Dadaab: The World's Largest Refugee Camp

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In the early 1990s, Somalia was consumed by civil war and famine. Millions fled their homes. Many tried to reach neighbouring Kenya in search of survival. In response, the UN set up a refugee camp complex at Dadaab, in a remote part of Eastern Kenya. It became the largest refugee camp in the world. At its height Dadaab was home to 500,000 refugees, most of them Somalis. But the Kenyan government has now announced that it will close down the camp and return the refugees to Somalia. We hear the story of Zamzam Abdi Gelle, a young woman who arrived in Dadaab 25 years ago, after her family was attacked in war torn Somalia. Photo: Dadaab refugee camp in 2011 (BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC BBC.
0:02.0	BBC.
0:05.0	Hello and welcome to the Witness podcast with me Alex Last.
0:10.0	And today we go back to the early 1990s and the story of one young woman who fled Somalia's civil war
0:17.0	to grow up in Dadaab in Kenya, the world's largest refugee camp.
0:26.0	I don't know what life's hold for you.
0:28.0	We have been in a good issue in a big city, in a well-good life, and then we end up in a refugee camp.
0:37.0	Zamsam Abdegeli was still a child when in 1991
0:41.0	Somalia's civil war engulfed the capital Mogadish. In for control of the city. In Mogadishu, my mom was a housewife,
0:55.0	and my father was a businessman.
0:58.0	And then the one have started.
1:00.0	In Mogadishu, there was a militia group everywhere. There was heavy
1:07.4	gunshots. We were scared. Deadbolds were scattered everywhere. Just like things that you cannot imagine.
1:15.6	We were attacked by the Malaysian group again.
1:20.0	I think they were about 10.
1:21.6	They killed one of my uncles and then they
1:24.8	touched my father, they shot my father that night. He was shot his left leg and
1:31.8	then from the back it has gone out from this side.
1:35.0	Alham Doolah that night my father survived.
1:38.0	They took away all the things we had at that time.
1:42.0	One of the friends from my father come with a vehicle in the
1:46.0	morning so he took his two children and his wife he came to us he took our father
	...

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