Clayton Maxfield

May 12th, 2015

Professor Ramjoue
Geography: Refugee Camp Assignment
For this assignment I was asked to watch the video Fault Lines- Horn of Africa crisis:
Somalias Famine in the video the topic discussed is what it is like for people living in refugee
camps and also the situations that lead to the famine that they are facing. The video says that
while the exact numbers are not known they know that tens of thousands of people are dying in
Somalia because of drought and famine. The majority of the people dying are young children
who are malnourished. The famine was first declared by the United Nations in 2011 and the
situation has only gotten worse with attacks from the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. They
invaded Somalia and forced the Somali people out of their homes, leaving them without means
to support themselves.
The terrorist group is interested in making Somalia a fundamentalist Islamic state, while
the United Nations is supporting Somalia in the fight against al-Shabaab because they want a
Democratic government to be put into place in Somalia. Because of the famine many refugee
camps have been put into place by the United nations to help support the people of Somalia who
were starving and homeless. The living conditions are very poor for the people living in the
refugee camps because the United Nations was not able to get involved quickly enough due to alShabaab banning Western Aid agencies from interfering on their territory.
This paper is going to be an explanation of how I would plan my own refugee camp in
Somalia. My refugee camp has ten thousand people the majority of them are children, elderly,
and pregnant women. Many of the children are displaced and have no one to take care of them. I
chose to place my refugee camp about one hundred kilometers west of the Juba River it also has
a road one hundred kilometers to the south. I chose this place for my refugee camps so that it
would be close to both a water source and the road to receive shipments of supplies.
The three categories that I have chosen to focus on are the water supply, food supply, and
medical supplies and treatments. Because I believe those are the most important things to put
into place initially in order to help the malnourished to eventually become self sustaining.
The drought was caused by a lack of rain for multiple years which led to the loss of crops and
livestock. This greatly depreciated their economy and left Somalia in a state of distress. I would
obtain water in my refugee camp by creating a irrigation system to collect water, I would also
implement programs to repair the damaged boreholes and create a better system for collecting
and distributing water. One adult needs about twenty litres of water on average per day. This
means that my camp would have to produce and distribute two hundred thousand litres of water
per day and thirty six million litres of water over the six months that the camp would be
functioning. An adult needs about three litres of drinking water per day. In order to clean the

water for drinking I would use water filtration tablets on the drinking water as well as making
sure that the holding tanks for the water would stay cleaned and sanitized. I would follow the
UNHCRs water guidelines to prevent health risks as well as ensure a secure distribution of
water. The guideline for distribution are, eighty to one hundred people at each water tap and two
hundred to three hundred per hand pump/well. This is to avoid arguments between people in the
camp over the water supply. The next issue to be addressed is the famine.
The famine was caused directly by the drought and has substantially affected the
agriculture and livestock in Somalia this has created a lack of foods that are sufficient in
micronutrients. The quantity of food needed to supply the camp would be five million grams of
wheat, three hundred thousand grams of edible oil, two hundred thousand grams of sugar and
thirty thousand grams of tea. This would mean in total the quantity of food needed to support my
camp would be, nine hundred and thirty million grams of wheat, fifty five million eight hundred
thousand grams of edible oil and sugar, and five million five hundred and eighty thousand grams
of tea.
I would follow the UNHCRs guidelines for buying food as well which is to spend the
least amount of money for the most supplies where the focus is quantity rather than quality. I
would originally buy the set amount that was given in the prompt but I would implement a
registration program to keep track of how many people are in the camp considering it would
fluctuate because of births,deaths, and population distribution. This way I could more accurately
order supplies so that there is no waste and no one going hungry. I would set up a ration card
system in correlation with the registration system to smooth out distribution and help us to
ensure we are not losing supplies somewhere. I would also set up a distribution cycle so that the
refugees would be well informed on when supplies are coming next. I would use a short interval
order system because we would distribute smaller amounts more often rather than large amounts
of supplies less often. This would make it easier to distribute food quickly as well as allow us to
adapt to having too much or too little food easily. It would also discourage the refugees from
trying to sell their excess supplies. Lastly for distribution I would use food scales rather than
scoops to more evenly distribute supplies and also to keep better track of our inventory.
UNHCRs guidelines for medicine quantification is different than food because quality is focus
on more than quality.
UNHCR focuses on ordering from international distributors even if though they spend more
money. They do this because this insures higher quality medicine, this is because many poor
countries have been flooded with counterfeit medicine and they want to make sure that their
patients are getting the correct treatment.Regional procurement should be limited to five percent
maximum. The essential medicines and medicinal supplies needed are provided on a list by
UNHCR it includes:basic emergency health kits, supplementary emergency health kits,
interagency reproductive health kits, diarrheal disease kits, immunization kits, oral medicines,
injectable medicines,external use
medicines,infusions,vaccines,immunoglobulins,psychotherapeutics,anticonvulsants,contraceptive
s,and antimalarials.

There are two techniques used for quantification of medicine, they are morbidity based
quantification and past consumption quantification. Morbidity based quantification has four
requirements to be used. Essential drug lists with packaging and price data for each type of
facility whose drug requirements are being quantified. Pharmaceutical budgets and foreign
exchange allocations actually or potentially available. Standard drug treatment schedules for
quantification purposes, based on average doses (called average treatment schedules for short). A
complete patient morbidity profile giving the number of treatment episodes for each health
problem defined. This method is less accurate in comparison to past consumption quantification
but it can be used with having any past information. So my method for ordering medicine would
be to use the morbidity quantification method for the first couple of months until I had an
accurate idea of past consumption at which point I would switch over to past consumption
method in order to be more accurate with ordering. I would do my best to get the highest quality
medicine for the best price to best benefit the refugees. I would also make sure to keep a close
watch on my inventory to make sure that I would not run out of anything that someone might
need. Careful distribution would be a priority because of where my refugee camp is if we were to
run out of a necessary medication it could take a long time before receiving anymore. My main
goal with all supplies in the refugee camp is to properly distribute all the supplies that refugees
might need in a secure and safe and controlled.
I would also want to make the refugees feel comfortable and to have access to education.
I want to be able to supply the people with an education system as well as somewhere to freely
practice their religions if they like. I just want the refugees to have everything they need to have
a less miserable time after all the hardships they have gone through. If I found myself in the
situation that they are in I would want to have some sort of normality in my life, I would want to
be able to socialize and interact with the people around me. Women,children and elderly would
be at risk for spreading disease easily because elderly people and children are the most
susceptible to catching and spreading illness. These risks could be avoided by keeping sanitary
living space to stop the spread of disease. I think that it would definitely be difficult living in a
refugee camp because I would feel like I wasnt in control of my life at all. I think that getting
the healthy refugees involved in projects such as an agriculture project or water well
development they would feel much more useful and be happier. I think that donating money to a
cause such as UNICEF or UNHCR would be the best way for an ordinary person to help people
in refugee camps.