Making a Difference in 2007

It’s amazing to see what a difference a year makes. In 2007, Refugees International completed 20 missions to countries around the world, assessing and promoting solutions for some of the most critical refugee crises. Our advocacy led to several major successes for the 35 million refugees and internally displaced people and over 11 million stateless people.

The Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act was a major milestone for RI this year. Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), along with a coalition of NGOs, expanded the resettlement opportunities in the U.S. for Iraqis who have worked and risked their lives for western forces. Our public education campaigns and other efforts also led to higher levels of UN funding for education and healthcare for the over 2.2 million Iraqi refugees scattered throughout Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East. The UN’s budget for Iraqi refugees rose from $22 million to over $250 million, and the American budget rose from $43 million to $200 million in 2007. Still, the crisis is not over and we will continue to push policy makers to meet the needs of Iraqi refugees in 2008.

In November, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres praised RI’s work with statelessness and vowed to make the issue a priority for the coming year.

Refugees International is playing a major role in raising awareness, in advocacy and in forcing us to do what we need to do, what we are supposed to do. So, it is a welcome pressure that I hope will go on, especially in drawing my attention to the need to be more effective in this area. As a matter of fact, UNHCR in the beginning was probably a little bit reluctant to give enough importance to statelessness.

In Darfur, the violence and displacement continue, but some progress was made in 2007. In June, we released our report, Laws Without Justice, which recommended changes to the system of Sudanese laws that exposes rape victims to further abuse. As a direct result of this report, members of the House of Representatives passed a resolution to prevent acts of rape and sexual violence against women and girls in Darfur. In addition, after years of calling for a strong peacekeeping force in Darfur that can protect civilians, we are happy that the new joint AU-UN peacekeeping force will finally deploy in Darfur next year.

RI advanced the interests of internally displaced people in Colombia—who comprise the second largest displacement crisis in the world—by working with Congressman McGovern (D-MA) to recognize 2007 as the Year of the Internally Displaced in Colombia. RI also led the effort that resulted in a significant reconfiguration of U.S. funding in Colombia, with the percentage of U.S. assistance going to humanitarian and development work, as opposed to military and security aid, rising from 20% to 44%.

Chad, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo, and south Sudan…the list of places where we have traveled to speak with displaced people this year is lengthy. In May, the UN congratulated us for our work in drawing attention to the forgotten Kasai Oriental province in DR Congo where our recommendations for infrastructure building were taken seriously and implemented. Refugees International also successfully called for stronger UN leadership in the CAR, an important step that is already leading to a more forceful response to the violence and displacement in this neglected country.

Throughout the year, our advocates urge Congress, the Administration and the United Nations to increase their efforts for refugees, speak out for the people they encounter on missions and find workable solutions for decision makers. As we reflect on those that we’ve met around the world and the struggles they face, we can be cheered that our work has made some improvements in their lives.

Hell is…Life as an Aid Worker in Sudan, Part 2

Last week, we brought you the first installment of our posts from Khartoum where we looked at the difficulties facing NGO workers in Sudan. Advocate Melanie Teff and Advocacy Associate, Camilla Olson, recently spent three weeks in Sudan assessing the humanitarian situation for Darfuris and the shortfalls affecting those who work with them.

The NGO workers we met in Khartoum seemed pretty demoralized. And who wouldn’t be when it seems like the Government of Sudan goes out of its way to make your life as difficult as possible? If you are an NGO worker in Sudan, you need a government permit to do almost anything. Not only do you need an entry permit and a residence permit, but you need a photo permit in order to take even tourist photos, and you need a travel permit to even venture outside of the capital, Khartoum. Worst of all, if you want to leave the country, you need an exit visa. And then, of course, there are the re-entry visas to contend with.

Not only do you have to wade through the tediousness of bureaucratic procedures, you also have to deal with increased banditry and lawlessness. From January to October 2007 in Darfur, 12 humanitarians were killed, 118 were abducted during hijackings and 75 humanitarian premises were raided by armed men. It seems that each day in Darfur brings a new rebel group with a new acronym. All of these splinter groups prey on the UN and NGOs for their resources, particularly Land Cruisers and satellite phones. Because of the insecurity in Darfur, none of the organizations we spoke with are able to access their field sites by road. Instead they use “hit and run” tactics – paying for expensive helicopter flights to bring in staff for a few hours once a week to make sure a project is still running. They can’t even drive their Land Cruisers in main towns like Nyala or El Fasher because they will be carjacked. Instead they are forced to rent old beat up taxis in order to get around.

The majority of humanitarian workers we spoke with also told us they are certain that the Government of Sudan is monitoring their emails and listening to their phone calls. More than once when we got to that point in the conversation, the person we were speaking with would look around and whisper, “In fact, I’m sure they’re listening to us right now.”

We asked many aid workers why their organizations did not just pack up and go home, in protest at the difficulties they were facing. But they pointed out that millions of people are dependent on the assistance that they provide, and that if they left now, their organizations would probably never be permitted to re-enter the country. At the end of the day, despite all of the challenges, civilians in Darfur - who have been through horrific experiences during the conflict of the past four years - must not be abandoned by the international community just because their government is making it so difficult for people to access them with assistance.

Suffice it to say, the difficulties that the UN, international NGOs and civil society face in Sudan are enormous. But, just like those aid workers who are managing to stay the course despite the obstacles thrown in their path, the international community must stay the course and continue to support the humanitarian operation in Darfur. Until a peace deal is reached, it’s all that there is to keep the long-suffering Darfuri population alive.

-Camilla Olson

Hell is…Life as an Aid Worker in Sudan, Part 1

We’ve just got back from a three-week mission to Sudan in which we were intending to travel to Darfur to find out if people displaced by the conflict were getting adequate food, health care, shelter and protection from violence. We never made it to Darfur as the government denied us travel permits. But we glimpsed the surreality and the deep frustrations of life as an aid worker in Sudan.

When entering the Government of Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) to apply for our permits it felt like we had fallen into a strange combination of the movies “1984” and “Alice in Wonderland”. This may be unsurprising in a country whose Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Mr. Ahmad Muhammad Harun, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So we asked for the form we needed to fill in to apply for travel permits to Darfur, and were given one copy. We asked for another copy, since there were two of us, but were told that no more forms were available. We headed off to a find photocopy the form, but were then told that we needed four copies of each form. After another trip to the photocopy shop we tried again to submit our forms, but were now told that we needed four copies of several other documents. Owning a photocopy shop near the HAC must be very lucrative!

We duly came back with all of the correct documents, but the person we had to submit them to was now out, so we waited four hours for him, before managing to give him our forms. He refused to accept the forms, since our organization was not registered in Sudan, but he said that he would phone us to let us know how we could proceed. For the next week we tried to contact him every day. Finally he told us that he was prepared to accept our travel permit applications, and to come back the next day for a decision. When we came back we were told that they were still waiting for advice from national security and military intelligence officers in Darfur. In all, we ended up visiting the HAC offices more than ten times over a period of nearly three weeks before we finally received a decision from them. Of course, it was a negative decision, but it felt like an achievement to finally get one.

Our experience of applying for travel permits is just one tiny example of the endless bureaucratic nightmare that aid workers in Sudan have to deal with on a daily basis. The Government of Sudan is not at all appreciative of the essential humanitarian assistance that aid workers are providing in war-torn Darfur. They don’t like having these international witnesses to the ongoing abuses around, so they make their lives as difficult as possible. One aid worker from another African country told us that he had worked in many humanitarian crises in several different countries and that he had experienced hardships and difficult conditions, but that Sudan is the first country he had worked in where the government had made him feel unwelcome. Another experienced aid worker told us that in 25 years of humanitarian work in nearly as many countries, he had never come across another government that cared so little about the humanitarian operation that was keeping its people alive. We applaud the efforts of these NGO workers who continue to provide assistance to people in Darfur despite the obstructions imposed by the Sudanese government and the day-to-day difficulties they have to endure.

--Melanie Teff

Visit our website for more information about our latest mission to Sudan

President's Corner: No Helicopters For Darfur

What if the United States and its allies pressured the United Nations to deploy a large new peacekeeping force to the Darfur region of Sudan and then failed to support it? I would consider the lack of support hypocritical and a clear lack of leadership.

Well, that is exactly what the U.S. and its allies are doing. On January 1st a new UN-African Union force will take over peacekeeping responsibilities in Darfur. The hybrid force will eventually have 26,000 members, replacing a beleaguered African Union force of about 7,000. Not only is the new force supposed to be larger, it is also supposed to be better equipped than the AU force. It is supposed to have sophisticated communications equipment and adequate transport, including helicopters, so it can move quickly around Darfur, an area as big as Texas.

So far, however, a UN campaign to win pledges of adequate helicopters and crews has failed completely. Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent a letter to the UN Security Council asking for 24 helicopters for the Darfur force, also known as UNAMID. Despite his plea, “no member state has come forward to provide these vital assets,” he told the press.

Mr. Ban has done more than write letters. Last week Deputy Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro said: “In the past weeks and months, the Secretary General has contacted, personally, every possible contributor of helicopters—in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia. And not one has been made available.” UN officials say that Mr. Ban has repeatedly raised the helicopter issue with top U.S. officials.

“In Europe alone there are thousands of military helicopters of different types. Large numbers of helicopters also exist in key Asian powers, and in the Americas,’ Ms. Migiro said. “Any assistance the governments in these regions can offer would be profoundly appreciated, not least by the people of Darfur.”

President Bush has accused the government of Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur, yet the U.S. now seems unwilling to provide a new peacekeeping force with the equipment it needs to succeed. U.S. officials say that the U.S. helicopters assets are tied up in Iraq, Afghanistan and in training. What’s more, they say that Sudan wouldn’t allow U.S. military pilots to fly in Darfur. Maybe they’re right, but why not put the Khartoum government on the spot by offering to send helicopters, perhaps from Reserve units?

The new UN-AU force faces many obstacles, including unwarranted restrictions imposed by the government of Sudan. Now wealthy, well-armed nations appear to be working hand in glove with Khartoum to sabotage the new peacekeeping force by grounding it even before it deploys.

This is more than hypocritical; it’s outrageous.

--Ken Bacon

Read Refugees International's latest bulletin on the current challenges for protecting civilians in Darfur.

DR Congo: The Moment of Hope is Dwindling

People say that the only things you can count on in life are death and taxes. In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) taxes are unreliable, and more likely to be extorted in the form of systematic looting than a tax return. Rape, on the other hand, has become another near certainty for women in the Congo, and major efforts are needed to protect these women.

Earlier this year John Holmes (UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs) described rape in the DRC as “the worst in the world” adding “the sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity— it's appalling.”

In a recent Washington Post column, Michael Gerson described the story of one 24 year old rape victim. This young, married woman was kidnapped and gang raped while her brother was forced to watch. She, in turn, was forced to watch while her brother was killed, and then taken as a “wife” – that is, a sex slave – during which time she got pregnant and acquired a sexually transmitted disease. When she finally managed to escape, her real husband had abandoned her for having been used by another man. Now, she lives in fear that it will all happen again, and there isn’t anyone who can promise her that it won’t.

Once used largely as a military tactic, this behavior has moved beyond strategic application as a weapon of war. Rape has entered the mainstream of expected - and in some grotesque way - acceptable behavior in a place where impunity reigns.

The most culpable of the perpetrators are members of the Congolese national military; the FARDC, whose “courage” President Kabila recently “saluted,” calling them Congo’s “anonymous heroes.” They are guiltier than others, not because their crimes are more prolific than those of the armed rebel groups, but because they belong to an institution that exists to protect the citizens it is brutalizing. Anywhere else, this would constitute a massive breach in trust, except that the Congolese people know better than to harbor any trust for their soldiers.

The other major threats are the FDLR –the anti-Tutsi remnants of the Rwandan genocidaire who fled to DRC in 1994 – the Mayi Mayi militia, and a handful of other armed groups spread throughout the east. Recently, civilians are attacking each other, too, proving – worryingly – that rape is not just a soldier’s prerogative anymore.

With a criminal and predatory military, a weak and poorly resourced police force, and little judicial system to speak of, impunity is the rule in North and South Kivu. Complex structures like a criminal justice sector will take decades to properly develop in the DRC, especially given the fact that North and South Kivu continue to be active war zones. However President Kabila can – and must - begin to take steps to emphasize that rape is unacceptable, and that it will not go unpunished, particularly within the ranks of the FARDC.

Refugees International is also pushing for additional steps by the UN and its peacekeeping force to protect civilians in the Congo from the ongoing violence.

Last year, people voted in the Congo’s first democratic election for president in four decades. This moment of hope is rapidly dwindling with the ongoing violence and brutality in the east. We can only hope the international community won’t write off the country, but continue to stay engaged until real peace, including safety from violence, and recourse to justice is restored.

--Erin Weir

Sudan: Struggling to Show Solidarity

While in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, on November 25th I attended the local inauguration of the global 16 days’ of activism against gender violence campaign. In a country which has often taken the official line that sexual and gender-based violence does not exist in its culture, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that such an event was taking place, and was even more impressed to see that it was a government-led event.

In the western Darfur province of Sudan there have been widespread reports of systematic rapes of women and children. Yet, in Sudan, many non governmental organizations (NGOs) have been prevented by the government from running programs that assist rape survivors and have threatened these groups with expulsion for talking publicly about violence against women. But there I sat at an official government event talking about violence against women. There were speakers from UN agencies and even a representative of local NGOs. Looking around the room, I realized that there were in fact very few local NGOs present. Unlike many other countries around the world, there did not appear to be any women’s organizations running public events as part of the 16 days’ campaign against violence against women.

I talked with a few local Sudanese women’s organizations to find out why they were not organizing any public events. I soon came to understand the difficulties that these groups were facing, and admired them for being able to carry on working at all.

I heard about how their staff members were frequently being taken away and questioned by national security and intelligence agencies about their activities and about their funding sources. Often when they organized a workshop to discuss violence against women it would be ruined by such disruptions. I heard about events, such as those organized on International Women’s Day, which were cancelled by government bans of public events on the days in question. I heard about how their organizations’ registration was frequently suspended by the government. And, I heard how many Sudanese women’s organizations that want to work with women in Darfur who are facing so many problems, are not permitted by the government to work there.

I also heard about the funding problems that these groups were facing. Some groups told me that they wanted to organize activities about violence against women on November 25th, but they couldn’t afford to do so. It is really hard for local NGOs to access funds that are much more readily available to international NGOs and UN agencies. Local groups just can’t comply with all the complex regulations involved in applying for such funds. They can often get funded to run individual activities, but not to pay their staffing or administration costs.

As one women’s activist said to me: “What’s the point of funding us to run eight workshops when we can’t pay staff to follow up on anything that came out of the workshops?” She talked about her frustration at the lack of support that international donors are showing towards local civil society organizations. Some of her words stuck in my head. “One day the UN and the international NGOs will leave Sudan. If they don’t invest in groups like ours now, then when they leave all of the advances made will be lost. Sudanese women, particularly Arab Sudanese women like myself, must be enabled to show solidarity with our sisters in Darfur now while they are suffering. If not, then the divisions in our society will never be healed.”

-Melanie Teff

Advocate Melanie Teff and Program Associate Camilla Olson recently returned from a mission to Sudan to assess the humanitarian situation in Darfur.

President’s Corner: Too Little Progress on Iraqi Resettlement

The U.S. continues to fall well short of its own plans to resettle Iraqis here. In the month of November, the State Department reports that it admitted 362 Iraqis for resettlement in the U.S. This is less than the 450 resettled in October and well below the government’s target pace of the 1,000 a month necessary to meet its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqis in the current fiscal year.

In the last year, despite a lot of huffing and puffing from the State Department, the U.S. resettled just 1,608 Iraqis, far below the indicated goal of 7,000. We are off to a better start this year, but the results are still pathetic.

Government officials justify the slow progress on resettlement by saying that it has taken them a long time to build an infrastructure for interviewing and processing Iraqi refugees who apply for resettlement in the U.S.

There are currently about 2.5 million Iraqi refugees, primarily in Syria and Jordan. Resettlement is only a solution for small numbers of these refugees, but it is a highly visible solution, one that could show that the U.S. is compassionate about and responsive to the plight of Iraqis who fled their country for safety. So far, the U.S. has been unwilling or unable to transmit that message.

Recently, some news stories have focused on refugees leaving Syria and returning to Iraq. The number of returnees is in dispute. The Iraqi Red Crescent Organization reports that about 28,000 people returned between mid September and mid October. The Iraqi government says the figure is about 60,000. Most of these people are returning because they have exhausted their resources and can no longer afford to live in Syria. When they come back to Iraq, they receive a stipend of $800.

The returns are encouraging, but they are still just a trickle compared to the large refugee population. If security improves, returns will accelerate, but many Iraqis, traumatized by the violence they have experienced and worried that sectarian tensions will continue for years, will be reluctant to return.

They deserve an opportunity to settle elsewhere, if they qualify, and the U.S. ought to give more of them that opportunity.

--Ken Bacon