EAST AFRICA: Rape Risk, Empty Refugee Camp, Aid Delays: E.Africa Drought Latest

The United Nations has described East Africa's drought as an emergency, one phase before famine, with more than 10 million people forced to rely on urgent food aid.

Here's a round-up of what some aid agencies are saying about the crisis, its impact and the responses to it:

Female refugees fleeing conflict and hunger in East Africa are facing the threat of rape and sexual violence on their journey to find food and help, CARE said.

The aid group has recorded 136 reported cases of sexual violence in two of its reception centres in northern Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp in the first half of the year, compared with 66 cases in the same period in 2010.

The most dangerous period for refugees is when they are on the move, CARE said. Women and girls are especially at risk of rape, abduction, illness and death on the journey, it added.

"The deep psychological affects that drought and subsequent movement can have on woman refugees is immense," Wilson Kisiero, CARE's gender and development officer in Dadaab, said in a statement.

"We have witnessed high levels of anxiety, panic and trauma due to loss of family members along the way and women are sharing stories of rape, violence and hunger."

Since the start of July around 11,000 people have fled to Ethiopia and more than 8,600 to Kenya. The number of people arriving on a daily basis is averaging 1,700 in Ethiopia and 1,300 people in Kenya, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said in a briefing note on Tuesday.

In southeast Ethiopia's Dollo Ado refugee camp, half of the children under the age of five arriving at the camp are malnourished, while a quarter of the children arriving in Kenya's Ifo camp are malnourished, it added.

On Monday, UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres met Kenyan Internal Security Minister George Saitoti and agreed on the need for the international community to organise humanitarian operations inside Somalia to tackle the hunger crisis. They also agreed that UNHCR and the Kenyan government would assess how to reorganise and expand Dadaab camp complex, UNHCR said.

On the topic of Dadaab, Oxfam says a new aid camp built to ease the overcrowding in the massive camp complex stands empty and unused, and effectively off-limits for the tens of thousands of arriving Somali refugees, who have crossed over the border into Kenya seeking help.

Oxfam said 60,000 new arrivals were sheltering in basic tents outside the camp boundaries, with limited access to clean water or toilets, risking an outbreak of disease.

"It is tragic that vulnerable families are trapped in limbo, forced to endure appalling conditions while there are fully functioning services right next door,” Joost van de Lest, head of Oxfam in Kenya, said in a statement. “Their basic needs are being ignored."

Unable to live in the new Ifo II camp, refugees have resorted to settling on community land which is exacerbating longstanding tensions between refugees and the local community, which is itself suffering severe shortages of food and water.

Medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), say it is very concerned about delays in assistance reaching newly-arrived refugees in Kenya's Dadaab.

Since the end of June, new arrivals have been given enough food to last them for 15 days, but must then wait as long as 40 days for another food ration, the aid group said.

"Families arriving in Dadaab are seeking a safe haven, and it is unacceptable that they should be made to wait this long to receive even the most basic form of assistance, food and water," said Emilie Castaigner, acting MSF head of mission in Kenya.