The Horn of Africa is experiencing the worst drought in almost sixty years affecting ten million people. Somalia is one of the nations in the region hit hardest by the extreme lack of rain. It is also one of the poorest and most crisis-prone countries on the planet. Somalia is experiencing the driest season on record since the mid-20th century, resulting in widespread famine.

“When there is no water and hence no food, people must move or they will die,” says Alice Thomas, RI’s Climate Displacement Program Manager. “And moving they are – and in great numbers.”

Unprecedented rain that has hammered Colombia over the past year has affected three million people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. In March, I spent three weeks traveling across the Caribbean region visiting families displaced by the floods.

When my father was dying in July 2009 and decided to set up the Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement at Refugees International (RI), my sister, Katie, and I sat down with him to talk about what he wanted the center to be and do. The first thing he said was, "I have always tried to be fair in all that I do."

This is the philosophy of Refugees International, too. Whether uprooted by war, ethnic cleansing, political persecution, or natural resource scarcity, RI fights to help get the displaced and vulnerable home or to a safer place.

Sukkur, Sindh Province, Pakistan -- On the way from the airport into the town of Sukkur you can see them camped along the road – thousands of people who fled the floods, now living in tents and makeshift shelters.  In some places, a group of families have found a spot of empty ground; in others, formal camps have been set up separated from the road by plastic sheeting.