02/28/2005

Read more about the Crisis in Darfur.

Contacts: Ken Bacon, Shannon Meehan, Eileen Shields-West
ri@refugeesinternational.org or 202.828.0110

Sudanese officials are trying to persuade internally displaced persons in Darfur to return to their villages before the planting season begins in June and July in order to avoid a serious food shortage for 2005 – 2006. But security is not yet good enough to allow sustainable returns, and leaders of the internally displaced say that the government lacks either the will or the ability to make their villages safe.

The pressure for return is apparent at both the national and the local level. In late February, one of Sudan’s most powerful officials, First Vice President Taha, met in Khartoum with local sultans and sheiks from the state of North Darfur to urge them to go home to make preparations to receive returning refugees and returnees. And in a village filled with internal refugees about 25 miles south of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, a local sheik says that “the government of Sudan regularly visits us to ask us to return to our villages. Our reply is, ‘We are not going back because there is no security.’”

Some people who believed the government’s claims of security learned the hard way that their return was premature. A small number of families accepted government assistance to return home to Mabruka, but they were attacked within a month and all of their livelihood materials were stolen again. Government-supported paramilitary forces, known as the Janjaweed, bandits and rebel forces continue to prey on villages. Other displaced people say they are unwilling to return home to villages that were burned and pillaged because they have no way to earn a living there.

In the course of the last two years, hundreds of villages have been burned by the Janjaweed, sometimes after being bombed by government planes, and nearly two million people have been displaced, fleeing to camps in safe areas. The government argues that it is trying to quell an insurgency, but many of the displaced charge that the government is trying to drive them from their villages and farms. Many of the displaced are African farmers who have been attacked by largely Arab militia groups armed by the government.

A wave of returns would help the government convince the international community that the crisis of killing and displacement is receding, perhaps reducing calls for new sanctions and other pressure on the regime. In addition, some Sudanese officials worry that the UN-supplied food distributed in the camps, where malnutrition rates are often substantially lower than in the countryside, is actually attracting local residents who have not been hurt by the war to move into camps, further exacerbating the crisis and collapse of local markets and social structures.
 
Internally displaced people report direct threats by government officials in order to pressure them to go home. In Riyhad camp just outside Al Geneina, residents say that men on foot or horseback dressed in khaki uniforms and carrying guns and knives come into the camp at night in an attempt to scare them into leaving. A woman who came to the camp from Nouri more than a year ago said, “A month ago, the soldiers came into the camp and said to me, ‘If you do not go back, we will come back soon and shoot you’.” “Even this camp is not safe, how can I go home?” a woman displaced from Dounta asks.

To accelerate returns, the government in Khartoum says that it plans to compensate displaced people for their lost houses, crops and animals, but few displaced people expect to get even a dinar in payment.

The government of Sudan has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Office of Migration asserting a “policy of no involuntary return.” A Letter of Understanding with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announces “that the right of all citizens to freedom of movement and residence within borders of their country is a basic human right.” In its agreement with UNHCR, the government notes that “voluntary return, where feasible, constitutes the best durable solution for those people who have been displaced by the conflict within Darfur.”  The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, international standards designed to protect internally displaced people, also prohibit involuntary return.

On paper the government has produced a good plan for orderly returns. In early December officials released a “Plan of Rehabilitation of War Affected Areas in the State of West Darfur.” According to a UN translation of the plan, which is in Arabic, “the local government considers the current displacement situation as disastrous, and is working hard towards the voluntary return of the displaced persons to their areas of origin following the provision of security and other social services. In this context, the local government of the State of West Darfur puts forward this plan with the aim of restoring confidence between the displaced persons and the government. And to rehabilitate the basic infrastructure and public services facilities, in the areas affected by the war in order to achieve the economic and social development of citizens in the State in general, and in the rural areas specific.”

But a top police official in El Geneina gives a different interpretation. “We need to make it easy for the IDPs. We will move them to resettle in larger planned areas with services and security, to mass them together for better protection and control. They will not need to go back to the smaller villages but can become part of these larger planned areas.” Such talk fuels the fears of many farmers that the whole point of the current war is to move them off their land, which will then be given to Arab herders who have fought for the government.

The fear that internal refugees will be relocated to places selected by the government is widespread. At a camp outside El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, the mother of two married twin sisters said, “If tomorrow an agreement is signed, we would go back, but I believe some people say that if there is a peace agreement completed, we have to stay here and build on this land. Will the government let us go home? We are not sure.”

In early March, the government of West Darfur will hold a meeting in El Geneina with local leaders, UN and other agencies to discuss its rehabilitation and resettlement plan. The government proposal, which applies to 75 areas, was developed without any input from representatives of the displaced or the international community, which the government expects to help pay for the rehabilitation. UN officials planning to attend the meeting say that they will hold fiercely to the principle of voluntary return.

If the government of West Darfur is sincere about voluntary returns, then it needs to make it clear to all that its plan is not part of a larger, government-orchestrated relocation program.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

• All parties honor the current ceasefire and start good faith negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur. This is a necessary precondition for creating conditions for safe and secure returns.
• All combatants in Sudan disarm, so that displaced people will no longer be afraid to go home.
• The Government of Sudan stop threats, payments and other efforts to force returns. The government must honor its commitments on voluntary returns and respect the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
• The international agencies continue to monitor and report any organized or spontaneous returns of IDPs from the camps to their villages to assure that such returns are truly voluntary.
• Donors support assistance programs for the few families that have returned voluntarily and for those who have remained in villages under difficult circumstances. This would reduce the attraction of moving to camps. The UN estimates that approximately 20% of the resident population suffers from the same loss of materials and lack of food as the internally displaced in camps and thus need similar assistance programs at their community level.