DJIBOUTI: Hard life for Somali refugees in Ali Addeh camp

Ali Addeh (Keydmedia) - Amina Ahmed Barre, a Somali refugee, sews clothes on her sewing machine out in the open, in temperatures of more than 30 degrees. There is not a tree in sight in the camp that houses more than 14,000 refugees.

Article Keydmedia Online
17 February 2011

Barre is one of the earliest residents of the Ali Addeh refugee camp, 130km south of Djibouti-Ville, capital of Djibouti. She supplements her aid donations by sewing clothes for other refugees.

Barre arrived at the camp with her parents in 1991 when she was only eight years old. They had fled the Somali capital, Mogadishu, after chaos erupted following the ouster of President Siyad Barre.

"I’m now 29 years old with children of my own and most of my life has been spent in a refugee camp," Barre told IRIN. "I did not choose to be here, I was forced to be here. It is getting harder and harder to have hope that my children and I will leave here. I don