VOA标准英语2012--Somali Refugees Face Insecurity Inside Dadaab Refugee Camp

Somali Refugees Face Insecurity Inside Dadaab Refugee Camp

Inside Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, 20-year-old Basharah speaks of violence in Somalia. She fled five months ago to create a better home for her child. Now, she worries Dadaab is not the change she was looking for. 

“Because of security now, there is no difference between here and Somalia," she said. 

The camp is not just an increasingly insecure place for refugees to live. Just 90 kilometers from the Somalia border, militants¹ and criminals have also made Dadaab home. 

Camp resident Ablah Ibrahim says this makes a bad situation worse. 

“There are people who come with guns at night," she said. "They come and steal our food." 

Both Basharah and Ablah live in a section of the camp where two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped in October of last year. They worked for Doctors Without Borders and they are still missing. 

Vittorio Opizzi is a field coordinator² for the organization and has been working under the new security conditions for the past five months. 

“The security situation poses us in a dilemma³, [eh] of course having the necessity to adapt our way of working without exposing our team to unnecessary risk, but on the other side to keep our services going," said Opizzi.

They have continued to work in the hospital and other parts of the camp. But, in this section, they have left and so have some of the refugees - including Amina Abdi Ali. 

“Some people have left the insecurity here. They’ve gone back to Somalia," she said. 

The camp leader, Ali Noor Hassan, has also become frustrated⁴ with the lack of police protection in his section. 

“This camp is large, and we only have one police post here, and it’s very far from here," he said. "We just wish for them to bring law and order.” 

Despite the threats Kenya faces from elements inside Dadaab, Kenya’s police spokesperson, Erick Kiraithe, says police have already exhausted⁵ their resources on the camp. It is the most policed region in rural Kenya. 

“The constitution of police in those camps is too high," said Kiraithe. "For us, abnormally high. But because of the complexity⁶, the kind of people who end up in the camps, then certainly it requires much closer police surveillance.” 

There are currently 300 police officers operating in the camp of nearly half-a-million refugees. They’re fighting both criminals and elements of the terrorist group al-Shabab who have infiltrated⁷ the camp. 

And, for the refugees living here, unless they return home to Somalia, they will continue to face these insecurities in the world’s largest refugee camp. 

1 militants   

激进分子，好斗分子( militant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The militants have been sporadically fighting the government for years. 几年来，反叛分子一直对政府实施零星的战斗。
• Despite the onslaught, Palestinian militants managed to fire off rockets. 尽管如此，巴勒斯坦的激进分子仍然发射导弹。

2 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

3 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

4 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。

6 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

7 infiltrated   

adj.[医]浸润的v.（使）渗透，（指思想）渗入人的心中( infiltrate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The headquarters had been infiltrated by enemy spies. 总部混入了敌方特务。
• Many Chinese idioms have infiltrated into the Japanese language. 许多中国成语浸透到日语中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》