How Many More Deaths Before We Help Somalis?

Refugees International's McCall-Pierpaoli Fellow, Yemisrach Benalfew, brings us today's post on the tragic events unfolding in Somalia. Yemi is originally from Ethiopia where she worked as a journalist reporting on political, human rights, and humanitarian issues.

For anyone who has been following the events unfolding in Somalia, this week was especially horrifying to read. Since Thursday, the joint Ethiopian and Somali government operation to clean up Mogadishu’s ‘insurgents’ has resulted in the death of at least 30 people and wounded more than 220.

The worst moment was the death of about 30 people who were trying to reach the coast of Yemen. 450 Somalis and Ethiopians were fleeing violence for Yemen when they were thrown into shark-infested waters by cut-throat smugglers. The smugglers were trying to escape after they’d been spotted by Yemeni security forces. Passengers who resisted were reportedly beaten and at least one Somali woman and several Ethiopian women were reportedly raped. According to UNHCR, about 4,400 people have managed to reach Yemen. Thursday's tragedy brought the total dead and missing to 262 this year alone. About 26,000 people have made the risky voyage across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen in 2006, with at least 330 dying and another 300 missing.

Up to now, Yemen has welcomed the Somali refugees. Of the total 88,000 registered refugee population in that country, about 84,000 are from Somalia. Kenya has closed its borders fearing the infiltration of members and sympathizers of the Islamic Union Court. In addition, there are about 400,000 people who have been displaced to other areas inside the country, particularly the Puntland region in Somalia.

I’m compelled to write this piece for two reasons. First, with the exception of the BBC, CNN and the New York Times, very few media outlets have reported on this. And those who have tend to focus on the daily violence and political aspects. The humanitarian dimension -- the cost on human lives and the daily exodus of the population -- hasn’t yet reached the public. And an international response that helps the Somali population is yet to come. Meanwhile, the US is focusing on pursuing Al-Qaeda suspects.

This brings me to my second point: the world continues to be paralyzed by the 1992 violent history of Somalia. And Somalis continue to have strong suspicions about any foreigners stepping into their country. They have every right to be suspicious, as Alex De Waal notes in “US war crimes in Somalia” -- a review of Kent Delong and Steven Tuckey’s book, Mogadishu!: Heroism and Tragedy. De Waal notes that although the 1992 Operation Restore Hope had the mandate to deliver “humanitarian relief”, it only intensified the “the level of murder and mayhem” and Somalis’ “determination to resist and fight back.” 1992 is not very far away - people tend to have long memories.

Talking to Congress Again and Again

In the last 10 days, Refugees International has testified in front of Congress four times. I'd like to say this is run-of-the-mill for us, but just as we were excited by all of last week's media attention, we are pretty pleased that members of Congress are looking for solutions to the world's refugees crises - and looking to us for those solutions.

None of these hearings has received as much attention as when Refugees International's President Ken Bacon testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in January on "The Plight of Iraqi Refugees." (NPR, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and others all covered that hearing.) Still, it is clearly important that key members of Congress are requesting to hear our recommendations on how to meet refugees' needs.

So, for a wealth of information on Iraqi refugees, the crisis in Darfur, and what Congress needs to do in 2008 to help refugees around the world, check out the following testimonies.

March 29, 2007 --
House Committee on Appropriations,
Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs
Statement by Ken Bacon: "Meeting the Needs of Internally Displaced and Refugees in FY 2008"

"The Congress over the years has been more supportive of international humanitarian efforts -- efforts which literally save lives. It is perplexing that this year, despite compelling needs particularly in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South Asia, the President has actually cut the funding for ...overseas assistance [to refugees] by almost $100 million and eliminated the tiny $16.5 million for emergency food aid."

March 26, 2007 --
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia
Iraqi Volunteers, Iraqi Refugees: What is America’s Obligation?
Statement by Kristele Younes: Violence and Displacement in Iraq

"The 2007 Global Needs Assessment by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid ranks Iraq as among the 15 most severe humanitarian crises in the world. Of those 15 crisis, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs rates Iraq as the second lowest funded crisis-per affected person. Yet, no Iraqi, U.S. or U.N. institution is taking this growing humanitarian and displacement crisis seriously enough to mount an effective response. The most urgent need is a program to protect the most vulnerable—people who had to leave their homes because they worked for and with U.S. forces, diplomats and contractors... Host countries, particularly Jordan and Syria, need multilateral and bilateral assistance in shouldering the burden of the refugee population. This means programs to help in sharing the costs of those who stay, and assist both Iraqis and vulnerable individuals in the host communities."

March 20, 2007 --
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on African Affairs
Chad and the Central African Republic: The Regional Impact of the Darfur Crisis
Statement by Ken Bacon: "Central Africa: Looking for Stability in a Chaotic Region"

"The central African region where the borders of Chad, Sudan and the Central
African Republic intersect is one of the poorest, least stable areas of the world. The region is filled with refugees and displaced people... Insecurity, poverty, political and ethnic tensions, and displacement are all inter-related, yet each country has different problems which must be addressed separately.

...The key to resolving the problems is political, not military. Even if the U.S. or other countries were prepared to commit troops—and we are not—or the UN could deploy large peacekeeping forces, troops would be no more than a palliative until the underlying political differences are resolved.

...The humanitarian response has been uneven. Huge resources are going to help the people in Darfur, with much less effective responses in the Central African Republic and Chad. Working bilaterally or through the UN, we need to fix this disparity by increasing aid to the C.A.R. and Chad. In fact, a relatively modest humanitarian investment in the Central African Republic now could forestall or avoid a much more costly emergency response later."

March 20, 2007
House Committee on Financial Services
Subcommittee on Domestic and Internal Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology
The Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act
Statement by Ken Bacon: Legislating to Stop Genocide

"Ever since the United States, led by the House of Representatives in July of 2004, declared the government of Sudan guilty of genocide, the world has been waiting for the U.S. to act... The Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007 is a step—although a small step—in that direction. In light of the gravity of the death and displacement taking place in Darfur, the Subcommittee may want to explore if other, more painful financial interventions are possible. In September 2004, Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, accused the government of Sudan of genocide. But he said that the identification of that crime against humanity would not change U.S. policy,
meaning that the U.S. would make no military move to stop the genocide. Instead, we have relied on diplomacy and economic sanctions to stop the government-orchestrated death and displacement in Darfur. So far our policies have failed."

(If you missed it, you can read Ken's blog post from last week on this hearing.)

Iraqi Refugees in the News

This week has been a good week. It's not every week that Refugees International -- and its work on Iraqi refugees -- is featured on NBC Nightly News, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN, NPR's Morning Edition and the New York Times.

Much of this coverage focused on the release of our new report describing the lack of assistance for Iraqis who have been forced out of their homes by violence but still stuck inside Iraq. Kristele Younes, the report author who just got back from northern Iraq and Egypt, is determined to remind the U.S. government that we have a responsibility to do more for the millions of Iraqis who have been forced from their homes. This media coverage is essential to helping us do this.

Already, we're starting to see that this pressure is paying off -- Kristele Younes, the author of the report, has been asked to testify to a congressional subcommittee on Monday about the situation for these "internal refugees." Soon after a series of news articles and TV stories based on our findings, the UN announced it would request more funding to help Iraqi refugees, the U.S. announced it would give more funding to the UN to assist Iraqis, and the U.S. offered to resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the country. Nowhere near enough, but it is a start. (Read our official reaction to this announcement here.)

So, here are a few quotes and highlights from this week for you to enjoy.

NBC Nightly News (view the video here): "Iraqis are left without resources for health care, without resources for education and this is a disaster." -- Kristele Younes

CNN's Week at War: "Two million have left the country already. They're leaving at the rate of about 100,000 a month. So we're going to have another million refugees outside the country and the internal displacement is increasing by almost that rate. So we'll have another one million displaced internally by the end of the year." -- Ken Bacon, Refugees International President

NPR's Morning Edition: "So not only are people leaving behind their houses, their homes, their lives, they also leave behind the possibility of getting very vital assistance, which is dramatic." -- Kristele Younes

Charlie Rose Show: "We may not know how to stabilize Iraq, but we do know how to protect refugees. America`s been doing this for centuries. We do know how to do this. We did it in Vietnam. We did it after Cambodia. We can protect these people. We can, should, and must do a much better job." -- Ken Bacon

New York Times -- Over all, displaced people “who reach the Kurdish provinces must surmount difficulties in finding housing, shelter, employment and education for their children,” the report said. That conclusion was reached based on interviews conducted by the two researchers, Kristele Younes and Nir Rosen.

The Experiences of a Boy Soldier

A few months ago, the cover story of the Sunday New York Times Magazine caught my eye: The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier. The cover photo pictured a young man photographed against a bright yellow background, a distant gaze in his eyes.

Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. When he was 11, a brutal civil war broke out in his home country. At the age of 13, after both his parents and two brothers were killed, Ishmael was recruited as a child soldier and fought for almost three years before he was placed in a rehabilitation home by UNICEF. He eventually came to live with a family in the US.

Ishmael has now written a book about his experience entitled A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Tonight he is the featured speaker at a Refugees International event in New York City. Our president Ken Bacon and senior advocate Andrea Lari will also be speaking at the event. In addition, author and filmmaker Roya Hakakian, who is also an RI Board Member, will speak about the refugee experience and present her short documentary on child soldiers, Armed and Innocent, which features Ishmael.

Here are some excerpts from Ishmael's powerful memoir:

...In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life. The rebel army, known as the Revolutionary United Front (R.U.F.), attacked my town in the southern part of the country. I ran away, along paths and roads that were littered with dead bodies, some mutilated in ways so horrible that looking at them left a permanent scar on my memory. I ran for days, weeks and months, and I couldn’t believe that the simple and precious world I had known, where nights were celebrated with storytelling and dancing and mornings greeted with the singing of birds and cock crows, was now a place where only guns spoke and sometimes it seemed even the sun hesitated to shine. After I discovered that my parents and two brothers had been killed, I felt even more lost and worthless in a world that had become pregnant with fear and suspicion as neighbor turned against neighbor and child against parent. Surviving each passing minute was nothing short of a miracle...

...I lay there with my gun pointed in front of me, unable to shoot. My index finger became numb. I felt as if the forest had turned upside down and I was going to fall off, so I clutched the base of a tree with one hand. I couldn’t think, but I could hear the sounds of the guns far away in the distance and the cries of people dying in pain. A splash of blood hit my face. In my reverie I had opened my mouth a bit, so I tasted some of the blood. As I spat it out and wiped it off my face, I saw the soldier it had come from. Blood poured out of the bullet holes in him like water rushing through newly opened tributaries. His eyes were wide open; he still held his gun. My eyes were fixed on him when I heard Josiah screaming for his mother in the most painfully piercing voice I had ever heard. It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor...

...The villages that we captured and turned into our bases as we went along and the forests that we slept in became my home. My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for more than two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen. I knew that day and night came and went because of the presence of the moon and the sun, but I had no idea whether it was a Sunday or a Friday...

You can read more about RI's work on children affected by conflict and displacement here.

President's Corner: Bystanders to Slaughter, Again

Tomorrow I am scheduled to testify before a House subcommittee on the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, legislation that is designed to hurt companies that do business in Sudan. Most of the targets of the bill would be foreign companies, since U.S. companies, in general, aren’t allowed to do business in Sudan.

Ever since the United States declared the government of Sudan guilty of genocide, the world has been waiting for the U.S. to act. Article 1 of the 1948 Genocide Convention says: “The contracting parties confirm that genocide…is a crime …which they undertake to prevent and punish.” But when Secretary of State Powell accused the government of Sudan of genocide in 2004, he said that U.S. policy would not change, meaning that the U.S. would make no military move to stop the genocide. Instead, we have relied on diplomacy and economic sanctions. So far our policies have failed.

What message has our inaction sent? Earlier this year, Roger Winter, who advised the State Department on Sudan, told a House subcommittee that “impotent reactions” by the U.S., the UN and Europe have had no impact on Sudan’s leaders. “Talk alone does not work,” Winter said. “Only credible threats that can cripple their agenda or deprive them personally of their power and ill-gotten riches will work.”

Every action by Sudan shows that it believes it can get away with murder, and, in fact, it is. The estimated number of people dead from war related causes ranges from 200,000 to 500,000. There are 232,000 refuges from Darfur in Chad, and 2.2 million Darfurians have fled to camps within Sudan. Many of the displaced are Africans whose villages have been attacked by primarily Arab government and militia forces. The destabilizing impact of the war is spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic.

In the last several months, the violence in Darfur has worsened dramatically. Displacement is increasing, not decreasing. Humanitarian workers are facing more attacks and harassment from government forces, allied militias, rebel groups and bandits. Both the U.N. and major relief agencies have warned that rising danger to their workers and operations may force them to pull out of Darfur. This could cripple or end the world’s largest humanitarian operation. In February, the World Food Program was helping to feed 2.4 million people in Darfur.

It is time to make it clear that Sudan will pay a price for the continued death and displacement. H.R. 180 moves in that direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. The Bush administration, after months of delay, finally appears ready to impose stiffer measures, including financial measures that could make if difficult for Sudan to carry out international trade. This could hurt the regime in Khartoum, but the impact wouldn’t be immediate.

It’s a tragedy for the people of Darfur that the world has not lived up to its obligations “to prevent and punish” genocide. Any effective action is better late than never, but that is a long way from “never again.”

A Family's Story from Iraq

Here are some excerpts from an excellent article about Iraqi displacement recently published in Newsweek entitled When Home Becomes Hell.

My Uncle Brahim is trapped inside his Baghdad home—waiting to flee a country that six months ago he swore he'd never leave...There seem to be a billion obstacles between Brahim's family and escape. They're still waiting on their new Iraqi passports, even though Brahim applied months ago. And who will watch their house of 45 years and all their belongings inside? Then there's the question of where to go. Jordan and Syria are already swamped with Iraqi refugees and have tightened, if not sealed off, their borders. It's clear that Brahim and his family waited too long, and now things are desperate. "I think maybe we will try Bulgaria, Loreen," he says. "My son-in-law knows a person there, and I hear they are excellent for the clinic of diabetes."

Baghdad or Bulgaria? This is what it's come to for thousands of families like ours. Most everyone from my dad's side of the family (whose names I've changed for security reasons) lived in the Iraqi capital up until 2003. But now, if they're not hiding out in their homes, they're struggling to adjust to life somewhere else. Brahim's middle daughter, Mahia, is in Amman with her three young kids. Her sister Lulu is in Germany with her husband and baby. My late Aunt Fatima's son Sami fled to southern Iraq when his Baghdad home was seized by insurgents. He's now looking to move to Egypt or even Sweden. His brilliant geologist sister Silma left her upscale Baghdad home and is now stuffed into a tiny apartment in Amman with her husband, Omar, and three teenagers. Uncle Hassan's daughter Loubna, once a curator for the museum of Baghdad, fled to Syria. So did her brother. But their sister never arrived. She was killed on the road from Baghdad to Damascus. Three more distant relatives were never afforded the chance to flee—or turn 25. They were brutally murdered, their mutilated bodies dumped in the streets of Baghdad...

..."This is not just a regional crisis, it's a global one," says Kristele Younes, a Refugees International advocate monitoring the Iraqi refugee flow. "But for the Bush administration to address the problem they'd have to admit failure in Iraq, and I don't see that happening any time soon." Responding to the criticism, the State Department recently announced plans to refer 7,000 Iraqis to the U.S. Resettlement Program by September. Sami's 19-year-old son, Ausama, heard about the openings and immediately text-messaged me. "There are some spaces for us there? Please send 2 me information soon." How can I tell him that with those odds, getting into America is about as likely as winning the lottery?...

...Leaving has also become more difficult with each passing week. Brahim refused to pay $2,000 in bribes for a set of Iraq's new updated passports (which most Iraqis must now have to travel), so three months later they still haven't been issued. To get to Jordan or Syria by car, he'd have to pay a driver anywhere from $250 to $600 per passenger (which is still less than one-way airline tickets), and they'd need to pass through Iraq's deadly Anbar province. They could not bring more than a suitcase or two with them, for fear of alerting border agents that they were planning on more than a vacation. If by some slim chance they did make it past Jordanian immigration, they'd face disgruntled locals, a cost of living that's tripled since 2003 due to the massive influx of refugees and no prospects of work...

You can read the entire article here. RI Advocate Kristele is due to return from her recent mission to Iraq and Egypt next week. Check back soon to read about her latest findings.

Coping in the Central African Republic

Refugees International's Vice President, Joel Charny, is in the Central African Republic with Rick Neal. For the last week, they have been in one of the most remote regions of the world, where nearly one million people are in need of assistance. He sent the following in:

Like any other field, humanitarian response has its share of jargon. What is an NFI, for example? Oh, it's a non-food item. (What ever happened to "supplies" or "materials"?) Terms like protection get over-used and over-defined to the point that they lose their meaning. Protection work involves helping people be safe; it shouldn't be more complicated or esoteric than that.

One of my least favorite terms is "coping mechanisms."

In humanitarian usage, coping mechanisms are the strategies people use year in and year out to survive in the face of harsh conditions. But the phrase is Orwellian -- it seems designed precisely to shield one from the image of struggle and anguish. In humanitarian jargon, when a group of people lose their coping mechanisms, that is a bureaucratic way of saying that more of them will die.

Unfortunately, my colleague Rick Neal and I have been hearing a lot about coping mechanisms during our current mission in the Central African Republic, where 200,000 people have been displaced due to attacks on their villages by the Presidential Guard and the regular army. These people have abandoned their villages and are living in the scrub land near their fields, far from their burned homes, schools, and water pumps. Many families lost everything in the attacks.

But too many in the humanitarian community here are assuring Rick and me that we shouldn't worry. People here have strong coping mechanisms. They are used to sleeping in their fields for weeks at a time during planting season. They are used to foraging for food to make up for deficits. They are used to children getting sick and dying young.

At some point the evocation of "coping mechanisms" becomes an excuse for doing nothing, a justification for failure. Yes, let's recognize the strength of people to manage, and their ability to survive in adverse circumstances. But let's not hide behind coping mechanisms and pretend that the current situation for the displaced in the Central African Republic is in any way acceptable.

As a Catholic sister in Kaga Bandoro put it, "It's not poverty. It's misery."

Let's look reality in the face and move with as much of our collective strength and wealth as we can muster to meet the basic needs of the displaced in the CAR.

President's Corner: Fighting Modern Slavery

Over the weekend I saw “Amazing Grace,” the film about how William Wilberforce, a 19th Century British parliamentarian, led a successful campaign to bar Great Britain from participating in the slave trade. Although slavery continued in the U.S. for nearly another half century, the British decision to get out of the slave trade was a huge and early human rights triumph.

This elegant, inspiring movie made we wonder if there is a human rights abuse of comparable horror today. I think there is: the illegal trafficking of men, women and children for forced labor and sex. The International Labor Organization, a UN agency, estimates that there are currently 12.3 million people in forced or bonded labor, forced child labor, or sexual servitude. Many of these have been trafficked across international borders, but large numbers work in virtual slavery in their own countries.

It is the transnational trafficking that is getting the most attention today. The U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report for 2006, says that “of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year, approximately 80% are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors.”

The Polaris Project, a non-profit agency fighting to end human trafficking, calls it “the modern practice of slavery.” But while the trade in and exploitation of African slaves was obvious and state-protected at first, human trafficking is covert, a combination of desperate families and huge criminal rings selling children into prostitution or child labor. Human trafficking “is the third largest criminal industry in the world today, after arms and drug dealing, and is the fastest growing,” the Polaris Project says.

Refugee populations, where people are fighting to survive, often suffer the depredations of human traffickers. The fastest growing refugee population in the world today is comprised of Iraqis fleeing the violence in their country. Most have sought sanctuary in Syria and Jordan, where refugees can’t work and are getting little outside help. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that women are beginning to resort to prostitution to support themselves and their families. Some will end up imprisoned in local brothels, others will be moved out of the country by criminal trafficking rings.

Although the modern day slave trade is, for the most part, shady and undercover, the ways to attack it are similar to the methods William Wilberforce used to abolish the British slave trade 200 years ago this year. First, publicize the problem by highlighting abuses. Second, fight for legislation to combat the problem. Most western countries have the laws they need already. So the third step is particularly important—prosecute the guilty. The other steps are prevention, and when prevention fails, protection of the victims.

There is plenty of reporting on human trafficking now by human rights organizations, the UN, government agencies, and newspaper columnists, such as Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. But ending the practice of human trafficking will require national and international efforts. The hymn, Amazing Grace, contains the line, “I once was blind, but now I see…” As long as most people are blind to the problems of child labor, the forced servitude of domestic workers, prostitution and other abuses connected with human trafficking, the problem will only grow.

Happy International Women's Day

From Senior Advocate, Sarah Martin:

Today is International Women's Day and the theme is Ending Impunity for Violence Against Women and Children. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. For the past ten years, I've been very interested in this topic and trying to find ways to help the survivors of rape. Refugees International has allowed me to pursue this passion and along the way, I've met some absolutely amazing refugee and displaced women, as well as the humanitarians who risk their lives to help them.

My very first mission for Refugees International was to Guinea and Liberia in November 2003. This is where I truly learned how widespread the problem of gender-based violence is during conflict. A mental health worker in a camp in Guinea let me sit in on a small counseling session of Liberian refugee adolescents who talked about the atrocities they had seen and discussed ways to deal with their anger. One of the most powerful articles I've ever read about the widespread problem of abuse of women in Liberia is Kenneth Cain's "The Rape of Dinah" in Human Rights Quarterly. I would urge you to read it. Liberia has made great strides - electing Ellen Sirleaf Johnson as the first democratically elected woman president in Africa but it's still slowly recovering from the civil war that tore it apart. There is still not enough being done to address the impunity that the rapists in Liberia enjoy.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, I visited the site of the infamous UN sexual exploitation and abuse scandal in Ituri. The UN was desperately trying to address this problem and there was nary a uniformed man in sight at the bars and restaurants there. There I met Mirella, an Italian aid worker who ran a psycho-social program for raped women in the Congo and tried to help them put their lives back together. The ICC actually indicted Thomas Lubanga Dyilo - the former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, a group notorious for abducting child soldiers and for rape. This action gives us hope that the women of the DRC will see some justice.

In Sri Lanka, I met with young women who were former soldiers in the LTTE: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. When these young women are taken for the LTTE, their hair is cut off - something rare for women in Sri Lankan society. These young women often hide out for months until their hair grows out so as to avoid being stigmatized as former combatants. With the war in Sri Lanka raging again, more girls and boys are being abducted into the LTTE and rapes by government soldiers continue.

The most difficult mission I undertook while at RI has to be the mission to Darfur in 2004 where we focused on the problem of gender-based violence there. Amna and Maha, two Sudanese aid workers who took my colleague Mamie and I underneath their wings and translated for us, introduced us to women, and even cooked us dinner. The warmth and the hospitality of Darfuri women has to be experienced to be believed. I've spent many afternoons sitting in IDP camps drinking tea with women listening to their stories about the abuses and the rapes that they endure.

For my last act at RI, I'm helping to field a mission of two lawyers that specialize in gender-based violence who are going to Sudan. By focusing on the laws and implemenation (or lack thereof), we hope to hold the Government of Sudan accountable for their appalling actions. Even if women are able to register a complaint about rapes, they are rarely investigated, or the defendents fail to show up for trials. By shining a bright light on the government of Sudan's inability to end the rapes in Darfur and punish the perpetrators, RI hopes to engage women's organizations around the world to stand up and demand justice.

So for all of you out there reading this, thank you for your support in helping us fight impunity for violence against women in every country that we work in. The women need to know that their voices are not being ignored.

President's Corner: Vietnamese Montagnards Still Need Protection

Refugees International was founded in 1979 by Sue Morton, an American housewife living in Tokyo, to promote the resettlement of refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam to the United States. She and other refugee rights activists were phenomenally successful; hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians have resettled in the U.S., and resettlement is continuing, although the numbers are small.

Thirty years ago, world attention was focused on the huge displacement from Asia following the U.S. retreat from Vietnam and the genocide in Cambodia. Today the world is focused on massive displacement in other places—Iraq and the Darfur region of Sudan. But the Montagnards in Vietnam—hill people from the Central Highlands there—still need protection from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.

Montagnards have long faced persecution in Vietnam. One reason is that they sided with the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, many of them practice Christianity in a Communist country, and there is an independence movement in the Central Highlands. As a result, Montagnards have been seeking asylum in Cambodia, some claiming religious persecution; others claiming that the government has taken their land.

On several occasions since 2001, when Refugees International received reports that Cambodia was forcing Montagnard refugees back to Vietnam, we have intervened to protect Montagnards. In one case, the U.S. agreed to resettle from Cambodia up to 1,000 Montagnards to protect them from being returned to Vietnam. Many of them joined a large Montagnard community in North Carolina.

In 2005, UNHCR and the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam signed an agreement covering the processing of 750 Montagnards who were then seeking asylum in Cambodia. Basically, the agreement provided that the refugees could remain in Cambodia until the UNHCR determined their status; Montagnards who qualified as refugees fleeing persecution would be resettled to third countries, mainly the U.S., while others would be returned to Vietnam. Of the initial 750 Motagnards, 78% were resettled to third countries, while the balance went back to Vietnam, usually because they were determined to be economic migrants rather than refugees fleeing persecution. The arrangement continues to apply to new asylum seekers. Last year, for example, 277 new Montagnards came to UNHCR shelters in Cambodia.

The U.S. is not a party to the tri-partite agreement, but it plays a key role by offering to resettle Montagnards who qualify as refugees (Canada, Sweden, Finland and Norway have also resettled Montagnards in recent years) and by reviewing all cases that UNHCR turns down for resettlement. Last year the U.S. reviewed the cases of 75 people the UN had rejected for refugee status and agreed to resettle 33 of them.

The U.S. review process is not popular with the UNHCR or the State Department; officials in both agencies say the U.S. review undercuts the UNHCR and sets a double standard. Indeed it does—and should. That is because a U.S. law called the Lautenberg Amendment requires the U.S. to make resettlement easier for people fleeing countries that practice religious persecution. In its latest Human Rights report, the State Department charges Vietnam with restrictions on religious freedom and specifically says:

“Police and local officials in some areas strove to prevent Protestants who
belonged to unregistered or unrecognized groups from assembling to worship. This
situation was particularly acute in some areas of the Central Highlands.”

The State Department is considering changes that could make it more difficult for Montagnards rejected for refugee status to get their applications reviewed—and perhaps accepted—by the U.S. This would be a mistake. Vietnam was been reducing religious repression and allowing more outside observers to monitor conditions in the Central Highlands, but as long as Montagnards can demonstrate continued repression and make legitimate claims for asylum in third countries, the U.S. should do all it can to protect them. The numbers are small, but the principle of protection from persecution is large and indivisible.

Wait... and Wait... and Wait (Chad)

Children in Kerfi, Chad collect water from a water hole.
(photo credit: Refugees International/Rick Neal)

Rick Neal sends more in from Chad today. He just returned from Goz Beida, a town near the Sudanese border in southeastern Chad that Refugees International last visited in March 2006.

"I just got back to Abeche - and internet access - from Goz Beida. I can't say that the tens of thousands of displaced people seeking shelter there from attacks on their villages have been abandoned, but they certainly have been left to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It's only now, sometimes a year after being driven out of their homes, that they're getting some help - some food, a fresh water source, visits by humanitarian agencies to make sure they're okay.

For some reason, relief agencies have been very slow to help out these displaced. It seems that the government asked that no one help them, to encourage them to go home. It wasn't that simple, though.

They didn't abandon their homes and livelihoods just to get handouts; they fled because they were in danger of being killed. So they chose to stay where they felt safe, even with no help. Now that it's clear to everyone that these people cannot go home, the UN and NGOs are starting to help.

There are still some who are waiting, however. Yesterday, I drove for about an hour to a place south of Goz Beida called Kerfi. It's a small windswept village, houses built from straw, the air hot and dry. On its edge are hundreds of smaller shelters, the temporary home of about 4,000 people driven out of their nearby villages back in November.

They are coping on their own - collecting firewood to sell, working for residents in Kerfi - so they can buy something to eat. They also use the skills they muster when drought comes. They boil leaves or a certain fruit from palm trees, and give the soup to their children. Doctors Without Borders - practically the only agency that has been helping the displaced from the beginning of the crisis - reports that malnutrition rates are rising.

And they wait - for a food distribution promised by the World Food Programme, for someone to come and find water, for the government to do something to protect them against marauders who drove them off their land and stole their livestock.

Safety and security are the big worries, and there are no easy answers. I heard from journalists last night that the president of Chad has rejected an initial proposal by the UN to deploy a force to patrol the border area with Darfur. Even if they work it out, it'll be months before troops arrive.

In the meantime, there are other villages that have not yet been attacked, but are waiting, too, for what is perhaps inevitable. Who will protect them? There are 2,000 French forces in Chad, providing logistical support to the Chadian army. If the United Nations asked them, would they accept a new mandate, to move out to the border and help keep people safe?"