UNHCR Chief appeals for more aid to Cameroon

News Stories, 26 March 2015

© UNHCR/H.Caux
UN High Commissioner Guterres and ECHO's Director of Operations de Brouwer listen as Mariam, a Nigerian refugee in Cameroon, describes the attack on her village that forced her to flee.

MINAWAO CAMP, Cameroon, 26 March (UNHCR) UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has called for greatly increased humanitarian and development assistance to Cameroon after touring a camp that is hosting tens of thousands of refugees who escaped violence in neighbouring Nigeria.

"Cameroon has demonstrated an enormous generosity opening its borders, its doors and its houses, the hearts of its people, to now more than 350,000 refugees from Nigeria and from the Central African Republic," Guterres said after listening to the experiences of those in Minawao camp in Cameroon's Far North Region on Wednesday.

"But Cameroon is also suffering the impact of a dramatic security situation in the Far North part of the country due to events in Nigeria," he said. The region now hosts an estimated 74,000 Nigerian refugees, of which 42,000 have been verified by UNHCR.

Opened in July 2013, some 90 kilometers from the volatile Cameroon-Nigeria border, Minawao camp now hosts over 33,000 refugees from the conflict in northeastern Nigeria. Guterres was accompanied to the camp by the governor of the semi-arid region, Bakary Midjiyawa, as well as representatives of environmental agencies and the donor community.

"Cameroon is today not only a very important protection space for refugees, but it is in the first line of defense of the international community," Guterres said.

"And so Cameroon needs and deserves a much stronger solidarity, not only from the humanitarian point of view but also from the economic and development point of view," the UNHCR head said.

"I hope the international community will be able to understand these needs and will be able to respond to the enormous generosity of the Cameroonian people."

Refugees told the High Commissioner about suffering direct violence or watching attacks on their loved ones and friends. Others had been kidnapped.

"They attacked my village in Borno State at night; they started to shoot at people and burned the houses," said Mariam, a 30-year-old Nigerian woman. "One of my brothers was shot and died during the attack.

"I escaped the village with my husband and our three children. We walked for 45 minutes towards Cameroon. We stayed in a village at the border, but after some months, they started to attack villages there, so we moved to Minawao camp."

Djumai, 60, told Guterres the insurgents arrived in her village and killed those who refused to convert to the group's ideology. "When they caught my son, they start beating him and torturing him. Then they tied him to wooden boards. That is how he died."

Both women thanked UNHCR for the assistance they are receiving in the camp, though the organization is trying to fill remaining gaps. Access to water remains a serious challenge in Minawao, with limited resources underground.

Twenty-one boreholes and daily water trucks provide 11 litres of water a day per person, which is less than the UNHCR non-emergency standard of 20 liters. But the refugee agency is developing 10 additional boreholes and, together with the authorities, seeking a site for a third refugee camp

The refugee agency is also boosting assistance to internally displaced people. At least 96,000 Cameroonians have been displaced following regular incursions of insurgents from Nigeria. Guterres met with some of them and promised to help.

The High Commissioner stressed it was essential that the international community enhanced its support to refugees and displaced people, and to host communities sharing everything with them.

He appealed for increased donor support, saying current funding levels did not allow for sufficient humanitarian assistance. UNHCR has received only nine percent of the funding needed for the Nigeria situation.

"I understand that the international community is now focused on Syria or on Iraq," said Guterres. "But this is the same kind of problem and it requires the same kind of commitment, the same kind of support from the international community, and we hope that the international community will be able to show it."

Guterres was in Chad on Thursday to learn more about the situation of 18,000 Nigerian refugees who found safety in the Lake Chad area. Most had fled deadly attacks on the town of Baga and its surroundings in early January.

By Helene Caux in Minawao camp

• DONATE NOW •

 

• GET INVOLVED • • STAY INFORMED •

UNHCR country pages

The High Commissioner

António Guterres, who joined UNHCR on June 15, 2005, is the UN refugee agency's 10th High Commissioner.

Crisis in the Central African Republic

Little has been reported about the humanitarian crisis in the northern part of the Central African Republic (CAR), where at least 295,000 people have been forced out of their homes since mid-2005. An estimated 197,000 are internally displaced, while 98,000 have fled to Chad, Cameroon or Sudan. They are the victims of fighting between rebel groups and government forces.

Many of the internally displaced live in the bush close to their villages. They build shelters from hay, grow vegetables and even start bush schools for their children. But access to clean water and health care remains a huge problem. Many children suffer from diarrhoea and malaria but their parents are too scared to take them to hospitals or clinics for treatment.

Cattle herders in northern CAR are menaced by the zaraguina, bandits who kidnap children for ransom. The villagers must sell off their livestock to pay.

Posted on 21 February 2008

Crisis in the Central African Republic

2014: CAR refugees attacked as they flee to Cameroon

Each week 10,000 Muslims cross into eastern Cameroon to escape the violence consuming the Central African Republic (CAR). Many new arrivals report that they have been repeatedly attacked as they fled. The anti-Balaka militiamen have blocked main roads to Cameroon, forcing people to find alternate routes through the bush. Many are walking two to three months to reach Cameroon, arriving malnourished and bearing wounds from machetes and gunshots.

UNHCR and its partners have established additional mobile clinics at entry points to provide emergency care as refugees arrive. The UN refugee agency is also supporting public health centres that have been overwhelmed by the number of refugees and their condition.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has relocated some 20,000 refugees who had been living in the open in the Garoua Bouai and Kenzou border areas, bringing them to new sites at Lolo, Mborguene, Gado and Borgop in the East and Adamwa regions.

Since the beginning of the year, Cameroon has received nearly 70,000 refugees from CAR, adding to the 92,000 who fled in earlier waves since 2004 to escape rebel groups and bandits in the north of their country.

UNHCR staff members Paul Spiegel and Michele Poletto recently travelled to eastern Cameroon and have the following photos to share from their iPhone and camera.

2014: CAR refugees attacked as they flee to Cameroon

Thousands Start Afresh in Niger After Fleeing Nigeria

In May 2013, the Nigerian government, responding to a surge in violence in the north-east of the country, declared a state of emergency in the volatile states of Borno, Adawama and Yobe. Many people fled to neighbouring Niger's Diffa region and to the Far North Region of Cameroon. Fresh violence in January this year has forced thousands more to flee to both countries. UNHCR photographer Hélène Caux visited the towns of Bosso and Diffa in Niger's Diffa region shortly before the latest influx. She met some of the Nigerian refugees who had fled earlier waves of violence across the border. They told her of the violence they had seen, the losses they had suffered and their attempts to lead as normal a life as possible in Diffa, including sending their children to attend school. They are grateful to the communities that have welcomed and helped them in Niger.

Thousands Start Afresh in Niger After Fleeing Nigeria

Cameroon: Central African Republic Refugees Register to VotePlay video

Cameroon: Central African Republic Refugees Register to Vote

Salihu Hassan, 57, from the Central African Republic may be a refugee now but he still wants to have a say in elections planned for December 27.
High Commissioner Guterres Remarks on the resettlement of Refugees from Bhutan in NepalPlay video

High Commissioner Guterres Remarks on the resettlement of Refugees from Bhutan in Nepal

The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) marked a major milestone: the resettlement of over 100,000 refugees from Bhutan in Nepal to third countries since the launch of the programme in 2007.
Nigeria: Back to schoolPlay video

Nigeria: Back to school

When gun-toting Boko Haram insurgents attacked villages in north-eastern Nigeria, thousands of children fled to safety. They now have years of lessons to catch up on as they return to schools, some of which now double as camps for internally displaced people or remain scarred by bullets.