Addressing the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa remains a priority for Australia as it continues its long standing efforts to support refugees in Kenya who have fled war and drought in the region.
Dadaab in Kenya is the largest refugee camp in the world with over 450,000 refugees, the majority of which are from Somalia.
As one of the largest donor countries and long-time supporter to the Horn of Africa crisis, Australia is working together with its partners to help those refugees who remain in Dadaab.
In 2011, Australia provided $112 million in humanitarian assistance for the Horn of Africa, for urgently needed food, shelter and health assistance. This financial assistance helped reduce the number of people needing life-saving assistance from 13 million in August 2011 to 10 million in January 2012.
And now, Australia will provide a further $2 million to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) which will deliver food and nourishment to almost 20,000 more people.
Specifically, the financial assistance will also provide school feeding, general food distribution, food for asset and supplementary feeding programs.
During a recent visit to Dadaab refugee camp, Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Richard Marles, saw first-hand how the WFP food and nutrition programs are helping the people of Dadaab.
The visit provided Mr Marles the opportunity to meet with teachers and students at Dadaab Ifo Camp primary school where students are provided with a corn soya blend porridge served mid-morning every school day.
As an incentive for girls attendance, take-home sugar rations are distributed to those girls who attend at least 80 per cent of school days per month–79,000 (31,800 girls) children are enrolled in the 32 schools throughout Dadaab and all receive school meals.
Mr Marles also met with people who were collecting their twice monthly 'food basket' containing cereals, pulses, oil, corn-soya blend and salt.
Refugee leaders and members of the refugee-elected food advisory committee spoke to Mr Marles about their role in receiving and managing refugee complaints around food distribution, and praised the support of Australia and other donors in supporting WFP and other agencies providing food for people in the camps.
To round off his visit to Dadaab Mr Marles visited women from a 'Food for Assets' site, which supports communities living within 35 kilometres of the refugee camps. Local communities are provided with support for local small-scale production of food for both consumption and sale.
Women told Mr Marles that the program helped create short-term employment and the motivation to grow chili, maize and sugar cane for sale.