Aquassistance Organization

 In refugee camps in Ethiopia Bernard Auclair, an Aquassistance volunteer, undertook a mission in November 2008 to the camps for Somali refugees in Kebribeyah  and Sheder.

 

This region, located in eastern Ethiopia near the Somali border, since the early 90s has received hundreds of thousands of refugees up to a peak of 630,000 after the fall of the regime of Said Barre of Somalia in 1991. Since then, more than 16,000 refugees who could not return to their homes because of frequent political and military instability are still based in Kebribeyah camp. 

 

Aquassistance works at Kebribeyah in partnership with the  Order of Saint Lazarus and in collaboration with the UNHCR.

On 20 June 2007, World Refugee Day, UNHCR and the Order of Saint Lazarus signed an agreement. The Order of Saint Lazarus is committed to helping refugees and the local populations that host them, and their staff often live in conditions as difficult as the refugees. The partnership aims to develop projects of accessibility to water for the refugees and the hosting populations.

 In November, Olivier Schlosser (Research Center Suez Environment - Le Pecq) and Huot Srun (Lyonnaise des Eaux Headquarters) spoke to doctors and nurses from the Faculty of Medicine Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, on the theme of supply water in the tropical arreas.

This intervention answered the request of the medical community with concrete feedback by Aquassistance on recent projects (Senegal and Vietnam)