by Charles London
07/18/2003

This is welcome news to those who want to see refugee resettlement for cases such as the “Lost Girls of Sudan.”  We hope that readers of this series will act in support of making the U.S. resettlement program a more viable option for refugees from Africa, the largest producer of refugees, yet the most underrepresented in refugee resettlement numbers to the U.S.

What can you do? 

ACTION:  Request that your Senator support the language concerning refugee resettlement and U.S. policy toward refugees passed by the House (Section 229 of H.R. 1950) in the Senate version of the Foreign Relations Act, which is pending in the Senate.

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Part IV-Final

Among young Sudanese women in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, the most prevalent desire is for escape, the way their brothers, friends and cousins-the Lost Boys of Sudan-did. They watched as thousands of boys left the refugee camp and started new lives in the United States as part of one of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees most heralded resettlement programs for minors. As I have explored in the previous parts of this series, the girls were not included in this resettlement offer. They remain in Kakuma, where many of them suffer beatings, servitude, forced marriages—all at the hands of their foster families, the very people who are supposed to be nurturing and protecting these girls. It is time for that to change.

“[The United States] has been interested in girls in vulnerable situations since we began processing of the Lost Boys in 2000,” a spokesperson for the State Department said. “The boys were seen as a group that needed to come first, but we have been asking UNHCR [about the girls] since we started with the boys.”

The girls did not fit the original resettlement criteria specified for the boys and the only girls who got to come-89 in total-were either connected to one of the boys or were seen as urgent protection cases. The boys were removed from the camp en masse to protect them from future exploitation as child soldiers or targets of the Khartoum government. Resettlement was seen as a durable solution for a population with no options for integration into camp life.

Because the girls were already integrated into foster families and not targeted as potential combatants, the urgency of their situation was not apparent and resettlement did not present itself as a ready answer to their problems.

But time has shown that they are just as alienated, and just as vulnerable as their male counterparts.

Because the girls have been historically harder to track, not only due to the fact that they are female and thus not able to live on their own, but also due to their lower numbers, they have missed the opportunity extended to the boys. Now, the girls are offered resettlement only when their cases become urgent protection cases, usually after a rape or attempted abduction.

Since the processing of the boys began, UNHCR has hired eight separate consultants over a period of four years to examine the situation of Sudanese girls and minors in Kenya. They have, as of now, not begun screening this population to determine eligibility for resettlement. In the only report by one of these consultants Refugees International, a DC based advocacy organization could access, the author documents widespread depression among Sudanese girls in Kakuma and a high percentage of abuse among the sample of girls interviewed.

But many of these girls are bright, determined, and would prosper in the United States. Marriage and housework are their only options for the future if they remain in Kakuma. This is the plight of many refugee women in Africa, but the U.S. is willing to offer this population of girls another, different future.

“We are eager to get these girls,” the State Department spokesperson said. “We want a gender balance in the resettlement program.”

If action is taken now to get the young women who suffered the same deprivations as the Lost Boys out of the camp, they might be able to come before they are victimized rather than after. For vulnerable women, resettlement can be more than a protective measure. It can be a balancing of a program that has previously favored boys; it can be a chance to embrace new ways of life and break out of cultural norms that limit them, and it can save them from further pain and trauma before they are forgotten.

“For myself, for the future,” says Claudia (not her real name), a twenty year-old mother whose child is the result of rape by a group of soldiers in the Sudan.

“I don’t know what will happen. That can only be determined if I went to a good place, a safe place with my child and little brothers. How can I go back to Sudan? No one will care for me because I have a child and no husband. I [make beaded jewelry] to distract myself from what has happened to me, but I would like to go to school and I would like to be safe.”

“Claudia” had been thrown out by her foster family for having a child and has taken refuge with another family, but, she says, there are many boys who want to take her by force, and she has no one who can help her.

The reality is that these girls have already been forgotten twice: upon arrival in Kakuma Refugee Camp, and again when the U.S. refugee resettlement program was started.

Let’s not forget them a third time. Contact your representatives in Congress today or visit www.refugeesinternational.org for more information.