by Charles London

07/14/2003

The “Lost Girls of Sudan” are a difficult group to identify. They are grown up now, having spent the bulk of their lives in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Unlike the famous “Lost Boys” they have been largely invisible for the past ten years and have not been offered the same opportunity as their brothers to board airplanes and leave the refugee camp behind for new lives in the United States. Since the year 2000, nearly 3500 Sudanese men and boys have been resettled to America from Kakuma. In that same time, only 89 women and girls have been resettled. Those girls who have been resettled were included only because boys who had been selected for the resettlement program brought them to the attention of the authorities or because of urgent protection needs. While the “Lost Boys of Sudan” were offered resettlement as a chance to prosper in a new environment, Sudanese women are only offered resettlement after they have been victimized or are under an immediate threat.

In the first part of this series, I looked at how one girl arrived in the camp. In the second part, I explored her life and the lives of other young women left behind, the problems and dangers they face. It is time now to find out why they were left behind in the first place. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, all names of girls in the camp have been changed and many officials from various agencies refused to be identified.

“In Sudanese culture,” explains Grace, a Sudanese Lost Girl, “it is not acceptable for a girl to live on her own. When the boys arrived they were put into groups together, but the girls were taken into foster families. This is why we were not included in resettlement.”

The girls in foster families were quickly forgotten. In many cases they had already been integrated into families in Ethiopia and were not registered as unaccompanied minors when they arrived in Kenya. Thus, as far as UN High Commissioner for Refugees was concerned at the time, they did not exist as separate individuals.

The original list of resettlement cases submitted to the US Government by UNHCR had no girls on it at all. In May 2003, I visited Kakuma with the advocacy organization, Refugees International, to find out what happened to these girls. Why were they not included in the original resettlement of Sudanese minors? What has happened to the girls since the Lost Boys have left the camp? What can be done to give these young women the same chance the boys have had?

“[The resettlement of the Sudanese boys as a group and not the girls] was not due to gender bias by attitude or design,” said one US official who works with resettlement. “It was simply easier.” The parentless women would thus remain very difficult to find. The women, said the official, are treated by these families as chattel. They are kept from access to education by working for the family, cooking, cleaning, collecting water and wood. If they resist this workload, they suffer beatings and in some cases, expulsion from the home. There is a substantial, but as yet unquantified population of women living without shelter in the refugee camp.

Several lists of these women exist and the numbers change depending on who compiled the list. It is not unheard of for a woman to be forced to take on extra children from other families if there is the possibility of taking them to the Unites States.

During the Lost Boys resettlement, it was later learned, young men lied about their marital status or family situation in order to be included in the program. Officials fear making the same mistakes again.

It is not the policy of UNHCR to break up families.

“We will not just pull a girl out of a family while I’m here,” said a resettlement officer for UNHCR. “Where there is an established dependency, we do not want to break up the relationship.”

But other advocates for refugees feel differently about UNHCR’s role in the failure to resettle the girls.

“UNHCR is not willing or able to cope with resettlement recommendations,” said one advocate in Kenya who works with refugees on legal rights. “They are the largest stumbling block to resettlement.”

UNHCR fears violence in the camp if they try and take the women for resettlement as a group while there are other groups, and indeed other women suffering the same deprivations of camp life. They are always overloaded with urgent protection cases as well, and do not want to suggest a bias toward one group or another, especially if that group is suffering an immediate danger. While this makes sense from a camp management perspective, it does little to fix the unfair exclusion of Sudanese girls from the resettlement opportunity offered to their male counterparts.

“Resettlement to the US would not be appropriate for all Lost Girls, says Anne Edgerton, an advocate for Refugees International. “But there are many who would thrive and should be given the chance to thrive in this country before they are raped, forced to marry, or abducted, rather than after.” Ms. Edgerton believes that UNHCR should act to resettle the population of girls if a nation such as the United States or Australia shows interest in them. If a country wants to take in one particular group of people UNHCR should not act as gatekeepers of the offer, but rather as a facilitator.

With inter-agency cooperation between the UN and resettlement countries, it would be possible to begin screening the girls in a matter of months, according to officials in the refugee camp.

For now, the girls wait among 100,000 other refugees, hoping for a chance, but expecting little. Slowly their numbers are dwindling as marriage becomes unavoidable, as they are abducted, as they fall into depression. But, it is not too late for some of them if action is taken now.

“When the boys were leaving, I prayed that God would perform a miracle and I could leave with them,” said Maria, a seventeen year old who arrived in Kakuma in 1994. She doesn’t go to school because she must look after her younger brothers and do chores for the family. As of now, she faces no immediate danger, though she is reaching marriage age and fears her uncles forcing her to marry in order to get the bride-price from a wealthy Sudanese man. Without a parent’s protection, it can be difficult to get out of a marriage that is abusive. The extended family is often reluctant to return the pride price, as is customary in a divorce. She is safe for now, but lists ten other women she knows who have been forced into marriage. She believes the same fate awaits her, she says. Maria, like countless women of all nationalities in Kakuma, would like other option’s: “When the boys left I kept quiet and prayed for another opportunity.”