12 July 2011 Last updated at 10:11

In pictures: Kenya refugee camp

Somali refugees sit in the yard of their makeshift shelter in Iffou 2, an area earmarked for refugee camp expansion, but yet to be approved by the Kenyan government, outside Dadaab, Kenya.

Extended drought is causing a food crisis in the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Weather conditions over the Pacific mean the rains have failed for two seasons and are unlikely to return until September.

Nado Mahad Abdilli builds a makeshift shelter for her family in Iffou 2

Since the beginning of 2011, about 15,000 Somalis each month have fled into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, looking for food and water.

Abdulkhader (L), a Somali refugee who arrived at the Dadaab camp six days ago with his wife and seven children, complains to guards about not having any access to emergency food aid.

More than 370,000 refugees are already crammed into three camps at Dadaab, built for a combined capacity of 90,000.

Recently-arrived Somali refugees wait to fill jerry cans with water at a newly-installed tank in Iffou 2

Many of the arrivals have walked for days or weeks, desperate to escape not only from the drought in Somalia but also its long civil war.

Somali parents care for their young children who are being treated for malnutrition, at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya.

The children especially are malnourished and dehydrated when they arrive. Some die within a day.

Two-year-old, Aden Salaad, looks up toward his mother, unseen, as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya

Children aged five and under are especially vulnerable to malnutrition and the illnesses that frequently accompany it, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. Here, two-year-old Aden Salaad looks up toward his mother as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital.

Suldano Osman, 1, is steadied by her mother's hand as a paediatrician attaches a feeding tube to aid her treatment for malnutrition, at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya.

The malnourished children receive high-energy food. Babies are also measured and weighed.

Newly arrived Somali refugees wait outside the Dadaab refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya

Aid organisations say they are over-stretched. It can take between seven and 12 days to deliver the first food rations to the camps.

A Somali woman walks past the frame for a sparsely-covered makeshift shelter in Iffou 2.

A UN refugee agency spokesman told the BBC he hoped a transit camp could be set up at Liboi to give immediate relief to those crossing the border.

In Pictures

In pictures: Kenya refugee camp

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