More than 1,400 Somalis
are streaming into the Dadaab refugee centre every day, and its existing
infrastructure cannot cope.
Aid organisations led by the UN's refugee agency UNHCR have been pushing Kenya
to allow new arrivals to use a ready-built camp which had been kept closed
at Nairobi's insistence.
But on Thursday Raila Odinga, Kenya's prime minister, said that he had agreed
to open the Ifo II complex.
"Although we consider our own security, we cannot turn away refugees,"
Mr Odinga said. The camp, for up to 80,000 people, must be run by the UN, he
added.
Kenya's government fears that agents of al-Shabaab, Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked
Islamist insurgency, could slip into the country unnoticed in the chaos of
the drought influx.
Dadaab's three existing centres were designed to house 90,000 people but are
currently catering for 380,000, almost all of them Somalis.
Orwa Ojodeh, Kenya's assistant internal security minister, said on Wednesday
that the UN should focus on feeding Somalis inside their own country.
"The United Nations refugee agency [UNHCR] can feed them in Somalia since
the latest arrivals are not fleeing due to insecurity but lack of food,"
he said.
The UN is understood to be discussing restarted food aid deliveries to areas
of Somalia currently beyond its reach because of a lack of security for its
staff.
Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee said on Thursday that more than f15
million had been given to its Horn of Africa drought appeal.
