On the Road to Safety

On the Road to Safety, originally uploaded by UNHCR.

Roughly 90% of the 54,000 residents of IFO camp in Dadaab (Kenya), mostly Somali refugees, have been uprooted and are fleeing the rising waters. UNHCR has been hiring donkey carts to take resident to Hagadera camp, one of the other two camps in Dadaab. Most of the vulnerable were transferred in Red Cross trucks. Hassan, a refugee living in Ifo camp in Dadaab, follows his family with a donkey cart loaded with personal belongings, to drier ground in Hagadera camp, 20 km away. / UNHCR / B. Bannon / November 2006

Most refugees flee to safety on foot. Others take tractors, cars, trucks, planes and in one famous case in Tanzania, they used the vessel Liemba, a former World War I German gunboat. Often refugees have time to collect only a few possessions before fleeing. Then they find many different and sometimes surprising ways to transport them. Their road to safety is often long, tiring and traumatizing, without being certain on where this safety will be found.

Uploaded by UNHCR on 17 Apr 09, 3.29AM PDT.