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Photo Gallery Dollow: Help inside Somalia

UNHCR provides assistance to Somali IDPs

All photos: UNHCR / S. Modola 

Dollow is a dusty Somali border town with a bridge, 3 km from the Dollo Ado refugee camps across the river in Ethiopia. But many of Dollow's most recent inhabitants are internally displaced people (IDPs) who have no intention of crossing the bridge - constructed with UNHCR's help over 20 years ago - to seek humanitarian assistance. Displaced by drought and famine from the Somali regions of Gedo, Bay and Bakool, these agro-pastoralists overwhelmingly express their wish to return home if the seasonal rains come in October and it is safe to do so. 

UNHCR and other UN agencies are providing aid through a variety of local NGOs. Shelter, emergency assistance packages and dry food rations are being distributed while a wet feeding centre provides much-needed sustenance to the estimated 2,000 IDPs in Dollow.

A spontaneous camp for internally displaced people is seen from the air near the town of Dollow in south-western Somalia. A severely malnourished child cries at the Kabasa transit centre. A woman displays a UNHCR registration card as she waits to receive aid supplies at the Kabasa transit centre. Women collect UNHCR relief items at the Kabasa transit centre. A group of internally displaced people (IDPs), comprising mostly women and children, wait to receive UNHCR aid supplies at the Kabasa transit centre.Forty-eight-year-old Marianne, her husband and their eight children fled their home village 40 kilometres away to this IDP camp in search of assistance. With a sick husband, Marianne singlehandedly supports the family by collecting and selling firewood. A mother clutches her baby and a UNHCR registration card as she waits to collect aid supplies at the Kabasa transit centre for IDPs in Dollow. Women and children queuing for aid distribution at Kabasa transit centre. Thirty-year-old Habon, with one of her eight children, left her village 20 days ago due to drought and violence. A family collects UNHCR aid supplies at the Kabasa transit centre. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres (Centre) and Sweden's Minister for International Development and Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson (2nd from Left) talk to a crowd of internally displaced people at Quanashely IDP site in Dollow, south-western Somalia.