Hundreds of thousands of Somalis forced to flee their homes are living in conditions 'barely fit for humans', Oxfam has said.
The international aid agency has warned the situation needs to be urgently addressed to stop mass human suffering.
Oxfam says poor sanitation and little access to basic services such as water and medicine need to be urgently addressed to prevent a public health emergency, caused, it says, by a 'total failure of the international community to deal effectively with the Somalia crisis'.
'Somalis flee one of the world's most brutal conflicts and a desperate drought, only to end up in unimaginable conditions in camps that are barely fit for humans.
'Hundreds of thousands of children are affected, and the world is abandoning the next generation of Somalis when they most need our help. Why does it seem like you matter less in this world if you are from Somalia?' said Robbert van den Berg Oxfam international's spokesman for the Horn of Africa.
The charity says 8,000 Somali refugees travel to Dadaab camp in northern Kenya every month. The camp is now home to 280,000 people, originally built to house just a third of that amount.
In Ethiopia's Bokolmayo camp, almost 10,000 people are already in the camp and nearly 1,000 people a month continue to arrive. In the Afgooye area, up to at least 485,000 people shelter on a 15km strip of land, which is now said to be the world's densest concentration of displaced people.
Oxfam says the UN refugee agency's response to the impending crisis has been 'weak and inefficient'. It has called on the agency to exercise much greater leadership in ensuring Somalis get adequate assistance by supporting host countries to respond effectively to the humanitarian crisis.
'This is a human tragedy of unthinkable proportions where countless people have now been deprived of a home and a sense of normality for months and months,' added Mr Van den Berg.
The international aid agency has warned the situation needs to be urgently addressed to stop mass human suffering.
Oxfam says poor sanitation and little access to basic services such as water and medicine need to be urgently addressed to prevent a public health emergency, caused, it says, by a 'total failure of the international community to deal effectively with the Somalia crisis'.
'Somalis flee one of the world's most brutal conflicts and a desperate drought, only to end up in unimaginable conditions in camps that are barely fit for humans.
'Hundreds of thousands of children are affected, and the world is abandoning the next generation of Somalis when they most need our help. Why does it seem like you matter less in this world if you are from Somalia?' said Robbert van den Berg Oxfam international's spokesman for the Horn of Africa.
The charity says 8,000 Somali refugees travel to Dadaab camp in northern Kenya every month. The camp is now home to 280,000 people, originally built to house just a third of that amount.
In Ethiopia's Bokolmayo camp, almost 10,000 people are already in the camp and nearly 1,000 people a month continue to arrive. In the Afgooye area, up to at least 485,000 people shelter on a 15km strip of land, which is now said to be the world's densest concentration of displaced people.
Oxfam says the UN refugee agency's response to the impending crisis has been 'weak and inefficient'. It has called on the agency to exercise much greater leadership in ensuring Somalis get adequate assistance by supporting host countries to respond effectively to the humanitarian crisis.
'This is a human tragedy of unthinkable proportions where countless people have now been deprived of a home and a sense of normality for months and months,' added Mr Van den Berg.
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