attempt to water them there. This has led to a phenomenon of ‘‘drought 

widows’’—women whose husbands have left to seek water for their livestock, leaving 

their families behind indefinitely. Malnutrition rates have been rising, and an estimated 40 percent of farming households in some districts are now skipping meals.10

Our teams expect to begin seeing elevated mortality rates in the very near future 

if swift action is not taken. In Ethiopia we are seeing a parallel situation. Recently 

completed assessments by Mercy Corps in eastern Ethiopia revealed that the 

drought is already having a massive impact on the population. In some areas that 

we visited, entire villages were empty—their inhabitants forced to move as the 

drought devastated their ability to support and feed themselves. Dead cattle litter 

the landscape, and along one 40-kilometer stretch of road we visited not a single 

bit of foliage was visible. Many families have been reduced to eating one meal per 

day. Ethiopian colleagues who have been living and working in the region for decades have told us that they have never before seen anything like this. 

SCALING UP THE RESPONSE

The international community’s response to the drought has been substantial, but 

nowhere near adequate. The United Nations estimates that nearly $2.5 billion will 

be required to meet the region’s needs this year.11 International contributions for 

humanitarian response, currently around $1.3 billion, are well below this target, 

and indeed are running well behind the levels contributed just 3 years ago, when 

a lesser drought gripped the region. Compared to other major disaster such as the 

Haiti earthquake or the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the drought crisis in the Horn is 

receiving a fraction of the attention and support that was committed to those emergencies. This reflects the paradox that aid agencies often face with slow-onset disasters: compared to more-telegenic natural disasters, in which most of the death and 

injury occur instantaneously, in slow onset disasters we can potentially save far, far 

more of the threatened lives. Yet we typically have a much harder time mobilizing 

the resources required to do so. We are working hard to convey to the public in the 

United States and other donor states that their support is badly needed. However, 

private contributions for this emergency are many times lower than the generous 

levels contributed after other major disasters. 

On the U.S. side, the work of the government’s emergency responders in USAID’s 

Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Office of Food for Peace (FFP), 

as well as the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration 

(PRM) has been exemplary. These offices possess a high level of expertise and professionalism, and they have focused on this crisis with great seriousness and energy. 

Their response is to be commended. But they will need ample resources well into 

the next fiscal year if they are to sustain an aggressive response to this emergency. 

U.S. contributions to the Horn of Africa are down significantly relative to 2008. 

The Bush administration’s humanitarian contributions that year topped $1 billion 

regionwide, while this year the United States has contributed less than half that 

amount.12 To put this in perspective, the U.S. contribution toward the drought this 

year amounts to roughly one-sixth of the amount that Congress appropriated for the 

Haiti response in the 2010 supplemental; this despite the fact that the population 

at risk in the Horn is greater than the entire population of Haiti. U.S. support to 

this drought also lags far behind U.S. contributions to other major crises, as the 

chart below demonstrates. 

31

13 UN: Monitoring Group Report on Somalia and Eritrea (July 18, 2011). 

Sources: GAO: USAID Tsunami Signature Reconstruction Efforts in Indonesia and Sri Lanka 

Exceed Initial Cost and Schedule Estimates, Face Further Risk (February 2007); GAO: Haiti 

Reconstruction—U.S. Efforts Have Begun. Expanded Oversight Still to be Implemented (May 

2011); USAID Fact. Sheet #10: Horn of Africa Complex Emergency (October 31, 2008); USAID 

Fact Sheet #4: Horn of Africa Drought (July 28, 2011).

In Somalia specifically, U.S. support dropped off drastically from 2008 to 2010, 

falling by 88 percent. While recent contributions have started to reverse this trend, 

the United States contribution to humanitarian response in Somalia still stands at 

only 15 percent of the international total, compared against a U.S. share of 40 percent to 50 percent in the rest of the region. The United States is the largest global 

donor to humanitarian relief, and other donors often follow our lead. If the United 

States steps up its assistance to the region, particularly to Somalia, this could have 

a powerful multiplier effect by influencing the behavior of other donors. 

CHALLENGES TO THE RESPONSE

There are several important reasons why the impact of the drought is proving so 

much more severe in southern Somalia than elsewhere in the region. The first is 

the long history of insecurity in the south, which has impeded aid actors and prevented development investments. Even before the southern militias imposed restrictions on aid access, the history of insecurity in the area prevented the sort of sustained food security and development programming that has been common in Kenya 

and Ethiopia. These programs build resiliency, improve natural resource management, and help people to mitigate the challenges posed by cyclical droughts. Southern Somalia has not benefited from this kind of aid, and has been left less resilient 

to drought than its neighbors. 

The next factor, as has been widely reported, is the restrictions on aid access by 

southern militias, and accompanying security risks to aid groups. The challenges to 

aid groups in the south have been well documented, including in the recent report 

by the U.N.’s Monitoring Group for Somalia.13 The report describes how aid groups 

were able to operate relatively freely in the south until 2010, when the operating 

environment deteriorated significantly as the militias began to impose unacceptable 

conditions on aid groups. Those conditions, which were inconsistent with core humanitarian principles, contributed to decisions by many aid groups to scale back 

their work. By the time that Mercy Corps and other aid groups were formally expelled from the south in September 2010, we had few operations left there in any 

case because of the deteriorating operating environment. It is important to note here 

that we and other groups have continued to operate in the northern and central regions of the country. 

The final obstacle has been U.S. legal restrictions on aid funding to Somalia, 

which predate the expulsion of aid groups by the militias. Reviewing the background 


jeremy.eps
32

14 New York Times: U.S. Delays Somalia Aid, Fearing it is Feeding Terrorists (October 1, 

2009). 15 IRIN: U.S. Government to Set New Aid Terms (October 6, 2009). 

of these restrictions is important not because I believe them to have been the principal obstacle to aiding southern Somalia—they were not. But these restrictions 

have been the only such obstacle that the U.S. Government could unilaterally take 

out of the way. We are encouraged by the recent indications from the administration 

that these restrictions have now been modified to allow greater support to relief efforts in the south. We have some remaining concerns about how the new arrangement will be implemented, particularly the fact that it only applies to programs that 

are wholly or partly funded by the U.S. Government. This provides no protection 

to interventions implemented by U.S. organization with funding from private foundations or European donors, for example. We hope to address those issues swiftly, 

but nonetheless the administration should be commended for its willingness to alter 

the overall restrictions in light of the ongoing emergency. With this issue hopefully 

moving in a positive direction, I do not wish to dwell overly long on the past. But 

it is important, even as we look forward, to take stock of what we have until now 

been unable to do, and draw lessons from that. 

The challenges that have arisen from the legal restrictions on aid to Somalia over 

the past several years are fundamentally systemic. Despite the best efforts of the 

professionals at USAID, the restrictions have several times caused serious delays 

in the efforts of USAID and U.S. relief groups, to provide aid to Somalia. USAID, 

for its part, has faced a thicket of legal and political obstacles but has consistently 

done its utmost to deal with those in a way that enables responsible aid to continue. 

Throughout our deliberations over the past several years, USAID’s professionals 

have been collaborative and constructive. The blame for the delays and obstacles ultimately lies with the nature of the restrictions themselves. They are overly broad, 

allowing automatic humanitarian exemptions only for medical supplies and religious 

materials. Obtaining humanitarian exemptions for anything outside of those two 

categories typically requires a license that is only approved after a cumbersome and 

lengthy interagency process. This is a system that cries out for serious review, as 

I believe the last 2 years have demonstrated. 

The restrictions first became an obstacle in Somalia in April 2009, when USAID 

raised concerns that some U.S. resources might be diverted in violation of U.S. Government prohibitions on material support to groups designated by the United States 

as terrorists. It was reported at the time that USAID was seeking an OFAC license 

for its work in Somalia, but that the Treasury Department was reluctant to grant 

this. Over the summer of 2009, USAID stopped processing new humanitarian response grants to U.N. agencies and NGOs while deliberations over a path forward 

dragged on.14 In the midst of a serious humanitarian crisis in much of the country, 

numerous U.S.-funded humanitarian response programs were suspended as grant 

agreements expired and could not be renewed. An agreement was finally struck in 

late October of that year—nearly 7 months after the issue first arose—to allow funding to move forward in FY2010.15

However, when the FY 2010 grants began to expire in early FY 2011, USAID 

again suspended grant processing. By this point, most U.N. and NGO partners were 

no longer operating in southern Somalia, and the grant requests that were held up 

were instead for northern and central regions of Somalia, which are not under the 

control of U.S.-designated militant groups. By the time the FY 2010 grants began 

expiring, the fall 2010 rainy season in Somalia had failed and it was clear that a 

dire humanitarian situation would arise in the coming months. Several months 

passed as the administration sought a way out of the impasse. In late spring, U.N. 

and NGO partners entered into negotiations with USAID over whether to resume 

funding. An agreement to allow USAID to resume humanitarian funding to northern and central Somalia was finally struck in May of this year—nearly 8 months 

into FY 2011. 

The 8 months that were lost were a period in which the humanitarian community 

was well aware of the prospect of severe drought and famine. This was the very period when the U.S. Government’s U.N. and NGO partners could have been working 

full-tilt to prepare for the coming calamity. While the south was not accessible to 

us at that point, a great deal could have been done to preposition, prepare communities in accessible regions of the country, and assist the already-large flows of internally displaced people. Yet the bureaucratic tie-up over U.S. legal restrictions left 

U.N. and NGO partners unable to obtain USG resources that would have enabled 

a much more robust response in the northern and central regions. This has been 

particularly damaging in central Somalia, which has been afflicted with drought 

33

16Devex: Aid Reaches Famine-Hit Region in Southern Somalia (July 27, 2011). 17 ALNAP: Slow-onset Disasters—Drought and Food and Livelihoods Insecurity (2007). 

every bit as severe as the southern areas, and also hosts tens of thousands of displaced southerners in desperate conditions. 

THE ROAD AHEAD

The situation across the Horn of Africa is likely to worsen in the coming months 

as water sources dwindle and people’s stocks of food and money are depleted. In 

southern Somalia—assuming that the administration’s moves to relax the legal restrictions will enable aid groups to resume programs there—many agencies will be 

eager to move ahead with relief efforts. The NGO community is strongly committed 

to ensuring that aid is not diverted away from those who need it most. I would emphasize that we do not know exactly what to expect in terms of access and security, 

and we do not discount the very real challenges that remain. But there are some 

reasons for cautious optimism, including the recent success of United Nations agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross in making initial aid distributions freely and without interference.16

The recent report of the U.N.’s Somalia Monitoring Group described how access 

for aid groups often varies considerably in different regions of the south, depending 

on local political and clan dynamics and their interplay with higher level political 

factors. That dynamic will largely shape the opportunities for response in southern 

Somalia, and provides further grounds for cautious optimism over what may be 

achievable. Regardless of the high-level political movements—positive or negative—

aid groups will ultimately have to negotiate terms of safe and effective access with 

local leaders in communities across the south. Many aid groups will choose to work 

with or support local Somali civil society organizations, which have capacity and 

long experience working on humanitarian response. This will result in a sort of 

‘‘patchwork quilt’’ approach to assistance provision, with different agencies providing 

aid in whichever communities they are able to safely access. These arrangements 

are likely to remain highly fluid, and aid groups will have to show extreme flexibility and responsiveness to seize new opportunities quickly. 

Beyond southern Somalia, there is a great deal that can be done to prevent the 

rest of the region from descending into famine conditions. The humanitarian community has learned a great deal over the past few decades about how to deal more 

effectively with food crises. No longer does the international response to famine and 

drought center mainly on camps and food distribution. Instead, we follow several 

‘‘best practices’’ learned from past disasters:

• Work with markets, not against them: Mass food distribution is not always the 

best way to deal with a food crisis; it can sometimes distort and undermine local 

markets, put merchants out of business, and degrade important market supply 

links. Mass hunger is not a result simply of inadequate local food production, 

but rather of inadequate resources amongst the population to access food 

through their normal means. This remains the case in the Horn, even in much 

of southern Somalia: food can be found in the markets, but it is priced well beyond the means of those who need it. This means that food voucher and cashbased interventions, which enable people to afford food, will be an important 

tool for combating hunger. These interventions can also be more efficient than 

distributing food aid, since they do not require the transport and importation 

of food nor complicated distribution networks. In-kind food aid will likely be 

needed to supplement what is available in markets, but should not be the automatic first resort. 

• Preserve livelihoods, not just lives: Interventions that seek to support the livelihoods of at-risk populations, as well as save lives, will bear helpful dividends. 

The most effective way to mitigate long-term impacts of the drought is to provide assistance that protects the remnants of people’s livelihoods in the near 

term and helps them to rebuild their livelihoods quickly in the medium term. 

This means interventions to protect remaining animal stocks, like veterinary 

services and water trucking; and agricultural support to ensure that farmers 

need not miss the next planting season due to depleted seed stocks. These sorts 

of livelihood-focused activities will reduce the need for prolonged humanitarian 

support.17

• Pay attention to health: In the 1991–92 famine in Somalia, the return of rain 

ironically posed major health challenges because the drought-weakened population was extra-vulnerable to water-borne diseases. Food aid and livelihoods 

support is not enough to save lives in this kind of situation—aggressive health 

34

18Secretary Clinton: U.S. Response to Declaration of Famine in Somalia and Drought in the 

Horn of Africa (July 20, 2011). 

care and emergency nutrition interventions are also necessary. Opportunistic 

diseases that prey on a weakened population will otherwise claim many lives. • Help people where they are: Aid programs that assist people where they are, 

rather than inducing them to displace to other areas, are both more efficient 

and more humane than camp-based interventions. Preventing displacement 

minimizes social and economic disruptions, enables continuation of livelihood 

activities, and avoids the arduous and dangerous process of abrupt relocation. 

It also avoids creation of semipermanent refugee and displacement camps, 

which are expensive to maintain and often hard to close down once a crisis 

ends. • Invest in long-term resiliency: Even as we focus on the immediate crisis, the aid 

community and aid donors should be thinking hard about how to build better 

resiliency to this type of crisis. While this drought is extremely severe, lesser 

droughts have become a common occurrence in the Horn in recent years and 

are becoming a permanent fixture. Avoiding future humanitarian crises will require that we seek to work with governments and community leaders to help 

at-risk populations to better manage their natural resources and develop successful coping mechanisms. This must be a long-term investment and will need 

to be sustained by donors even after the energy around the current crisis has 

waned. Fortunately, sustaining longer term investments in resiliency will save 

money over the long term by mitigating the impact of recurring droughts on the 

population, thus reducing the need for frequent humanitarian assistance.

We know what we must do; what remains in question is whether we will be able 

to do it. This rests on two important unknowns. The first is whether the region at 

large—Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti—will receive sufficient resources to enable humanitarian agencies and regional governments to respond aggressively to 

mounting needs. The second is whether obstacles to humanitarian access in southern Somalia—principally the local restrictions and security threats, but also legal 

restrictions amongst donor states—will be removed in order to enable a response to 

scale up in that region. With these unknowns in mind, I would like to leave the 

committee with several recommendations:

1. Ensure a robust U.S. Government response: As noted above, the U.S. response 

this year stands at less than half of what the Bush administration contributed to 

the region’s drought response in 2008. While the U.S. and global contributions this 

year are generous, they do not approach the level that will be required to avoid a 

large-scale catastrophe—as Secretary Clinton herself acknowledged on July 20.18

USAID did a good job of regional prepositioning, and has been rapidly churning out 

new grants over the past month as the full scope of the disaster has emerged. But 

real questions remain about whether the United States will be able to step up like 

it did in 2008. The FY 2012 outlook is not encouraging, with the House of Representative proposing to slash the very accounts that are financing the U.S. Government response: Food for Peace (a 30-percent proposed cut below FY11 levels, and 

50 percent below FY08 levels); International Disaster Assistance (a 12-percent proposed cut below FY11 levels); and Migration and Refugee Assistance (an 11-percent 

proposed cut below FY11 levels). Enacting such cuts in the face of the worst famine 

the world has seen in several decades would be disastrous, and I would urge the 

Senate to ensure that these accounts are protected in the FY 2012 budget deliberations. But I suspect that even more must be done. In years past, a disaster of this 

magnitude would have been cause for a supplemental—like the $3 billion supplemental that was passed last year to support the Haiti response. I would urge the 

Congress to consider a supplemental budget appropriation to address this crisis. 

2. Engage the American public: Despite the severity of this crisis, there has been 

relatively little of the sort of active public engagement that we saw following the 

recent disasters in Haiti and Japan. This is troubling, because the ability of American aid organizations to respond robustly to a humanitarian disaster tends to track 

closely with the level of American popular engagement in the crisis. I would encourage all Members of Congress, as they head back to their districts for the August 

recess, to alert their constituents to the severity of what is now taking place in the 

Horn of Africa. I would also urge the White House to be much more vocal about 

this crisis. As we saw after the Haiti earthquake, calls by the President and First 

Lady for generosity can have a tremendous galvanizing impact on the American 

public. The ideal scenario might involve joint appeals by administration and congressional leaders to demonstrate that responding to human suffering on such a 

massive scale transcends political boundaries. 

35

3. Reform legal restrictions on U.S. response: As I noted earlier, the legal restrictions imposed under the Patriot Act and related law have thrown up significant 

roadblocks to the humanitarian response and impeded preparedness. The safety 

valve provided by OFAC licensing is useful and we hope that the administration’s 

recent announcement will be implemented in a way that truly enables us to provide 

relief without fear of legal exposure. As a general rule of thumb, we would ask that 

the protections now extended to USAID through their OFAC license be extended in 

full to USAID’s partners as well. But this development notwithstanding, we have 

seen over the past 2 years that obtaining an OFAC license if often politically difficult and massively time-consuming. The fact that OFAC restrictions harmed U.S. 

capacity to prepare for and respond to a famine that was anticipated months in advance should give Congress pause. I suspect that those who wrote the laws did not 

have this sort of outcome in mind. I would strongly advise that Congress reexamine 

the interplay between OFAC restrictions and humanitarian aid, and explore whether a more streamlined and responsive approach can be found. A good place to start 

would be by expanding the list of exempted categories beyond medical supplies and 

religious materials, to also include assistance related to food, water, and shelter 

needs.

I wish to sincerely thank the subcommittee for its focus on this tremendously important issue, and for extending me the privilege of testifying today.

Senator COONS. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Pham. 

STATEMENT OF DR. J. PETER PHAM, DIRECTOR, MICHAEL S. 

ANSARI AFRICA CENTER, ATLANTIC COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. PHAM. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Isakson, I want to 

thank you for this opportunity to testify today on a very important 

issue. 

As we meet, the situation, as the other panelists have already 

stated, is especially grave. The U.N. refugee agency describes it as 

the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, with nearly half the 

Somali population facing starvation, while at least another 11 million men, women, and children across the Horn of Africa are at 

risk. 

Given this grim reality, the first concern of the international 

community is understandably focused where it should be: getting 

relief to the victims. However, in addressing immediate needs, 

attention should also be paid to the broader geopolitical context, as 

well as the long-term implications of the challenges before us. 

Since other witnesses testifying today are better positioned individually or institutionally to address the technical questions relating to the humanitarian crisis, its impact on vulnerable populations, and the logistics of getting assistance to them, I will 

concentrate on four key points which I believe policymakers in the 

United States and other responsible international actors should 

bear in mind in assessing the current situation, in determining 

adequate responses to it, as well as in planning longer term engagement with this region. 

First, al-Shabaab has a responsibility for exacerbating the crisis. 

While the group cannot be blamed for desertification trends, climate change, or meteorological conditions, the violent conflict it 

has engaged in, the economic and political policies it has pursued, 

have certainly worsened an already bad situation. 

Although in the past al-Shabaab has profited either by diversion 

or taxation of humanitarian aid, the amounts represented at most 

a small fraction of its broader revenue stream. Consequently, it is 

36

heartening to hear that the administration is working to clarify 

and, where necessary, ease the relevant restrictions in order to 

facilitate the work of humanitarian organizations. However, allow 

me to cite just one example of where the major funding al-Shabaab 

directly impact the current humanitarian crisis. 

For example, the industrial production for export of charcoal. It 

is estimated that somewhere around two-thirds of a forest which 

used to cover 15 percent of Somali territory have been reduced to 

chunks of ‘‘black gold’’ packed into 25-kilogram bags and shipped 

to countries in the Persian Gulf. One cannot underestimate the 

negative environmental impact of all this, which earned al-Shabaab 

millions in profit, which is recycled into violence and terrorism. 

And if this were all not bad enough, once the famine set in,

al-Shabaab leaders have alternated between denying the crisis and 

preventing effective people from moving in search of food. Whether 

or not it is a formal policy of the group, I have reports from sources 

on the ground in the last 24 hours of at least three ‘‘holding areas’’ 

in lower Shabelle where al-Shabaab forces are either using force or 

the threat thereof to keep displaced people from leaving the territory and finding help. And we can get into why they might be 

doing that. 

Second, far from being part of the solution, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the TFG, is part of the problem; in 

fact, a not insignificant cause of the ongoing crisis. The regime’s 

unelected officials may be preferable to al-Shabaab insurgents, but 

they represent at best the choice of the lesser of two evils. 

Hobbled by corruption, weakness, and infighting, the TFG is of 

limited helpfulness in the face of the present humanitarian emergency. TFG leaders are likelier to see the crisis as yet another opportunity to capture rents, especially since their already extended 

mandate expires in 2 weeks, and it is for want of a ready-made 

plan B that the international community is not taking issue with 

the TFG leaders’ arbitrary extension of their terms of office by 

another year. No wonder the official position of the Government of 

the United States, notwithstanding its engagement with the regime, is not to recognize the TFG or any other entity as the

legal sovereign of Somalia. 

We need to pursue a permanent resolution to the ongoing crisis 

of state failure in Somalia if we want to avoid humanitarian emergencies in the future. 

Third, the sheer number of people moving in and from Somali 

territory will have an enormous and possibly permanent consequences for the region. The potential population shifts threaten 

to upend delicate political balances, as we well as present new 

security challenges for the Horn of Africa and beyond. If they are 

not to cause, however unintentionally, greater harm, responses to 

this mass migration need to be factored into these considerations. 

Finally, amid the crisis, there is nonetheless an opportunity to 

promote stability and security in Somalia. In fact, there is a narrow 

window of opportunity during which it might be possible to seriously weaken and possibly even finish al-Shabaab as a force in Somali politics once and for all. The disaster has exposed divisions 

within the movement, with some of its local councils and militias 

37

expressing a willingness to accept help, even as the leadership continues to spurn it. 

The disaster has exposed divisions with some of the groups within it and factions, and there are ways the international community 

can get assistance to drought-affected populations and so where 

they are rather than requiring of these poor people displace themselves and create additional challenges that will be dealt with 

down the road. 

I want to underscore that there are local NGOs with a proven 

ability to both deliver aid in hard-to-reach areas, all the while 

avoiding diversion of aid to al-Shabaab and other problematic 

entities. 

Again, thank you for attention. I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Pham follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. J. PETER PHAM

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member lsakson, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I would like to thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today 

on the drought and famine conditions in the Horn of Africa in general and in Somalia in particular, as well as on the response of the United States and other members 

of the international community to this growing crisis. 

As we meet, the situation especially critical—the head of the United Nations refugee agency describes it as the ‘‘worst humanitarian disaster’’ in the world today—

with nearly half of the Somali population, some 3.7 million people, facing starvation 

while at least another 11 million men, women, and children across the Horn of 

Africa are thought to be at risk. 

Given this grim reality, the first concern of the international community is, understandably, focused where it should be anyway: getting relief to the victims. However, in addressing immediate needs, attention should also be paid to the broader 

geopolitical context as well as the long-term implications of the challenges before us. 

Since other witnesses testifying today are better positioned, individually and institutionally, to address the technical questions relating to the scope of the crisis, its impact on vulnerable populations, and the logistics of getting assistance to them, I will 

concentrate on four key points which I believe the United States and other responsible international actors should bear in mind in assessing the current situation and 

determining adequate responses to it, as well as planning longer term engagement 

with this region:

1. Al-Shabaab’s responsibility in exacerbating the crisis. While the group cannot 

be blamed for the desertification trends, climate change, and meteorological conditions, the violent conflict it has engaged in and the economic and political policies 

it has pursued have certainly worsened a bad situation. 

2. Far from being a part of the solution, Somalia’s ‘‘Transitional Federal Government’’ (TFG) is part of the problem—in fact, a not insignificant cause of the ongoing 

crisis. The regime’s unelected officials may be preferable to the insurgents seeking 

to overthrow them, but they represent, at best, the international community’s choice 

for the lesser of two evils. 

3. The sheer number of people on the move in and from Somali territory will have 

enormous and possibly permanent consequences for the region. The potential population shifts threaten to upend delicate political balances as well as present new security challenges for the Horn of Africa and beyond. 

4. Amid the crisis, there is, nonetheless, an opportunity to promote stability and 

security within Somalia, if not across the Horn of Africa. In fact, there is a narrow 

window of opportunity during which it might be possible to seriously weaken and 

possibly even finish al-Shabaab as a major force in Somali politics once and for all. 

AL-SHABAAB’S ROLE IN THE CRISIS

Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (‘‘Movement of Warrior Youth,’’ al-Shabaab) is 

not only linked ideologically with the global jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda and, increasingly, operationally with Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula 

(AQAP), it is also an entity that richly deserves to opprobrium for its singular role 

in making what in any event would have been a very bad situation far, far worse. 

There is no doubt that the insecurity it has caused since it began its violent insurgency 4 years ago added greatly to the sufferings of the Somali people. Moreover, 

38

while al-Shabaab is far from a monolithic organization, its leadership does have a 

history of denying access to the areas under its control to U.N. relief agencies like 

UNICEF and the World Food. For their part, as is now well known, last year the 

international agencies as well as several nongovernmental organizations pulled out 

of several areas under the control of al-Shabaab after several aid workers were 

killed and the group began imposing strict conditions on their remaining colleagues, 

extorting ‘‘security fees’’ and ‘‘taxes.’’ Moreover, because al-Shabaab has been designated as an international terrorist organization by the United States and a number of other countries, NGOs have avoided working in areas it controls for fear of 

running afoul of laws against providing material support to terrorist groups. 

As a matter of fact—one which a number of analysts, including myself, have noted 

for some time and which was confirmed by the annual report to the U.N. Security 

Council by its Sanctions Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea, a document released just last week—although al-Shabaab has profited, either by diversion or ‘‘taxation,’’ from humanitarian aid, the amounts represented at most a small fraction of 

its overall revenue stream. Consequently, it heartening to see that the administration is working to clarify and, where necessary, ease the relevant restrictions in 

order to facilitate the work of humanitarian organizations. 

A far more important source of income for the group is, in fact, more directly related to the humanitarian crisis: the industrial production for export of charcoal. 

While people living between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in southern Somalia have 

gathered charcoal for their own use from the region’s acacia forests from time immemorial, it is only in the last few years that the production has reached its present 

unsustainable levels. It is estimated that somewhere around two-thirds of the forests which used to cover some 15 percent of Somali territory has been reduced to 

chunks of ‘‘black gold,’’ packed into 25-kilogram bags, and shipped to countries in 

the Persian Gulf which have themselves banned the domestic production of charcoal. The U.N. Monitoring Group conservatively estimates that up to 4.5 million of 

these sacks are exported each year, primarily through the port of Kismayo, which 

has been controlled by al-Shabaab or other forces allied to its cause since September 

2008, earning the group millions of dollars in profits. Meanwhile, where once there 

were the old-growth acacia stands, thorn bushes now proliferate, rendering the 

areas useless to the Somali people, whether they be pastoralists or agriculturalists 

(the former graze their livestock in the grass that flourishes where the root systems 

of acacia groves hold in ground water and prevent erosion, while the latter grow 

staple crops in neighboring lands so long as there are tree stands holding in top 

soil), and contributing further to the desertification that is always a persistent 

threat in a land as arid or semiarid as Somalia. Thus, it was both simultaneously 

tragic and ironic that, when a heavy rain came briefly this past weekend to what 

was formerly the country’s breadbasket, the result was not deliverance, but disaster 

as, absent any foliage to help absorb the precipitation, flash floods compounded the 

misery in several places. 

Al-Shabaab also operates a complex system of taxation on residents within areas 

it controls and imposes levies not just on aid groups, but also businesses, sales 

transactions, and land. The tax on arable land in particular has had the effect of 

changing the political economy of farming communities which previously eked out 

a living just above subsistence. For example, in Bakool and Lower Shabelle—precisely the two areas at the epicenter of the famine—communities used to grow their 

own food and, whenever possible, stored any surplus sorghum or maize against 

times of hardship. However, when al-Shabaab imposed a monetary levy on acreage, 

farmers were pushed into growing cash crops like sesame which could be sold to 

traders connected with the Islamist movement’s leadership for export in order to obtain the funds to pay the obligatory ‘‘jihad war contributions.’’ However rich in antioxidants sesame seeds may be, they are of rather limited value for purposes of food 

security. 

If all this were not bad enough, once the famine set in, al-Shabaab leaders have 

alternated between denying the crisis—arguing instead that accounts of hunger 

were being ‘‘exaggerated’’ in order to undermine their hold over the populace—and 

preventing affected people from moving in search of food. Whether or not it is a formal policy of the group or not, there are credible reports from sources on the ground 

of at least several ‘‘holding areas’’ in Lower Shabelle where al-Shabaab forces are 

using force or the threat thereof to prevent displaced people from leaving its territory to find help. 

SOMALIA’S DYSFUNCTIONAL TFG

In congressional testimony 2 years ago, I noted that the TFG was ‘‘not a government by any common-sense definition of the term: it is entirely dependent on foreign 

39

troops . . . to protect its small enclave in Mogadishu, but otherwise administers no 

territory; even within this restricted zone, it has shown no functional capacity to 

govern, much less provide even minimal services to its citizens.’’ And that was before the famine. 

Despite the fact that, at not inconsiderable sacrifice, the African Union Mission 

in Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeeping force protecting the regime has managed to extend its operational reach to now be present in 13 of Mogadishu’s 16 districts—

although the force commander, Ugandan Major General Nathan Mugisha, acknowledges that his troops ‘‘dominate’’ in just ‘‘more than half of these’’—the TFG remains 

hobbled by corruption and infighting. Quite frankly, the so-called ‘‘government’’ lead 

by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is little better than a criminal enterprise—one that 

its own auditors reported stole more than 96 percent of the bilateral assistance it 

received in the years 2009 and 2010. The findings contained in the U.N. Monitoring 

Group report were perhaps even more damning: ‘‘Diversion of arms and ammunition 

from the Transitional Federal Government and its affiliated militias has been another significant source of supply to arms dealers in Mogadishu, and by extension 

to al-Shabaab.’’ The investigators even highlighted case where an RPG launcher and 

associated munitions, purchased for the regime under a U.S. State Department contract, found their way into a stronghold of al-Shabaab that AMISOM captured earlier this year. 

It should thus come as no surprise that such ‘‘leaders’’ are of limited helpfulness 

in the face of the present humanitarian emergency. They are likely to see it as yet 

another opportunity to capture rents, especially since their already extended mandate expires in 2 weeks and it is for want of a ready-made ‘‘Plan B’’ that the international community is not taking issue with the TFG’s leaders arbitrarily 

proroguing their terms of office by another year—although on what legal grounds 

is anyone’s guess. (No wonder the official position of the Government of the United 

States, expressed in a brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court last year by thenSolicitor-General Elena Kagan as well as the Legal Advisor of the Department of 

State, is that since the fall of the dictator Muhammad Siyad Barre in 1991, ‘‘the 

United States has not recognized any entity as the government of Somalia’’ and that 

federal courts should ‘‘not attach significance to statements of the TFG’’ absent specific guidance from the executive branch.) 

MASS MIGRATION

Given this context, it should come as no surprise that Somalis are on the move. 

The Dabaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, which was built in 1992 during 

the last great Somali famine to temporarily house 90,000 people, nowadays hosts 

more than 400,000, with more than 1,000 additional persons arriving each day. Another 112,000 refugees have found shelter in the Dollo Ado area of Ethiopia. And 

these are the lucky ones: it is estimated that there are possibly 1.5 million Somalis 

internally displaced within their own country, with some unfortunates even literally 

caught in the no man’s land at outskirts of Mogadishu between the frontline positions of the insurgents and AMISOM troops. And, it needs to be emphasized that 

all of this is before the coming months when conditions are expected to be even 

worse. 

Given the parlous conditions prevalent across the territory of the former Somali 

state (outside of Somaliland in the northwest, Puntland in the northeast, and possibly a few other places), it is virtually assured that any Somali who crosses the 

border into Kenya or Ethiopia is likely to become ipso facto a permanent emigrant 

(after all, Somalia’s contemporary economy, it should not be forgotten, has been 

transformed into one built upon remittances from the diaspora). In any event, since 

there has been no rush of third countries offering resettlement to the preexistent 

Somali refugee population before the famine, there is no reason to think that things 

will be different with the influx of new arrivals. Kenya and Ethiopia, however, are 

beset with complicated issues with their own ethnic Somali minorities; neither country is in much of a position to absorb hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 

itinerant Somalis. 

Consequently a population shift such as what we are witnessing in the Horn of 

Africa—a literal exodus of Biblical proportions—threatens to upend delicate political 

balances as well as present a host of new security challenges. In fact, concerns over 

security and the adequate screening (or lack thereof) of Somalis entering their country have already exposed one rift within Kenya’s national unity government between 

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who opened the border as a humanitarian gesture, 

and some of his ministers who oppose the move. A quick perusal of Kenyan newspapers is enough to confirm that this question will undoubtedly enjoy a high profile 

as the East African country enters its electoral season next year. 

40

Thus, if they are not to cause, however unintentionally, even greater harm, responses to the mass migration set in motion first by the prolonged Somali crisis and 

now the famine need to take factor in these realities. 

A CHANCE FOR STABILITY AND SECURITY

If one dares contemplate a silver lining to the current crisis—although it comes 

at a terrible price—it is that it has apparently caught al-Shabaab off guard. 

For a long time, despite the extremist ideology espoused by its foreign-influenced 

leaders which set them outside the mainstream of Somali culture and society,

al-Shabaab could present itself as being better (even if harsher) rulers than the corrupt denizens of the TFG. The brutal hudud punishments its tribunals meted out, 

for example, may have been utterly alien from the Somali experience, but it was 

a rough justice nonetheless and better than the chaos and lawlessness that was the 

experience of many Somalis in the 1990s. Moreover, the group managed to wrap 

itself up in the mantle of Somali nationalism by portraying the African Union peacekeepers as foreign occupiers, although the fact that AMISOM troops are propping 

up the despised TFG and, in the process, cause civilian casualties, made this narrative all the more credible. 

Within the last year, however, AMISOM has improved its capabilities and managed to lower civilian casualties even as it pushed al-Shabaab forces back within 

Mogadishu. In addition, the famine and al-Shabaab’s clumsy response to it have 

thoroughly dispelled any delusions about the ‘‘good governance’’ capabilities by the 

movement. Now the effects of famine are not only exacerbated by al-Shabaab, but 

the disaster has exposed divisions within the movement with some of its local councils and militias expressing a willingness to accept help even as the leadership continues to spurn it. Moreover, actions like the blocking of people trying to escape the 

famine will sap al-Shabaab of what remains of its popular legitimacy. (Of course, 

if one is seeking to use this opportunity to undermine al-Shabaab, it would be helpful if a prospect more attractive than domination by the venal TFG was offered to 

communities just freed from the militants’ yoke.) 

While there is undoubtedly some risk in sending aid areas where al-Shabaab operates, it is more probable that whatever negative effects the assistance will have will 

fall largely on the group, either as some of its local leaders defect or populations 

are weaned from their reliance on them. And there are organizations—not all of 

them necessarily international—with a track record of delivering assistance, even 

within al-Shabaab held areas, without allowing resources to be diverted. One that 

comes to mind is SAACID, the extraordinary nongovernmental organization founded 

and directed by Somali women, which is engaged in conflict transformation, women’s empowerment, education, health care, emergency relief, employment schemes, 

and development. SAACID’s modus operandi is a model for others. SAACID gets 

food from, among other partners, the World Food Programme—when, that is, the 

latter agency has any. By working closely with clan elders and community members, 

it embeds itself in its immediate surroundings and thus can carry on in areas 

where, for example, the WFP can no longer go because the presence of al-Shabaab. 

Thus, during the height of the fighting in Mogadishu in recent years, SAACID was 

literally the only entity that was present in all 16 of the capital’s districts, providing 

some 80,000 2,000-calorie meals daily to some of the most vulnerable residents. 

Such a model is one way the international community can get assistance to 

drought-affected populations and do so where they are, rather than requiring that 

these poor people displace themselves and, consequently, create additional challenges which will have to be dealt with further down the road after the initial emergency has passed. 

And it goes without saying that should security be improved in Somalia and the 

mass emigration halted, if not reversed, the prospects for the increasingly important 

subregion at the crossroads of the Africa and the Middle East will brighten 

immensely. 

CONCLUSION

Confronted with the dreadful specter of mass starvation on a scale not seen in 

more than half a century, the priority most assuredly is to get life-giving assistance 

to those most at risk and to do so in the most timely, efficient, and effective manner 

possible. However, urgency is no dispensation from the ethical and political responsibility both to understand to what caused or heightened the emergency and to consider the possible consequences of any proposed responses to it. Increased material 

resources are clearly needed, but even more, what is required is sustained engagement and not a little bit of strategic vision.

41

Senator COONS. Thank you, Doctor. 

Mr. Schaap. 

STATEMENT OF WOUTER SCHAAP, ASSISTANT COUNTRY 

DIRECTOR, CARE INTERNATIONAL SOMALIA, NAIROBI, KENYA 

Mr. SCHAAP. Mr. Chairman, Senator Isakson, thank you very 

much for this opportunity you have given us to testify today on this 

horrible situation that we are facing in the Horn of Africa. 

I speak today on behalf of CARE, a leading international humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. And we have six decades of experience in helping to prepare for and respond to natural 

disasters, providing life-saving assistance in crises, and helping 

communities recover after an emergency. 

We place special focus on women and children, and yet again in 

this crisis, they bear the brunt of what is happening. 

Myself as assistant country director for programs for CARE in 

Somalia, I see firsthand in my work the consequences that tens of 

thousands of people are facing today. I have worked in the Horn 

for 7 years now, traveling extensively within Somalia, both in the 

north and in the south. I recently returned from a trip to IDP 

camps in drought-affected areas in the north, and what we see 

there is probably less dramatic than what we see in some parts of 

the south, yet the stories we hear are horrible. 

A woman that I met in one of the IDP camps in Gardho, with 

a severely malnourished child on her arm, explained to me she did 

not have any money to go to the health clinic to seek assistance 

for her child, and that assistance was not available there. You 

could see in her eyes she was severely traumatized by the experiences in the south and the things that she had seen there. 

I met a father in the Sanaag region who had recently lost his 

wife. And he was there nursing his five remaining cows. The cows 

were bleeding from their noses, and he was trying to do something 

about it, but not really knowing what to do. And our staff said, 

well, this is a lost cause. 

These kind of experiences my staff see on a very regular basis, 

and they are stories that remain with you for the rest of your life. 

Our response to the emergency in the Horn began to scale up in 

2011—the beginning of 2011—when the early signs were clear that 

this was going to be a major crisis. Today we are helping more 

than 1 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya with lifesaving food, water, nutrition, and other life-saving emergency 

assistance. CARE, for instance, is one of the largest agencies working in Dadaab. We also support longer term activities that help 

people become more resilient to drought. 

The severity of the situation is extremely worrying, and other 

speakers have spoken at length about that, so I will keep my remarks on that quite short. But the worry is that the situation is 

not at its worst yet. The deepest part of a drought is normally the 

month before the rains come, and then people are weakened. And 

so, by September, we are going to see a significantly increased 

number of deaths due to diseases that affect this already weakened 

population. 

So, as my colleagues have said, agencies know now how to deal 

with this kind of situation, that we need to focus on a broad range 

42

of services—of water sanitation, health, nutrition, food—and address those multiple causes of deaths in a famine crisis. 

However, unfortunately there is still a major funding gap in the region of $1.4 billion U.S. dollars for the consolidated appeal of the 

U.N. This is really a worry, notwithstanding all the generous contributions from various donors. And we really appreciate the support from the U.S. Government for our work in the three countries 

where we have been supported by BPRN, OFTA, and others. And 

we really appreciate that. However, it is not enough. The crisis is 

so massive it needs additional support. 

The access issues have been discussed at length. The ongoing 

conflict in the south is making it much more difficult to get access 

to the south. And what we are seeing is that agencies already 

present there, local NGOs, other international NGOs that work 

there have an ability to negotiate some level of access, but it is 

limited. 

And unfortunately, aid is at risk of becoming very politicized in 

this environment. It is very important for all sides to this conflict 

to let humanitarian principles—neutrality and impartiality—guide 

all of our discussions on humanitarian assistance. And we are 

determined to provide only assistance to those people that are most 

in need, and assistance in place to ensure that only those people 

get it. 

We are urging local authorities in southern Somalia to grant an 

uninhibited and unconditional access. But the crisis is happening 

now, and it needs a concerted, thoughtful, careful diplomatic work 

of U.N. donors and NGOs to get aid to the victims of famine wherever they are. And now is really the time to have space and reach 

out to all parties of the conflict and work to save the lives of tens 

of thousands of people, and to avoid politicization of the issues. 

We have been speaking with colleagues from the U.S. Government about the legal issues that have concerned us. And we really 

appreciate the recent steps taken by the U.S. Government, specifically for programs funded by USAID and the Department of State. 

Questions, however, remain on the ability of the U.S. NGOs to program funding from non-U.S. Government donors, for instance, the 

U.S. public. NGOs get large sums of money from the U.S. public, 

but this funding does not fall under the OFAC licensing that is now 

being put in place for NGOs. That would only be covered if you 

have funding from the U.S. Government for south central Somalia. 

Other funding, like ECO, DFID, that would not be covered for U.S.-

based NGOs, and those are major sources of funding for U.S.-based 

NGOs. 

The long-term implications—we need to start thinking about 

those as well now. And I am sorry I am running a little bit over 

time. 

These are very marginalized populations, and they are among 

the most vulnerable to the impact of changes in the weather patterns. When I started working on Somalia, we would see a drought 

every 5 years. Now, it is just a continuous cycle of mist seasons, 

and things are really changing. People are finding it very difficult 

to adjust to these changes, but we know that there are things that 

we can do to help that, and we need to invest in that in the years 

to come. 

43

Our recommendations, I just would just sum up. The expansion 

and the speed of funding for the crisis is really important. The 

urgency is there, but we are seeing that major donors take quite 

a substantial time for funding to become available on the ground 

to support our work. And we urge donors to be faster in their processes and move things forward. 

We need to start planning for increased long-term support for resilience in these areas. And we need concerted, thoughtful, and 

careful diplomatic work of United Nations donors and NGOs to 

negotiate access on the ground and help to support a public climate 

in which those efforts can actually take place by the agencies working there. 

And the efforts by the U.S. Government to ease legal restrictions 

for U.S. Government-funded work is really appreciated, but it is 

not enough, because we are at risk when we use other governments’ funding and U.S. public funding, for instance. 

So, on that last item, we really need some very urgent action forward. The NGO community is ready to engage the appropriate U.S. 

Government agencies’ developed, constructive options to alleviate 

the effects of famine, while controlling the risk of diversion. And 

there are precedents for this in Burma and Iran and more recently 

in Gaza, and that could be achieved in two different ways. First, 

issuance of a general license from OFAC that would reduce the risk 

of prosecution due to transactions that may be incidental to the 

famine response. And, second, favorable and very expeditious processing of specific license requests to OFAC from U.S.-based NGOs. 

Those things would really help agencies place themselves in a position where they can start negotiating for access on the ground. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schaap follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WOUTER SCHAAP

Mr. Chairman, Senator Isakson, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the 

opportunity to testify today and join with you in this critically important and timely 

hearing on the crisis in the Horn of Africa. 

I speak today of behalf of CARE, a leading international humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE has more than six decades of experience in helping people prepare and respond to natural disasters, providing lifesaving assistance 

when a crisis hits, and helping communities recover after the emergency. CARE 

places a special focus on women and children, who are often disproportionately affected by disasters, as is the case in the Horn of Africa Crisis with the majority of 

those fleeing Somalia to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya women and children. 

As Assistant Country Director for Programs for CARE Somalia, I have seen firsthand, the dire circumstances tens of thousands of individuals in the region face. I 

have worked in the Horn of Africa for over 7 years, traveling extensively within Somalia, both in the North and South. I recently returned from visits to IDP camps 

and drought affected areas in the North. I will never forget some of the individuals 

I met there: the mother in a camp in Gardho town in Puntland with her sick malnourished child on her arm who had fled the conflict in the South, or the pastoralist 

man up in Sanaag region in Somaliland desperately trying to save his remaining 

three cows in front of his rural homestead and many others. 

East Africa is currently in the grips of the worst drought in 60 years, affecting 

an estimated 12 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya at risk of hunger, 

starvation, and other ills related to the drought. This is the most severe food crisis 

in the world today, with a desperate need of humanitarian aid in the region. The 

situation in the Horn of Africa is so dire that on July 20, the U.N. declared a famine 

in the Lower Shabelle and Bakool regions of southern Somalia. It is feared that all 

southern and central regions will be in a similar situation in the coming weeks and 

months if immediate measures are not taken to provide emergency relief. The situation in Kenya, Ethiopia, northern Somalia, and Djibouti is also dire, with not only 

44

large refugee and IDP populations to take care of, but also very large drought affected populations that are in need of immediate assistance. Huge swaths of these 

countries are already characterized as ‘‘emergency phase,’’ the level immediately before famine. Overall in the Horn of Africa region, the U.N. says that $2.5 billion 

is needed for the humanitarian response. While $1.1 billion has been pledged, it is 

estimated that an additional $1.4 billion is urgently needed. The United States 

should play a leading role in ensuring that this requirement is met. 

CARE’s emergency response to the drought in the Horn began to scale up at the 

beginning of 2011 when the beginnings of the crisis first became apparent. Today, 

we are helping more than 1 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya with 

lifesaving food, cash, water, destocking and other emergency assistance, but also 

drought resilience activities such as livestock health activities, natural resource 

management, vocational training, and savings groups that help people diversify livelihoods, save their assets, and buy food for their families. In our work we pay special attention to the vulnerable women and girls, who are especially at risk to the 

current crisis. 

Somalia faces the highest malnutrition rates in the world. Consecutive seasons of 

poor rainfall have created serious food crisis and extensive displacement in southern 

Somalia. The crisis is only expected to get worse in the next few months as the next 

regular rainy season is in October. Famine may spread to other regions. The 

drought has caused a devastatingly high mortality rate of animals, with levels as 

high as 40–60 percent, especially for cattle and sheep. UNHCR reports that more 

than 85,000 Somalis have sought refuge in Kenya since January, 2011, with daily 

arrivals now exceeding 1,500. The rate of Somali refugees arriving in southern Ethiopia has also jumped from 5,000 per month to more than 30,000 per month in the 

June. 

CARE IN THE HORN OF AFRICA (KENYA, ETHIOPIA, AND SOMALIA)

CARE’s emergency interventions in the Horn of Africa are driven by the humanitarian imperatives of saving lives, reducing suffering, restoring dignity and rebuilding livelihoods. Our work is guided by humanitarian principles of neutrality and 

independence. 

In Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world, CARE is the lead implementing 

agency for water and hygiene, food distribution, and education, providing support 

for the more than 390,000 refugees in the camp. CARE in Kenya has worked in the 

refugee camps around Dadaab since 1992. CARE provides food and water for each 

of the three main camps, currently with a population of over 393,000 refugees. As 

part of this latest influx of refugees CARE is working with our partners in the U.N. 

and other INGOs to provide immediate food, shelter materials, and support to victims of sexual and gender based violence. CARE is extending our water delivery system within the camps to the temporary areas where new arrivals wait for allocation 

to a space within the camps. 

In Dadaab, we are experiencing an influx of over 1,500 new refugees arriving 

every day, many of them severely malnourished. This has put enormous pressure 

on already overstretched resources in the refugee camps. While CARE immediately 

scaled up its capacity and initiated emergency response to the situation, no organization could have prepared for the dramatic influx of new refugees. CARE is working alongside UNHCR and the World Food Programme to ensure refugees in the 

camps are receiving live-saving support they desperately need. The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration provides support to this vital 

emergency programming in Dadaab. 

Apart from this work with the refugees arriving from Somalia, CARE also works 

with the Kenyan communities of the northeast to rehabilitate water facilities, to 

provide cash through relief work programs, and to partner with the Government of 

Kenya in disease surveillance and vaccination of the remaining animals that these 

pastoralist communities rely upon. Our approach is strongly focused on building the 

capacity of communities to manage their own water resources, rangelands and environment as the changing climate will bring more erratic rainfall and drought years 

in the future. It is essential that the assistance provided by the international community and the Government of Kenya emphasizes that the humanitarian response 

can help to increase resilience, instead of increasing the vulnerability and dependence on external support that can result from such interventions. 

CARE has a longstanding presence in Ethiopia, working in the country for over 

25 years. Because CARE has ongoing long-term programming in Borena zone of 

southern Ethiopia, most of which focuses on helping communities to build resiliency 

to climactic shocks, we began raising the likelihood of La Nina drought almost exactly a year ago. As that unfortunate projection has become reality, CARE has been 

45

able to scale up its response interventions in close collaboration with local communities and government. To date, CARE’s emergency response activities in Ethiopia 

have reached a quarter of a million people, providing them with food, water and 

sanitation, nutritional support and livelihoods assistance. Some of these interventions are literally and immediately life-saving, while others are aimed at saving 

lives in the months ahead. For example, by slaughtering cattle no longer fit for the 

market—with small cash payment to owners and meat distributed amongst the 

neediest—families receive some much-needed cash to meet immediate needs and the 

burden on dwindling pasture and water resources reduced, improving survival rates 

of the culled herds and reducing the burden on the environment. Although the situation is already quite dire throughout much of southern Ethiopia, even if the next 

rains are better than projected they will not arrive for several weeks. In anticipation 

of a worsening drought, therefore, CARE is increasing the intensity of its efforts, 

especially in the rehabilitation of water points and provision of nutritional support. 

CARE’s interventions in Somalia are also aimed at addressing the long-term underlying causes of the problems as well as responding to the immediate crises 

caused by drought and conflict. Many parts of Somalia have experienced several cycles of drought, which has affected the coping capacity of communities. It takes a 

goat or sheep 5 months to reproduce, and with the successive cycles of drought, we 

have seen a major erosion of people’s asset base, with many people having lost hundreds of sheep or goats and dozens of camels and cattle. In drought-affected areas 

of North Somalia we support a large-scale cash relief program, doing both cash for 

work as well as immediate cash handouts to the most vulnerable within the community. Other emergency work comprises of supplementary feeding, provision of water 

and sanitation and nonfood items for IDPs. In some cases our staff does direct programming, and in some cases we work through partners. In all cases we have rigorous processes in place to verify quality and quantity of the works, and ensure that 

money ends up with the right people. The situation on the ground is extremely complex. Even in the remote parts of the North control by regional governments is at 

times limited and needs strong community involvement to help ensure disputes are 

resolved and access is maintained. 

The majority of the refugees displaced or fleeing Somalia are women and children. 

Since January, 2011, approximately 70 percent of those arriving at the camps in 

Dadaab are women-headed households. To support the newly arriving refugees, 

CARE has increased its capacity to respond, particularly for vulnerable women and 

girls. In addition to severe malnutrition, the deep psychological affects that drought 

and subsequent movement can have on the women refugees are immense. We have 

witnessed high levels of anxiety, panic, and trauma due to loss of family members 

along the way, what U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director, Josette 

Sheeran, aptly referred to as ‘‘roads of death.’’ These women are sharing with our 

staff stories of rape, violence, and hunger. Compounding the problems for the thousands of female refugees fleeing conflict and hunger in the Horn of Africa is the 

threat of rape and sexual violence. According to recent UNHCR reports, the number 

of sexual and gender-based violence cases has quadrupled: 358 incidents reported 

from January–June 2011 in comparison with 75 during the same period in 2010. 

At CARE’s reception center screening tents in two of the refugee camp numbers 

have more than doubled. 

FAMINE IN SOMALIA

On July 20, the U.N. declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia: Bakol 

and Lower Shabelle. The daily death toll due to malnutrition in these regions has 

surpassed 2 per 10,000 people, while around 40 percent of children are acutely malnourished. In some regions the mortality rate is now 6 per 10,000 people per day. 

It is feared that all southern and central regions will be in a similar famine situation within the next 6–8 weeks if immediate measures are not taken to provide 

emergency relief. Overall, there are more than 3.7 million Somalis that need urgent 

lifesaving assistance. Tens of thousands of people have died, and tens of thousands 

more will die if aid is not scaled up. The current dry season extends to September, 

and even after that it will take people months to recover. The crisis is therefore expected to last at least until the end of the year. 

What is needed is food and/or cash assistance, nutritional support to malnourished children, water, sanitation and health services. In the 1992 famine a large 

proportion of deaths were due to preventable diseases impacting on a severely weakened population. With the rainy season approaching and the large numbers of IDPs 

in Somalia, this is a major concern for humanitarian workers. 

Somalia is a complex emergency as both drought and conflict continue to take 

human lives and are forcing people to migrate to other areas in search for food and 

46

shelter. The situation has gradually deteriorated over the course of a number of 

years, eroding people’s coping capacity. Tens of thousands of people who have lost 

everything they owned due to the drought are on the move, both inside and outside 

Somalia. This is true both in the south of Somalia, as well as in the north of the 

country, over the last 2 years, we have seen a gradual increase in numbers of people 

moving from rural areas to towns and cities after losing all their livestock. Many 

people from the south are moving to the camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, whilst other 

are moving to camps in the north of the country. Furthermore, despite being the 

site of active conflict, UNHCR reports that over 100,000 IDPs have moved to the 

city of Mogadishu. 

CARE’s interventions in Somalia aim to both address the long term underlying 

causes of the recurring drought crises as well as respond to the immediate humanitarian needs caused by drought and conflict. Our emergency work comprises of supplementary feeding, cash relief, water and sanitation, and nonfood items for IDPs, 

including basic survival items, such as plastic sheeting for shelter, buckets for gathering water, and utensils for cooking. The unfolding catastrophe in Somalia has 

spilled over into other countries of the region. The best way to minimize the impact 

of the famine and to support affected communities is to provide aid directly to communities where they live rather than people having to become refugees and IDPs 

in order to access humanitarian assistance. 

Humanitarian agencies are trying in very difficult circumstances to ensure that 

desperately needed aid can reach the most vulnerable people within the region, the 

majority of them women and children. All of us are very aware that delays are costing lives. However, the ongoing conflict in the south means that it is much more 

difficult to get aid to this part of the country. A number of agencies have started 

scaling up their activities in south central, but it will still come too late for tens 

of thousands of Somalis living in this area, with women and children expected to 

suffer the most. Agencies with an established presence in the south are likely be 

able to respond more effectively to the needs of communities in these areas than 

new agencies or agencies that have left the south. While CARE does not currently 

have an operational presence in the south, we are doing what we can to support 

others that do. 

Compounding the problem is that aid is at risk of becoming politicized in this environment, and it is important for all sides to the conflict to let common humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality guide any of the discussions on humanitarian assistance. We urge governments around the world, including the U.S. 

Government, to avoid strong political statements that have the potential to enflame 

local sensitivities and thereby further reduce humanitarian access. The crisis is happening now, and it needs concerted, thoughtful, careful diplomatic work of U.N., donors and NGOs to get aid to the victims of famine where ever they are. Now is the 

time to ensure there is space to reach out to all parties of the conflict and work 

to save the lives of tens of thousands of Somalis. At the same time we urge all local 

authorities in southern Somalia to grant uninhibited and unconditional access to the 

people affected by the drought. 

CARE urges all donors, including, the United States, to review and ease legal hurdles impeding provision of emergency assistance in Somalia. We anticipate that the 

legal restrictions are most acute in those areas controlled by armed opposition 

groups. Increased flexibility will ensure that organizations can more easily program 

funding in areas that otherwise might not be reached, therefore fully leveraging the 

generosity of our donors. We understand and highly value the need for accountability of aid; aid agencies are therefore doing their utmost to ensure aid reaches 

beneficiaries and no aid is diverted to armed groups on either side of the conflict. 

We also understand and take seriously our compliance responsibilities under U.S. 

law. We anticipate, however, that the ability of humanitarian actors to adhere to 

these compliance responsibilities will likely to be tested in areas firmly controlled 

by prohibited entities. 

We applaud the recent steps taken by the U.S. Government to loosen legal restrictions relating to programs funded by USAID and the Department of State. However, 

questions remain as to the ability of U.S. organizations to program funding from 

non-U.S. Government donors such as the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO), the Department for International Development (DfID), 

and others, as well as private U.S. donors including foundations and corporations. 

We anticipate that funding from such donors will be significant. We therefore urge 

the U.S. Government to take additional steps to provide relief from certain legal 

risks for U.S. organizations providing famine relief in areas controlled by prohibited 

entities, such as the issuance of a General License from the Office of Foreign Asset 

Controls (OFAC) allowing U.S. persons to engage in certain transactions that may 

be incidental to the delivery of humanitarian relief in Somalia. Historical and illusVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:18 Jan 27, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARIN~1\112THC~1\2011IS~1\080311~1.TXT BETTY
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trative precedent for this practice exists, including the earthquake response in Bam, 

Iran in 2004, and more recently in Gaza. Additionally, we request expedited processing and favorable consideration of any specific licenses that U.S. organizations 

may seek with respect to their work in Somalia, as well as guidance that will allow 

organizations to fully understand OFAC licensing policy. 

LONG-TERM NEEDS

While focusing in the immediate term on the acute needs of the populations in 

the Horn of Africa, we also must look at building longer term resilience among poor, 

vulnerable populations throughout developing countries. 

We must work to address the underlying causes of hunger and poverty. Within 

our programs in the Horn of Africa, CARE continuously emphasizes the need to 

tackle the long-term, underlying causes of poverty. We are helping to break the 

cycle of hunger and to adapt to the changing climate and reoccurring draughts. In 

Kenya, for example, CARE focuses on disaster risk reduction measures lead by local 

communities to create resilience. This includes natural resource management, livestock marketing, as well as activities to improve community capacity in business 

management and marketing skills. CARE works with communities to diversify their 

livelihood sources, such as milk marketing, beekeeping and fodder production, and 

protect assets to reduce the longer term debilitating impacts of crisis and shock. 

CARE strongly supports the Obama administration’s Feed the Future Initiative 

to reduce global hunger and poverty though a comprehensive whole-of-government 

approach to increase global agriculture sector growth and improve nutritional status, especially women and children. CARE supported legislation introduced in the 

last Congress by the ranking member of the full committee, Senator Lugar, with 

support from others on the committee, including Chairman Kerry—the Global Food 

Security Act, which passed this committee, but unfortunately that is as far as it got. 

One of the lessons learned in the current crisis in the Horn is evident in Ethiopia, 

where CARE, USAID, and other partners have been working in partnership with 

the Government of Ethiopia on a Productive Safety Net Program launched in 2005—

the Household Income Building and Rural Empowerment for Transformation 

(HIBRET) program. This program is aimed at protecting resource poor households 

while preventing asset depletion at the household level. Programs like this have 

helped to increase community resilience in Ethiopia and reduced the number of 

Ethiopians requiring humanitarian assistance during this drought compared to the 

last serious drought in 2002–2003. Investing in social safety net programs those in 

Ethiopia is critical to alleviating chronic hunger and poverty. 

Research indicates that climate change will lead to more frequent, severe, and intense extreme weather events—like droughts as well as floods and storms. What we 

also know from what communities are telling us on the ground is that weather patterns in the Horn of Africa have significantly changed over the last 10 years, with 

rains less predictable now than they were before. The world’s poor and marginalized 

populations are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. They 

live on the edge of crisis already, and climate change threatens to push them off 

that edge. Women are often among the most vulnerable within communities and 

households because they are often tasked with collecting food and water—climate 

sensitive tasks that (as we can see in the Horn of Africa) become much more difficult in the face of extreme climate conditions. 

It is critical to build the resilience of these populations to climate impacts and 

shocks. Building resilience among vulnerable populations is about increasing their 

ability to be flexible in the face of uncertainty and to access the resources and opportunities they need to adapt. At the same time, we must also tackle the underlying causes of their vulnerability. These efforts include: supporting livelihood diversification, promoting savings and insurance schemes to provide a safety net for 

vulnerable populations, community and government led early warning systems and 

other drought preparedness measures. We need to support men and women to access the resources, rights and opportunities they need to adapt to their changing 

environment, their ability to access land and water, and women’s ability to expand 

their control over household income, by supporting education work and activities 

that address women’s ability to shape their own destiny inside and outside the 

household. 

And while some will disagree on the cause of drought, the reality on the ground 

in the Horn is that the weather patterns have changed—be it through climate 

change or other causes—and we must provide adequate resources for the mitigation 

and adaptation to our changing climate. 

48

RECOMMENDATIONS

Given the gravity of the situation we suggest a number of recommendations to 

be implemented urgently:

1. While efforts to date by the USG to ease legal restrictions applicable to U.S. 

Government-funded programs in areas controlled by prohibited entities are commendable, we implore the USG to extend the relaxation of these restrictions to all 

possible funding sources available to U.S. organizations. This may be achieved in 

two ways: first, the issuance of a General License from OFAC allowing U.S. persons 

to engage in certain transactions that may be incidental to the famine response; and 

second, the favorable and expeditious processing of specific license requests from 

U.S. organizations. The NGO community stands ready to engage the appropriate 

USG agencies to develop these constructive options to alleviate the effects of famine. 

2. Expanded and speed up funding for the crisis in Somalia to match the needs, 

but also to match the urgency of the response. The crisis is happening now, and we 

need to ensure that funding is available for spending within the next few weeks—

not in several months down the line. Hence we need urgent support from donor 

agencies within the U.S. Government to reduce the lead-time for funding and reduce 

the turnaround time on proposals. 

3. Invest in the long-term resiliency and livelihood protections. While we must address the immediate humanitarian crisis at hand in the Horn of Africa, we should 

also take a long-term approach to addressing the underlying cause of hunger and 

mitigate future impacts of disasters. Investments in programs that support livelihoods and resiliency of at-risk populations are critical to both saving lives and saving money, by reducing the far more expensive response necessary to address future 

crisis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to answering any questions, you and 

members of the committee have.

Senator COONS. Thank you very much, Mr. Schaap. 

I hear a common theme. Obviously there are both naturally 

caused or occurring climate-driven causes for this regional drought 

and famine, but also those that arise directly from al-Shabaab and 

its control of a significant area. There are some real concerns both 

about the security and logistics of getting into the area, but in a 

more pressing way about the United States and the interaction 

between several of our agencies and departments. The opportunity 

now through OFAC now to get a license. 

Mr. Konyndyk, you also had raised some concerns or questions 

about the implementation of the new OFAC license opportunity Mr. 

Schaap also reflected on. We are grateful for the role that CARE 

and Mercy Corps and others play. 

Mr. Schaap raised an issue about how NGOs who receive funding 

other than directly from the United States Government would operate, some unresolved questions about the license. Would you 

expand a little bit, as you suggested in your statement you would 

like to, concerns about implementation and clarity about the necessary path forward for us to deliver assistance appropriately and 

in a multilateral way? 

Mr. KONYNDYK. I am sorry. I would associate myself with Mr. 

Schaap’s comments. As we understand it, and we were only briefed 

on this yesterday afternoon, so we are still digesting it, and we all 

have armies of lawyers who are reviewing this and whatnot. Our 

understanding at this point is that the license that has been issued 

would only apply to programs that are wholly or partly funded by 

the U.S. Government. And so, if our agencies are working there 

doing discrete programs that do not receive U.S. Government funding or wishing to do that, that would not be covered by the license 

that was issued apparently last Friday. 

49

Senator COONS. So, your concern, if I understand correctly, from 

both of you on behalf of your organizations, is that relief efforts 

that are not directly funded by the U.S. Government may still put 

your organizations at some legal risk——

Mr. KONYNDYK. That is correct. 

Senator COONS [continuing]. If they are operating within south 

Somalia. 

Mr. KONYNDYK. That is correct. And then the other——

Senator COONS. And then the other hope that can be resolved 

promptly. 

Mr. KONYNDYK. Yes, we hope so as well. The other concern on 

the implementation is just that at this point per our understanding, USAID has all the authorities and clearances that it needs, 

and it is going to be a matter of how they then translate that in 

terms of what applies to their partners. And that will be a discussion that we will be having with them in the coming days. 

Senator COONS. And all three of you and the previous panel emphasized the time is of the essence, that there are literally tens of 

thousands of children who are starving, and hundreds of thousands 

who are at risk of or are on the verge of starvation. Would further 

bureaucratic delay in resolving these issues strike you as cruel and 

inappropriate? 

Mr. KONYNDYK. Your words, not mine, Senator. I certainly think 

that the administration is moving now with great urgency to try 

and clear these things out of the way. I think that what we were 

told yesterday is an important step forward and a sign of sincere 

good faith on the part of the administration in resolving these 

things. I hope that we are now to a point of detailed negotiations 

rather than kind of big picture political will, and I do think that 

is the case. 

But as I said in my remarks, and as I expand on them in my 

written testimony, I do think there is a larger issue here that bears 

exploration going forward by the Congress and the administration 

of why it even got to this point. I mean, can we find some ways 

of reviewing the law on this so that we do not have to go through 

this long, drawn-out bureaucratic process in order to do what generally everyone agrees should be done in the first place. 

Senator COONS. Doctor, let us turn to the question of al-Shabaab. 

Understandably, they are subject to sanctions by the United States. 

We have done everything we can to restrict their opportunity to 

gain funding for their terrorist activities. 

You referenced both in your written testimony and the testimony 

you just gave to us that there is real opportunity here because of 

some tensions within the organization. Speak, if you would, just a 

little bit further about whether it is appropriate for us to be issuing 

broad licenses and allowing humanitarian assistance in, if it might 

further strengthen this terrorist organization. 

Dr. PHAM. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, the question of al-Shabaab 

really is to understand that it is not a monolithic organization. 

Senator COONS. Right. 

Dr. PHAM. At its core is a very radicalized, extremist leadership 

with very close connections to some very dangerous people in other 

parts of the world, and we need to be seriously concerned. They 

50

have operational reach and have shown themselves capable of carrying out its acts in neighboring countries as well. 

That being said, however, the organization itself is broken up. It 

is a marriage of convenience. Some of the factions that are now in 

al-Shabaab, a year ago were possibly with the government; next 

year—these are clan factions and militias. And this is an opportunity. Some of them in places I can name—Harardhere, for example—have stated, ‘‘Bring us aid. We are willing to switch allegiances.’’ So, there is an opportunity. 

And this is why the secondary track, the track two policy that 

Assistant Secretary Carson announced last year, is important. We 

need to get that going. It was announced a year ago, but we still 

have not really developed it. This is the type of program that would 

allow us to have the information and the partners on the ground 

who can distinguish where are the areas we can work in. 

Right now, it is a theory—it is a concept, a very valid one, but 

we really have not worked it out as well as we should have. 

Senator COONS. So, if I understand you correctly, like most 

groups, it is made up of a variety of different splinter groups, some 

that are hardcore jihadists bent on international terror, others 

that, frankly, are local either clan or tribal groups that are aligned 

with al-Shabaab sort out of convenience. 

You mentioned in your testimony before there is reason to believe that they may be holding by force or threat of force thousands 

of potential refugees who could find assistance elsewhere in Kenya 

or Ethiopia. Why would you think they might be doing that? 

Dr. PHAM. Several reasons. First, because there have been several districts actually in lower and middle Shabelle where they did 

not exercise that type of control, and now they rule literally a 

desert. A 100 percent of the people are gone, 100 percent of the 

livestock is dead. They have a desert to themselves. They can enjoy 

it. So, quite pragmatically, if you are trying to seek control of territory, you want a population. 

Second, and this gets into some of the quandaries of aid delivery, 

I think they have gambled as well that eventually aid is going to 

flow, and this is where we have to be careful how we allow that 

to flow. And, therefore, the more—and we have had this experience 

in Somalia; I was in there in the 1990s when it happened—the 

more refugees you have, the more displaced persons, the more 

resources will flow to your area, not necessarily to those people, but 

resources you can divert. 

So, some of them may very well be simply holding people so they 

can increase head count and rent seeking behavior. 

Senator COONS. One other country in the region we have not referenced at all today is Eritrea, one of the most totalitarian regimes 

in the world, that there is really very little information about the 

conditions on the ground, about the humanitarian needs, if I understand that correctly. As I was looking at maps, it was literally 

blank in terms of data. Any insight from any members of the panel 

on the likely humanitarian situation in Eritrea, also a country 

where the tension between the security situation, the governance 

situation, and the humanitarian situation is unresolved and with 

an unclear path? 

51

Dr. PHAM. If I may begin, Senator, just to give one index of how 

bad the situation probably is in Eritrea, somewhere around slightly 

under 50,000 people have crossed the border into Ethiopia. It is a 

mine laden trap, and these people have risked everything, not just 

to walk across the desert, but a minefield, to get over the border—

these are the survivors. And so, that just says something about the 

level of desperation. 

I have met people who have made that passage, who have become refugees. I have spoken with them, and the situation is pretty 

dire. 

Senator COONS. Thank you. I have further questions, but I will 

yield to Senator Isakson. 

Senator ISAKSON. Mr. Konyndyk, I want to ask you a specific 

question regarding what you referred to as a systemic problem in 

the administration regarding licensing. Is the systemic problem too 

much bureaucracy? 

Mr. KONYNDYK. I do not know if I would say there is too much 

bureaucracy. I mean, I think that, you know, what we have—there 

are different agencies that have different priorities and different 

angles on some of these issues. And the setup we have right now 

in terms of the legal restrictions, the OFAC restrictions, what is 

prohibited in terms of what is considered to be material support, 

makes it, I think, very difficult for those different agencies that all 

have a stake in this to resolve this sort of thing quickly. 

Our suggestion would be to look at, maybe as a first step, to our 

understanding, the Patriot Act exempts medical supplies and religious materials from the definition of what would constitute material support. We would be interested in exploring whether that 

carve-out could be broadened to include other sorts of urgent 

humanitarian assistance in situations like this so that it would not 

require a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process to enable aid agencies to have the legal permissions they need to respond in this kind 

of situation. 

Senator ISAKSON. On that point, Dr. Pham, it is my understanding, well, I know, in fact, in your testimony you said that in 

many cases local NGOs are better equipped to deliver aid than 

might be a nonresident NGO. And SAACID, I think, is a group of 

Somali women that deliver support within Somalia, but would 

probably be prohibited from having assets because of this restriction that it only be United States delivered funds. Is that correct? 

Dr. PHAM. Well, Senator, SAACID—to cite that specific NGO, 

one of their problems was that they were falsely accused about a 

year and a half ago in a U.N. report of having made payoffs to

al-Shabaab. They were exonerated in the subsequent U.N. followup 

report, but that meant 18 months where they were cut off from the 

international funding. And those were 18 months they lost. 

But they work very effectively by partnering with traditional 

clan elders, local community members, and that is their protection. 

During the period of fighting in Mogadishu, they were only entity, 

governmental or not, that had operations in all 16 districts of the 

city. It is a tremendous organization today. And the scale of what 

they are delivering is amazing, so I want to pay tribute to them. 

If I can turn back—I know my two colleagues are somewhat constrained by relationships to comment on the——

52

Senator ISAKSON. That is why I asked you——

Dr. PHAM. Yes. We focus a lot, and we are Americans—we focus 

a lot on perhaps obstacles in our own processes. I think we also—

in fairness also look at obstacles at the international level. The 

World Food Programme works on a 3-month delivery cycle. How is 

it—and I ask myself, how is that knowing that this was coming 

down the line, although they are a major resource in the region, 

they did not put more food in the region? Over the weekend, they 

had two flights that for all intents and purposes to Badoa and 

Mogadishu were for show. They took 4 tons of Plumpy to Badoa, 

about 14 tons, I understand, to Mogadishu. 

SAACID is the NGO we spoke on earlier, in a month goes 

through 65 tons just in Mogadishu alone. So, 4 tons is helpful, but 

it really was more for the cameras than anything else frankly. 

Senator ISAKSON. Well, I wanted to be quite clear. I understand 

that it is important that the administration and our country do 

everything they can to prohibit U.S. aid getting into terrorist 

hands, and that is one of the reasons for some of the restrictions. 

But when you do reach a crisis point in a humanitarian problem 

like this, it seems like there ought to be expedited procedures, or 

else the people you are trying to help are going to be dead. And 

that is the comment that I was trying to get to, because there is 

no question these organizations in Africa operate on cash flow from 

corruption. And many of them are organizations that are affiliated 

with al-Qaeda or with other nefarious groups around the world. 

But it is important with this many people at threat of losing their 

lives that we have an expedited procedure to the maximum extent 

possible. 

I noted that Bob Laprade was supposed to testify today, but you 

are in his place. That causes me to make an observation for the 

people here today. Mr. Laprade, who is with CARE International, 

could not be here today because he is suffering from malaria. That 

reminded me that my first trip with CARE to Ethiopia, in Awaze 

Ethiopia, the CARE representative that I worked with also had 

malaria. And so, I want to thank you for the risk that you take in 

very dangerous parts of the world to deliver humanitarian aid and 

hope. People do not, I think, sometimes equate the risk and the exposure of their own health that CARE and many other NGOs like 

it put themselves in to help other people. So, thank you for doing 

that. 

One last question for Dr. Pham. You talked in your remarks 

about al-Shabaab keeping people from getting help. They are actually stopping refugees from leaving the country to get help. Is that 

correct? 

Dr. PHAM. From sources on the ground that I have spoken with 

in the last 24 hours, there appear in lower Shabelle to be three different areas. One appears to be a camp of sorts where they are 

actually holding people. Two are just areas where they have created enough violence around them more or less to corral them in, 

so it is not a guarded situation, but it is a threatening one. And 

they are preventing people in, it appears in two of those cases, 

from heading to Mogadishu, crossing the line over to the area controlled by the African Union peacekeepers where aid can get to 

them. A hundred thousand people have already crossed, and 

53

they’re preventing more from going. The other area seems to be to 

prevent people from heading south toward Kenya. 

Senator ISAKSON. And the goal is to just strike fear in the population, or what? 

Dr. PHAM. I think it is several fold, and I think it is hard to 

disaggregate. One, to keep people that they can still rule. They 

aspire to rule and ruling on empty land is not what they were planning to do. And, two, I think some of it might be local interests of 

local al-Shabaab commanders to have people as resources, because 

people will attract aid, which they hope they will be able to tax, 

divert, or otherwise tap into. 

Senator ISAKSON. Last quick question. One of the big problems 

in Africa is in a lot of cases, organizations will use rape and violence against women as a tool of accomplishing their end goal. Do 

your people on the ground give you any indication that al-Shabaab 

is using that as a tool? 

Dr. PHAM. I am not getting reports of anything. There are cases 

of violence against women very clearly, and some of those are being 

documented, but not as a systematic attempt to exert control or 

terror, unlike other tragic cases in Africa. 

Mr. SCHAAP. May I——

Senator ISAKSON. Yes. 

Mr. SCHAAP [continuing]. Add a point on that? In various camps 

in the region, sexual violence against women is a serious problem, 

and not just within in Somalia, but also outside. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you very much for testifying today, all 

of you. 

Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COONS. I would like to follow up, if I could, Mr. Schaap, 

on a comment you made earlier in response to the earthquake that 

was in Iran. I think 2003 that there was an exception to the licensing procedure by OFAC that was granted more broadly that might 

be a useful example here. Could you elaborate on that? 

Mr. SCHAAP. I do not have the technical details as such, but we 

can get back to you on that. 

Senator COONS. I mean, certainly from all of our witnesses today, 

we are looking for a responsible, swift, and appropriate path forward. I understand that—just by my comment earlier—I understand that different entities within the United States Government 

are charged with enforcing different legal obligations, and that 

sometimes the desire for prompt and effective humanitarian assistance runs up against the barriers that we put in place in order to 

prevent assistance from being provided, wittingly or unwittingly, to 

those who are also enemies of the United States and pose a real 

threat to the international order. 

I would be interested in your input, if I could—it is for my three 

questions here—first, about future planning, about how the United 

States can better assist the countries in the region, particularly 

here in the Horn of Africa, where the climactic conditions seem to 

be worsening. How do we help them build resilience, sustainable 

capacity, to deal with these crises so that we do not face them 

periodically? 

Second, several of you have referenced threatened cuts to U.S. 

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posed—I think Mr. Konyndyk suggested it was a 30-percent cut 

over last year, 50 percent over the year 2008 funding levels. How 

do you see our efforts to sustain American engagement with development, with assistance, playing out, and what suggestions might 

you have for us on how to help the average American understand 

why there is value in doing this, not just from a humanitarian perspective, but a strategic perspective? 

Mr. SCHAAP. I think the need for recovery and resilience programming is extremely high, and I think it is important to get the 

planning for that started now even while we are in such crisis. 

There are other things that NGOs and others are doing in these 

areas around ensuring livestock health, ensuring improvement of 

natural resource management, vocational training to diversify the 

income streams that people have. CARE does a little work on savings groups to help ensure asset diversification so people have 

some liquid assets during a drought. 

So, there are a lot of things that can be done, and this needs to 

be scaled up in response to the drought because people have lost 

all of their assets. And we want to avoid a situation where after 

this drought and after this massive crisis, because it is going to be 

massive, people are left for a long period of time while agencies are 

planning for recovery and resiliency programming afterward. 

If I may add a point on your earlier comment on bureaucratic 

obstacles and aid delivery coming through quickly, this is a serious 

concern. We are looking at a 2- or 3-month window of opportunity 

in which we can still save lives. The pace we have seen, not just 

with U.S. Government donors, but other donors as well, it take 

multiple, multiple months to get through the process. And the 

added complications of U.S. antiterrorist regulations have added 

significant periods of time. And that’s really worrying also going 

forward now that we have a short timeframe to prevent more 

deaths. 

Senator COONS. Thank you, Mr. Schaap. 

Mr. Konyndyk. 

Mr. KONYNDYK. Yes, I would, again, fully endorse what Mr. 

Schaap has said about the need to build resiliency. The sorts of 

programs that the U.S. Government has funded many of its partners to do in Ethiopia, in Kenya, are a really important reason why 

the impact of the drought there is not as severe as what we are 

seeing in southern Somalia. 

I mean, it is important to note that regardless of the political and 

security factors, the lack of sustained development programming 

going back years in southern Somalia, far before the current political configuration was in place, is a significant factor in why it is 

so much worse there. 

And looking forward, we need to invest in a response right now 

that is not thinking just about the next 3 months but about the 

next 5 to 10 years, and trying to rebuild people’s resiliency and 

livelihoods as quickly as possible. 

In terms of the U.S. Government’s support, the specific USAID 

budgets and engaging the American public, we have been very concerned so far that this situation does not seem to have really broken through yet in terms of the American consciousness in a way 

that the recent crises in Haiti and Japan did. I think that—there 

55

is a very clear link between the level of American public engagement in a crisis and the level of private donations and private support that the public provides, but also then the level of support 

that the U.S. Government is motivated to provide. 

And so, I think that obviously we strongly support the accounts 

that I mentioned earlier, and we think that protecting those is critical. But it is also really important for U.S. political leaders to, I 

think, to signal to the American people just how serious this situation is. After the crisis in Haiti, the President and the First Lady 

were very vocal about the needs there, about the importance of providing aid there. We have not seen that level of engagement out 

of the White House yet, and I think that that would be really important and really helpful. I understand the President has been 

dealing with some other issues lately, but hopefully in the coming 

month we can see more engagement on that. 

And I think as well, you know, for Members of Congress, all of 

them are going back to their districts now for recess. I think this 

is an important to discuss with your constituents. And we would 

love to see, you know, joint calls from the Congress and the administration for greater American engagement. Thank you. 

Senator COONS. Thank you. 

Senator Isakson. 

Senator ISAKSON. Following up, Mr. Konyndyk, what guarantee 

or assurance does Mercy Corps give that the funds made available 

to it actually get to the needy communities? 

Mr. KONYNDYK. Well, we have a range of measures in place for 

that. As with any private American charity, there are laws and 

procedures that are in place. We get audited every year and we 

make those audit findings public. Those audits are very, very intensive, and they are every year. 

We also are part of and collaborate with various accountability 

networks within our sector. There is a group called Interaction, 

which is sort of the umbrella organization for all American international charities, which has member standards that we adhere to 

that get to exactly that. And then also, as a partner of the U.S. 

Government, there are very, very rigorous standards that we have 

to adhere to in order to qualify for U.S. Government funding. 

So, there are a lot of kind of overlapping accountability standards 

and audits, and all of those things which help to hold us to 

account. 

Senator ISAKSON. In those standards, or in your own internally 

controlled standards, is there an acceptable amount of—I understand we are dealing in very difficult areas of the world and very 

difficult circumstances is there an acceptable level of leakage and 

then one upon which there is no tolerance? 

Mr. KONYNDYK. There is no—you never want to say ‘‘here is our 

acceptable level of leakage,’’ because then you will be sure to get 

that level of leakage. 

Senator ISAKSON. Right. I understand that is how things get 

worse. 

Mr. KONYNDYK. So, I mean, our priority is absolutely to ensure 

that the aid gets where it is supposed to go. I think that we have 

a very low tolerance for leakage. It is always on a case-by-case 

basis. Looking at Somalia specifically, and as I written in earlier 

56

articles on this, one of the factors that caused us to scale back our 

operations in the south back in 2010 even before we were formally 

expelled, was that we were seeing unacceptable levels of interference. And so, no level of leakage is really tolerable, and I think 

that what we are willing to work with is minimal, but it cannot be 

defined except on a case-by-case basis. 

Senator ISAKSON. Mr. Schaap is nodding his head in agreement 

with that answer I think, but I want to be sure and give you a 

chance to express yourself. 

Mr. SCHAAP. Yes. I just want to add to that is that there is also 

in Nairobi with agencies working in Somalia a constant dialogue 

about what mechanisms we have in place to severely limit the ability of diversion to happen. And there is the leadership of the U.N., 

the humanitarian coordinator on this has been quite strong in the 

last couple of months to really push back on those initiatives that 

have been pushing for taxation, et cetera, et cetera on the ground. 

And our systems internally are very tight to make sure that whatever we pledge to provide to beneficiaries are actually going to 

beneficiaries and not anywhere else. 

Senator ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COONS. Senator Isakson, thank you very much for joining me. I would like to thank Mr. Konyndyk, Dr. Pham, and Mr. 

Schaap for your personal service, for the risks you’ve taken, in 

order to deliver relief, for the leadership role that your organizations have taken, and for the insight you have given us and the 

world as folks have deliberated over this humanitarian crisis. 

As you have helped make clear today, this is the gravest humanitarian crisis facing the world today. It was foreseeable. It was one 

for which preparations were made and where there is investment 

that has made it less severe than it otherwise might have been. 

But it is one that can be expected to occur again because of the 

combination of governance, climactic, regional, economic, and social 

factors in the Horn of Africa. 

And so, it is my hope that we will be working together, the people of the United States, the nonprofit community, have private 

citizens to heighten public concern, to strengthen international 

engagement, to not just respond to this immediate and very real 

crisis that will likely take tens of thousands if not hundreds of 

thousands of lives, but to lay the groundwork for preventing a 

recurrence of this crisis, those parts of it that were entirely preventable. 

Senator Isakson and I share a view that Africa is a continent of 

enormous promise, and it is tragic to have this particular crisis be 

what most Americans will be seeing about Africa in the month 

ahead. It is my hope that they will be seeing more of it, and I am 

grateful for your role in highlighting and addressing this very serious humanitarian crisis. 

Thank you for your testimony. I will keep the record open for the 

Senators who were not able to join us today to submit statements 

until the close of business, Friday, August 5. 

Senator COONS. And this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:52 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

57

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN’S FUND (UNICEF) 

Chairman Coons, Senator Isakson, members of the subcommittee, thank you for 

focusing attention on the unfolding tragedy in the Horn of Africa, and for providing 

UNICEF with this opportunity to share our perspective on this devastating situation. 

This is a children’s crisis. The haunting images we have seen and the facts of this 

emergency speak for themselves. 

Across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, an estimated 2.3 million children are 

acutely malnourished. These are already among the world’s most disadvantaged 

children, living on the brink and becoming more vulnerable by the day, deprived of 

virtually every human need. More than a half million severely malnourished children are at risk of imminent death. Those children who do survive face huge threats 

to their physical and mental development. 

While the situation is most dire for those inside Somalia and the refugees arriving 

in Kenya and Ethiopia, a large number of people affected by the drought live outside 

the camps, in communities across the region. The impact of the drought is threatening people’s livelihood and, for the large nomadic population, their way of life. 

This is important to consider when we look beyond immediate life-saving needs, and 

focus on building resilience to avoid this situation in the future. 

UNICEF has worked in Somalia for decades. We are currently one of the few 

agencies operating in southern Somalia. We are gearing up to increase delivery of 

critical supplies to some of the hardest hit areas there. Over the next 2 months, we 

expect to expand blanket supplementary feeding to reach 150,000 families, including 

180,000 children under the age of 5 in Somalia. 

We are also planning to more than double the capacity for treatment of severe 

malnutrition in Somalia, increasing coverage from the current 7,500 children per 

month to at least 17,000 children per month through a network of over 200 outpatient therapeutic feeding facilities in southern Somalia. 

But food alone is not enough. For children, an effective response requires much 

more. To save their lives and safeguard their futures, we need an integrated response that includes miracle foods like Plumpy-Nut and therapeutic milk; 

breastfeeding support; clean water and proper sanitation; basic immunizations 

against killers like measles and polio; and child protection programs to keep children safe. In fact, in many instances it is diseases like these that kill children who 

are too weak from lack of food to fight infection. 

With our partner U.N. agencies, including the World Food Programme and the 

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF is doing everything we can to provide this critical support. This includes: supplying health clinics and outposts that 

serve an estimated 2.5 million women and children with sufficient essential drugs, 

vaccines, basic equipment and training; reaching millions of children with measles 

vaccinations, Vitamin A supplementation, and deworming. At the same time, we are 

working to expand access to education to hundreds of thousands of primary schoolage children, and we are working to establish 343 new Child Friendly Spaces to provide psychosocial support, recreational materials, food, education activities, health 

and hygiene education, and clean water for an additional 30,000 children. 

UNICEF is also scaling up our response in Kenya and Ethiopia in health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene promotion. In Kenya, an emergency measles 

vaccination campaign is underway for more than 230,000 children in Dadaab camp 

and neighboring host communities. We are leveraging this campaign to provide 

other emergency health interventions such as polio vaccinations, Vitamin A supplements, and deworming. 

In Ethiopia, we are expanding our response to measles outbreaks in droughtaffected areas for more than 650,000 children, and working with UNHCR for the 

vaccination of refugee children upon arrival as part of the routine screening. 

The need for all of us—U.N. agencies, NGOs like those represented at this hearing and others—to expand these efforts is urgent, and securing immediate funding 

is crucial. We at UNICEF greatly appreciate the generosity of the donor community, 

including the U.S. Government. And for the U.N. as a whole, public and private 

donors have committed more than US$1 billion this year to help respond to humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa. But there is a significant shortfall in funding. 

To reach the greatest number of children possible, we must close this gap as quickly 

as possible. 

As we noted at the outset, this is a children’s crisis. The magnitude of suffering 

and loss is tremendous, and the stakes have never been higher. With no significant 

harvest in sight for the next 6 months, this crisis may well deepen. But we must 

58

not despair. For we have the obligation, and potentially the means, to save literally 

hundreds of thousands of children’s lives—if we act now. 

Once again, we thank the subcommittee for its leadership in addressing this 

humanitarian catastrophe. 

RESPONSES OF ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR NANCY LINDBORG TO QUESTIONS

SUBMITTED BY SENATOR BENJAMIN L. CARDIN

LONG-TERM AGRICULTURAL INVESTMENT

Question. With over 12 million people in the Horn that currently need life-saving 

assistance and access to food, water, and sanitation, this crisis clearly requires a 

response now. However, it also points us back to the need for continued investment 

in long-term agricultural and food security programs. In order to put an end to the 

cycle of recurring crises and vulnerability in the Horn, we must continue to invest 

money in programs abroad that support infrastructure development such as roads 

and irrigation systems, value chain development, and environmentally sustainable 

agricultural practices. We need to expand economic opportunity for women, through 

strengthening their access to markets and decisionmaking power and help them to 

sustain economic livelihoods that can be resilient in the face of crisis. How can the 

U.S. Government and its partners ensure that they are not only responding to the 

current crisis but also working to lay the foundation for stronger, more sustainable 

local and regional food systems that can withstand crises and better respond to 

emergencies in the future?

Answer. This question is at the heart of our drought response as we see the positive impact of programs that have built resilience and the critical challenges of 

building longer term sustainability even as we meet emergency needs. 

In countries prone to cyclical droughts and floods, reducing social and economic 

vulnerability is a necessary step toward sustainable (and equitable) food security. 

The primary responsibility for this rests with government, which means that the 

prospects for reducing vulnerability in Somalia are unlikely to improve until a legitimate form of governance is in place. Even in Kenya and Ethiopia, despite good policy frameworks, governance issues contribute significantly to chronic vulnerability 

and food insecurity. However, both governments have publically committed to increasing their investment in these previously marginalized areas, and the U.S. Government is well positioned to work with other donors and development partners to 

align resources and programs in support of these efforts. 

The Senator’s question raises an issue that is at the heart of the Presidential 

Initiative, Feed the Future (FTF). While the bulk of resources provided directly 

through FTF tend to be focused on achieving broad-based agriculture growth, the 

initiative provides a framework for the integration of a wide range of program approaches necessary for increasing the resilience of households and communities to 

the impacts of repeated climatic shocks, including community management of acute 

malnutrition, disaster risk reduction, productive safety nets, livelihood diversification—all supported by food and other disaster relief programming. These are activities on which development programming can build, as long as appropriate levels of 

investment in those areas and commodities most likely to trigger and drive sustainable long-term economic growth can be maintained. This approach recognizes that 

in several of our Feed the Future focus countries—most notably Kenya and Ethiopia—a ‘‘comprehensive’’ approach to food security will require a deliberate focus on 

reducing chronic vulnerability as well as stimulating economic growth. 

The current crisis has underscored the need for a mechanism to increase coordination and resource integration. The Administrator has established a ‘‘Joint Planning 

Cell’’ (JPC) comprising humanitarian and development experts from the Kenya, 

Ethiopia, and Regional missions, and the Bureaus for Democracy, Conflict and 

Humanitarian Assistance; Food Security; Africa; Global Health; and Economic 

Growth, Agriculture, and Trade. 

Externally, we are working with the Africa Union, government counterparts, regional authorities, other donors, and development partners to ensure that emergency efforts are sustained while a process for coordinated action and investment 

in medium to longer term development in the region’s arid and semiarid lands—

those areas most vulnerable to climatic shocks and chronic food insecurity—is established. 

Momentum is building, and a series of high-level events in East Africa, the United 

Nations General Assembly, and the World Bank fall meetings, are being used to 

build an international coalition focused on this effort. The U.S. Government is increasingly looked to for leadership in the areas of early warning, nutrition, and cliVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:18 Jan 27, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00062 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARIN~1\112THC~1\2011IS~1\080311~1.TXT BETTY
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mate-sensitive agricultural research and development—the key components of sustainable global food security. We are in the position to leverage significant foreign 

and domestic development resources, however, we must continue to demonstrate a 

sustained level of commitment—of both humanitarian and development resources—

something that is increasingly being challenged in FY 2012 budget negotiations. 

CONSULTATION/ENGAGEMENT WITH WOMEN

Question. As in almost all crisis situations, women have been disproportionately 

impacted by the drought and famine in the Horn. Women and children have been 

identified as most vulnerable to malnutrition, communicable disease, and ultimately, death. Recently, Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg insists that women be 

front and center in the response to the crisis, not just as victims but as a key part 

of the solution. How are the U.S. Government and its partners involving women and 

women’s civil society organizations in the planning and execution of its programs 

and working to ensure that women are active participants in the response efforts?

Answer. The U.S. Government’s humanitarian assistance partners in the eastern 

Horn of Africa are taking steps to ensure that the most vulnerable community members, including women and children, are both targeted by the assistance and are 

able to participate in the response. From August 11 to 15, 2011, the USAID Disaster 

Assistance Response Team (DART) visited and conducted a focus group with Masai 

pastoralist women and girls in drought-affected Kajiado County, Kenya. USAID/

DART members, including a gender specialist, also conducted an assessment in 

Oromiya and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples (SNNP) regions to assess 

protection and gender mainstreaming in ongoing nutrition and water, sanitation, 

and hygiene programs. The assessment in both Kenya and Ethiopia found that relief 

agencies have put in place careful targeting procedures that involve communitywide consultation to ensure that the most vulnerable community members, including women and girls, are included in beneficiary lists. Additionally, agencies have 

put in place complaints procedures that enable community members to notify the 

relief agency if, for any reason, they do not receive assistance that was targeted for 

them. 

Relief agencies also design assistance to ensure that women and girls can participate in the response intervention. For example, agencies implementing cash-forwork programs design work activities that are physically feasible and culturally 

appropriate for women, and enable women to work on a flexible schedule, which allows them to both participate in income-generating opportunities and to attend to 

household responsibilities. USAID implementing partners also rely heavily on female health extension workers to implement health and nutrition programs in 

health posts and stabilization centers that target vulnerable women and children. 

The programs use gender-balanced teams and predominantly rely on female staff to 

attend to female patients. These health extension workers also make referrals in the 

communities they work in for the transport of women and children to stabilization 

centers, minimizing dangers they would face during long distance travel. 

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE

Question. Violence against women and girls is often severe in situations of crisis 

and natural disasters and the current famine in the Horn of Africa is no exception. 

Women and girls are facing rape and sexual violence as they travel to and live in 

refugee camps. Reports of sexual violence for the month of June alone are four times 

the amount from January through May. Women just arriving to camps, who are living in tents and makeshift shelters, consistently report sexual violence as a threat 

to fuel collection and access to basic services such as water and food. How are 

USAID and the Department of State working with humanitarian organizations and 

U.N. agencies to prevent and respond to this violence?

Answer. USAID strongly encourages its humanitarian partners to incorporate protection measures into all humanitarian assistance activities through protection 

mainstreaming. Protection mainstreaming seeks to minimize risks for harm, exploitation, and abuse for disaster-affected populations—including gender-based violence. 

Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to harm, exploitation, and exclusion, 

and many protection mainstreaming efforts are designed to ensure their inclusion, 

participation, and safety in accessing relief activities. 

There are a variety of ways in which USAID-funded relief programs in the Horn 

response are mainstreaming protection; for example, NGOs implementing cash-forwork and cash grant activities consult with all community members, including 

women and other potentially marginalized groups, to target the most vulnerable 

households. Additionally, relief agencies design cash-for-work activities and schedules that enable women to participate, by offering work activities that are culturally 

60

appropriate and safe for women, and by allowing a flexible schedule that enables 

women to manage both household responsibilities and income-generating activities. 

USAID’s implementing partners also consult with women and girls about the 

placement of water points, latrines, and distribution sites, to ensure that they are 

safely accessible for women and girls. To limit the risk for domestic violence when 

women are targeted with food assistance, humanitarian agencies may conduct 

awareness-raising within communities to explain to men and boys the reasons for 

providing assistance to the women, and pointing out to benefits to the entire household. In addition, USAID’s gender and protection advisors routinely review all NGO 

funding proposals to encourage potential partners to incorporate protection and gender mainstreaming efforts in their proposed activities. 

USAID also works closely with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) to ensure a coordinated USG response supporting refugee, host-community, and internally displaced populations. USAID is currently 

exploring opportunities with PRM to coordinate support for the provision of fuel 

efficient stoves with the multiple goals of preventing GBV during wood collection as 

well as mitigating tension between refugee and host community populations while 

reducing impact on the environment. 

RESPONSE OF DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY REUBEN BRIGETY TO QUESTION

SUBMITTED BY SENATOR BENJAMIN L. CARDIN

Question. Violence against women and girls is often severe in situations of crisis 

and natural disasters and the current famine in the Horn of Africa is no exception. 

Women and girls are facing rape and sexual violence as they travel to and live in 

refugee camps. Reports of sexual violence for the month of June alone are four times 

the amount from January through May. Women just arriving to camps, who are living in tents and makeshift shelters, consistently report sexual violence as a threat 

to fuel collection and access to basic services such as water and food.

• How are USAID and the Department of State working with humanitarian organizations and U.N. agencies to prevent and respond to this violence?

Answer. The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration 

(PRM) prioritizes the protection of refugee women and girls, including prevention 

and response to gender based violence (GBV), in all displacement crises, and has 

supported GBV interventions for refugees in the Horn of Africa and beyond for 

many years. Despite significant gains on this issue, the recent influx of new refugees is posing new challenges that require additional resources. Refugees are at 

particularly high risk during flight and upon arrival at camps where humanitarians 

are struggling to ramp up to keep pace with the rate of new arrivals (1,500 a day 

to Kenya and 100–300 a day to Ethiopia). Women and girls are particularly 

vulnerable. 

PRM is working with our main partner, the Office of the United Nations High 

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and nongovernmental organization (NGO) 

partners and has provided emergency funding to ensure that efforts to prevent and 

respond to GBV are scaled up. UNHCR has completed a rapid GBV assessment to 

identify priority interventions and also increased its registration capacity—a critical 

step in accessing services. UNHCR has also deployed protection and community 

services officers to both Kenya and Ethiopia and stood up protection teams to increase protection monitoring, systematically interview new arrivals and conduct border monitoring. It is also training implementing partners on vulnerability screening 

in order to fast track those with special needs through the registration process. 

PRM emergency funding to UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration 

(IOM), and NGO partners is supporting a number of activities including: (1) expansion of transportation for refugees from borders to camps to mitigate the risk of attack in transit, (2) awareness raising campaigns, particularly for new arrivals who 

may not know of services available, (3) referral pathways which inform humanitarian staff, survivors and communities about response procedures, (4) safe havens 

for survivors, (5) emergency medical interventions, (6) mental health services, (7) 

shelter, and (8) hygiene. PRM has also deployed staff to monitor the refugee response in Dadaab, Kenya, and in Ethiopia. 

While PRM is focused mainly on the refugee situation, we are working closely 

with colleagues at USAID to ensure a coordinated and thorough response as refugee-hosting communities are also very vulnerable and disputes over limited resources often incite GBV. USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) has 

provided nearly $80 million in support to drought-affected populations and USAID’s 

Office of Food for Peace has contributed nearly $400 million in food aid toward the 

crisis in the Horn, a portion of which goes to refugees but also to the drought-afVerDate 0ct 09 2002 13:18 Jan 27, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\HEARIN~1\112THC~1\2011IS~1\080311~1.TXT BETTY
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fected host communities. We are exploring with OFDA opportunities to support provision of fuel efficient stoves with the multiple goals of preventing GBV during wood 

collection as well as mitigating tension with host communities and reducing impact 

on the environment.

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