CHAD: Darfur’s forgotten refugees
GOZ-BEIDA, 10 August 2012 (IRIN) - Ten years after fleeing violence in the
Sudanese region of Darfur, Abdulla Juma Abubakr has no intention of
returning home.
After leaving the West Darfur town of El-Geneina in 2002, he first spent two
years in a border camp inside Sudan, before moving on to Djabal, a refugee
camp in eastern Chad’s Goz-Beida region.
“From what I saw when we left, the way people were killed, mosques burnt… I
can’t imagine going back,” Abubakr, a refugee leader at the camp, told IRIN.
“I know that other people are going back but I can’t go back. I still have
some family members in Darfur but I can’t be sure of my security if I
return.”
Many of the camp’s 18,000 refugees, most of them from Darfur, are also
reluctant to return home.
“The Darfur refugees have put many conditions towards return - security and
recovery of property and land and other things,” Aminata Gueye, the
representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Chad, told IRIN.
“We were working on a tripartite mechanism with respect to possible
repatriation, but as long as the situation is not good they will not return.
We were hoping in 2013 to facilitate the returns of some refugees, mainly
the Masaliet.” The Masaliet are a non-Arab ethnic group found in parts of
Sudan and Chad.
“We always hope for return because this is our first durable solution. The
second is resettlement, but it is always blocked by political
considerations,” added Gueye.
Since 2009 and the thawing of relations between Chad and Sudan, the Darfur
conflict has switched from western to eastern Darfur, allowing some pockets
of stability to appear in West Darfur, Jérôme Tubiana, an independent
researcher, told IRIN. “Some returns of both IDPs [internally displaced
persons] and refugees have happened in those pockets, but they are often
temporary because the security is still very unstable.”
Darfur at present has an estimated
<
http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/map_2514.pdf> 1.7
million IDPs registered in camps while Eastern Chad is hosting an estimated
264,000 <
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e45c226.html> Sudanese refugees.
Every week, some of the refugees go home and then return, Saudi Hassan, the
head of the Goz Beida office of the national commission dealing with IDPs
and refugees (CNARR), told IRIN. “They have real-time information; around 95
percent of them do not want to go back. They say that their land has been
occupied by unknown persons, there lacks infrastructure in the original
homes compared to the refugee camps, there are still some IDP sites in
Darfur, and they ask, ‘how can we then go back home?’”
Forgotten
Since 2010, Darfur has all but vanished from the international agenda, notes
a July report, entitled
<
http://smallarmssurveysudan.org/pdfs/HSBA-SWP-28-Forgotten-Darfur.pdf>
Forgotten Darfur: Old Tactics and New Players, by Small Arms Survey. “While
several parts of Darfur have become demonstrably more peaceful since 2009 -
particularly as the geography of conflict has shifted eastwards away from
West Darfur and the Sudan-Chad border - late 2010 and the first half of 2011
saw a significant offensive by the Sudan Armed Forces and militias.”
The offensives, says the report, have been backed by airstrikes and aerial
bombardments, targeting the rebel groups and the Zaghawa civilian population
across much of eastern Darfur.
Darfur first experienced major fighting between 2003 and 2005, with
Arab-dominated abbala (camel-herding) militia attacking non-Arab groups
accused of supporting an anti-government rebellion there, the report said.
But “the ‘new’ war in eastern Darfur, which erupted in late 2010 and early
2011, has pitted non-Arab groups against other non-Arabs; speci?cally,
government-backed militias drawn from small, previously marginalized
non-Arab groups - including the Bergid, Berti, and Tunjur - deployed against
Zaghawa rebel groups and communities.”
Back in eastern Chad’s Djabal camp, the Darfur refugees are feeling
increasingly forgotten, Abubakr told IRIN. “When we came [into the camp] in
the first and second years, there was a lot of attention on us. Now we do
not receive visitors; it seems like no one cares. Before, organizations came
and started schools then…we were told the basic schools were ours to manage,
now there is no pre-school in the camp.
“When we came, all refugees were vulnerable, now to get non-food support,
they chose the most vulnerable as if the rest of us have jobs,” he said.
Sudanese refugee children face other risks, as well. “Sudanese refugee
children are not receiving birth certificates while the ones from CAR [the
Central African Republic] do,” UNHCR’s Gueye said. “These children did not
choose to be born in the country.” A lack of birth certificates means that
the children may not be able to sit for exams - when they go back home, they
may also not be recognized there, she explained.
The Sudanese refugee children are being issued birth declarations, which are
not recognized documents, but advocacy efforts are underway for them to get
birth certificates, said CNARR.
Access to conventional justice for the refugees due to cultural issues is
also a problem, according to UNHCR. For example, among the refugees there is
the payment of ‘dadia’, a fine imposed when violence leads to death; if
someone cannot pay, then they are killed together with their family. Efforts
at introducing mobile courts have been complicated by the harsh living
conditions in the refugee areas, with civil servants and lawyers reluctant
to work there. Threats against staff have also left many cases pending.
Affected by the food crisis
The ongoing <
http://www.irinnews.org/Theme/SAH/Sahel-Crisis> Sahel food
crisis has not spared the refugee population either. Refugees in parts of
eastern Chad rely mainly on humanitarian aid, a full ration of 2,100 Kcals
from the UN World Food Programme through UNHCR, without farming
opportunities, while those in the south have access to land for cultivation
and receive a half ration.
“This has reflected in their current nutrition status with GAM [global acute
malnutrition] rates higher in the east than in the [southern] camps, with
the exception of Dosseye camp,” said Prosper Kabi Dibidibi, UNHCR Chad’s
senior public health officer.
Meanwhile, the refugees in eastern Chad, as elsewhere, are seen as
better-off than host communities in the remote regions where the camps are
located. “If you compare the refugees to the hosts and the IDPs, the
refugees are doing better than the rest of the group, they are not really
the most affected by the food insecurity in the region,” said CNARR’s
Hassan.
But this year, UNHCR resources for Chad have been drastically reduced and
could reduce further in 2013, Gueye said. “When the plan to respond [to the
Sahel crisis] was put up, they did not include the refugees because they
said UNHCR is there. There is a need for a harmonized response to the
crisis; the refugees should not be left out of any response.”
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Received on Fri Aug 10 2012 - 15:45:49 EDT
