A safe Romanian pit stop on the road to resettlement

News Stories, 13 January 2015

© UNHCR/G.Leu
Somali refugee Ahmed stands with his mother and sisters in the grounds of the Emergency Transit Centre in Timisoara, Romania.

TIMISOARA, Romania, January 13 (UNHCR) Ahmed, a 24-year-old Somali, sat in a bus and fidgeted anxiously as it took him and a group of fellow refugees from Timisoara's Emergency Transit Centre (ETC) on a trip outside the city in western Romania.

The journey was a simple excursion part of the ETC's programme to prepare particularly vulnerable refugees for resettlement in a new country. But for Ahmed, who had spent years either in flight or in camps, it was a journey into the free world one he has had little experience with.

"From the moment we left the city," he said, "I expected to see one checkpoint after another. In Yemen, if you are a refugee at a checkpoint, you are in trouble," added the young man, who grew up in Yemen's Kharaz refugee camp after fleeing from Somalia with his parents aged just six years old.

There was no trouble on that day for Ahmed and the others. The group toured the Romanian countryside, and then returned to the transit centre, which was set up in 2008 by the Romanian government, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration to provide a temporary haven for refugees in urgent need of evacuation from their first asylum countries. They can stay for up to six months of language and cultural orientation before being resettled.

But Ahmed's trepidation underscores how difficult it is for many to make the transition from refugee. The small number of ETCs around the world can mark an end to years of traumatic and crowded camp life.

In Yemen's Kharaz camp, Ahmed and his family lived in a simple shelter. Every day was a struggle to find food, and life outside the camp posed dangers. Ahmed joined the staff of a humanitarian agency once he was old enough to work. In time, being a refugee was all Ahmed understood.

"I grew up listening to refugee stories," he said. "I met refugees who had lost someone dear to them or had been thrown in the ocean [during the dangerous high seas boat crossing from Somalia] but survived, their skin burned by salty water and [their minds] traumatized for life," he recalled.

For Ahmed and his family, the reality of spending their lives in a camp was unexpected. Like many displaced people, they had considered their predicament temporary, and thought that a chance to return home lay around the corner.

But 18 years after fleeing Somalia, Ahmed's family was still languishing in Kharaz, and in limbo. "Life in the camp was not stable," he said. "We could never settle. You never know what will happen tomorrow as your life is never fully in your hands."

Ahmed's life as a refugee began so early he knew nothing else. His first memories were of fleeing. "I can still see my father getting into the truck, and telling me to stay there and look after our belongings," he said. "Now when I look back I realize how sad and emotional that trip must have been for my parents. That truck ride changed our lives for good."

Ahmed and his parents are now facing another change, and they hope a happier one. Selected for resettlement in the west, they were brought to Timisoara to prepare for a new home in a new land.

After almost two decades of camp life, it has not been an easy transition. But they were not alone. The Emergency Transit Centre in Timisoara has room for up to 200 occupants at any one time, and some 1,500 refugees have passed through the facility since it was opened.

These people come from different countries and walks of life. The one thing that unites them is their vision of a better future; one without conflict or persecution and where they will have a chance to work, prosper and raise a family in peace.

Ahmed looked forward to two things when he leaves Timisoara freedom and belonging. "The moment I get to my new home," he said, "I'll go out and walk the streets. I want to know my new city, feel the freedom, and the sense of citizenship."

By Gabriela Leu in Timisoara, Romania

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Resettlement

An alternative for those who cannot go home, made possible by UNHCR and governments.

Resettlement from Tunisia's Choucha Camp

Between February and October 2011, more than 1 million people crossed into Tunisia to escape conflict in Libya. Most were migrant workers who made their way home or were repatriated, but the arrivals included refugees and asylum-seekers who could not return home or live freely in Tunisia.

UNHCR has been trying to find solutions for these people, most of whom ended up in the Choucha Transit Camp near Tunisia's border with Libya. Resettlement remains the most viable solution for those registered as refugees at Choucha before a cut-off date of December 1, 2011.

As of late April, 14 countries had accepted 2,349 refugees for resettlement, 1,331 of whom have since left Tunisia. The rest are expected to leave Choucha later this year. Most have gone to Australia, Norway and the United States. But there are a more than 2,600 refugees and almost 140 asylum-seekers still in the camp. UNHCR continues to advocate with resettlement countries to find solutions for them.

Resettlement from Tunisia's Choucha Camp

Crossing the Gulf of Aden

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In this lawless area, smuggler networks have free reign and innocent and desperate civilians pay up to US$150 to make the perilous trip across the Gulf of Aden.

Some stay weeks on end in safe houses or temporary homes in Bossaso before they can depart. A sudden call and a departure in the middle of the night, crammed in small unstable boats. At sea, anything can happen to them - they are at the whim of smugglers. Some people get beaten, stabbed, killed and thrown overboard. Others drown before arriving on the beaches of Yemen, which have become the burial ground for hundreds who many of those who died en route.

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Somalia/Ethiopia

In February 2005, one of the last groups of Somalilander refugees to leave Aisha refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia boarded a UNHCR convoy and headed home to Harrirad in North-west Somalia - the self-declared independent state of Somaliland. Two years ago Harrirad was a tiny, sleepy village with only 67 buildings, but today more than 1,000 people live there, nearly all of whom are former refugees rebuilding their lives.

As the refugees flow back into Somalia, UNHCR plans to close Aisha camp by the middle of the year. The few remaining refugees in Aisha - who come from southern Somalia - will most likely be moved to the last eastern camp, Kebribeyah, already home to more than 10,000 refugees who cannot go home to Mogadishu and other areas in southern Somalia because of continuing lawlessness there. So far refugees have been returning to only two areas of the country - Somaliland and Puntland in the north-east.

Somalia/Ethiopia

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