Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Depuis janvier, 184 000 Somaliens poussés par la famine et la guerre menée par les milices islamistes ont fui leur pays vers les pays voisins: le Kenya et l'Éthiopie. Reportage dans les camps de réfugiés éthiopiens de Dolo Ado, où l'aide se met en place sous l'égide de l'Onu.

Dolo Ado (Éthiopie),

correspondance.

Dakat Ibrahim réajuste le voile d'où n'émerge que son visage, puis s'appuie contre l'abri de taule qui offre un peu d'ombre à sa hutte. Sous 35degrés, dans un coin du centre de transit de Dolo Ado, au sud de l'Éthiopie, cette mère de trois enfants raconte, entourée de curieux aux histoires similaires, son départ de Somalie.

Voilà trois jours qu'elle a franchi la frontière, à un kilomètre de là. Trois jours qu'elle patiente parmi quelque 20 000 autres Somaliens, venus s'agglutiner dans des abris de fortune en attendant d'être envoyés dans un des quatre camps de réfugiés mis en place par le gouvernement éthiopien. Dakat ira sûrement dans le camp Haloweyn, qui doit ouvrir en fin de semaine. Les précédents ont déjà largement dépassé leurs capacités d'accueil. Officiellement, 115000 réfugiés vivent ici, pour majorité des femmes et des enfants.

Le premier camp de Dolo Ado a ouvert en 2009. À l'époque, les Somaliens fuyaient la guerre entre les milices islamistes Al Shabaab et le gouvernement. Mais, depuis la fin juin2011, la faim a jeté sur la route des milliers de Somaliens. Ils étaient 2 000, chaque jour, à se présenter à Dolo Ado. Ces derniers jours, le flux s'est ralenti. «Depuis quelques jours, ceux qui arrivent sont en meilleure santé que les précédents. Ils ont des téléphones portables, ils sont mieux habillés... Ils viennent probablement d'une ville», explique un responsable du Haut Commissariat aux réfugiés (HCR).

« on reste assis et on attend »

Dakat est une de ces derniers arrivés. Mais elle n'a jamais eu de téléphone et n'a sans doute que rarement mis les pieds en ville. Pourquoi est-elle venue ici? Qu'a-t-elle laissé derrière elle? Presque rien. Dakat vivait dans la brousse, avec ses enfants et trois ânes sur lesquels elle chargeait du bois qu'elle vendait sur les marchés. L'argent gagné lui permettait de remplir les ventres. Mais la sécheresse a eu raison de ses bestiaux et de sa réserve de nourriture. Elle a donc mis son enfant de deux ans sur son dos et a pris la route, les deux autres à ses côtés. Sept jours de marche, en compagnie d'autres familles. Le bouche-à-oreille les a attirés à Dolo Ado où, disait-on, elle recevrait de la nourriture et une aide médicale. Pour l'heure, elle a droit à deux repas chauds par jour et un peu d'eau. Les enfants reçoivent une ration supplémentaire. «Le reste du temps, on reste assis et on attend», dit-elle, à deux pas de sa hutte. Un mètre carré d'ombre qu'elle partage avec une autre mère. Ils sont dix à s'y protéger de la poussière. Dans certains de ces abris, des ombres jonchent le sol, écrasées par la faim, la chaleur et le désœuvrement. Çà et là, un âne slalome entre les bassines, de petites marmites et les déjections. Le sable crisse sous les dents.

Ici, le ballet des ONG et des agences onusiennes se limite à un pas de deux. Le gouvernement éthiopien veut garder la main sur l'aide aux réfugiés, via son Agence pour les réfugiés et les rapatriés (Arra, Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs). Le HCR et MSF figurent parmi les rares à circuler au milieu des milliers de tentes alignées au cordeau et réparties dans quatre camps. Il faut compter plus d'une heure sur une piste caillouteuse, à partir de Dolo Ado, pour gagner le plus éloigné d'entre eux.

En attendant de prendre la direction d'un de ces camps, Dakat a vendu les «cinq biens» qui lui restaient. De quoi acheter du savon, par exemple. D'autres vendent une part de leur ration alimentaire, admet à regret un responsable du Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM). Surprise: on trouve des échoppes aux abords du centre de transit. «Au début les gens des villages alentour voyaient d'un mauvais œil l'arrivée de ces réfugiés. Depuis, un marché s'est créé entre réfugiés et villageois», poursuit le fonctionnaire onusien.

De quoi le futur de Dakat sera-t-il fait? À court terme, sans doute une tente blanche siglée UNHCR, au milieu de milliers d'autres. Elle recevra chaque mois 20,5kilos de nourriture, fourni par le PAM. Autant pour ses enfants. Retournera-t-elle un jour chez elle, en Somalie? Elle n'en sait rien.

Son pays, la Somalie, est privé d'État depuis deux décennies et a fini de se déliter. Les miliciens islamistes d'Al Shabaab s'en arrangent, eux qui ont chassé les organisations humanitaires en 2009. La communauté internationale aussi, qui n'a pas fait grand-chose pour stabiliser la Somalie. De son côté, l'Éthiopie admet que 4,5millions de personnes ont besoin d'une aide avant la prochaine récolte, malgré des progrès en matière de sécurité alimentaire, assurent les agences onusiennes. Le Kenya, lui, se lasse d'abriter le plus grand camp de réfugiés au monde, à Dadaab. Quant à l'Érythrée, plus fermée encore que la Corée du Nord, elle a disparu des radars. Ajoutez à cette équation une hausse des prix et une sécheresse sans précédent depuis soixante ans, dixit l'ONU, et 12millions de personnes se trouvent dans une situation alimentaire dramatique. Les réfugiés somaliens n'en sont que la face la plus visible.

une alerte lancée il y a plusieurs mois

«Nous avions lancé l'alerte il y a plusieurs mois, en appelant à augmenter les réserves alimentaires. Mais les bailleurs de fonds n'ont pas réagi. Il faut que des gens meurent pour que des fonds soient levés», se défend, dans son bureau d'Addis Abeba, Abdou Dieng, représentant du PAM en Éthiopie. «En deux semaines, beaucoup d'argent a été mobilisé grâce aux médias. Si nous avions demandé, il y a six mois, une réunion comme celle qui a eu lieu à Rome (le 25juillet, sous l'égide de la FAO), je ne pense pas que cela eût été possible.» De son côté, l'Union africaine a annoncé, hier, le report d'une tardive conférence censée lever des fonds pour la Corne de l'Afrique. Sans doute l'urgence peut-elle encore attendre.
 

Large numbers of Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing to southern Africa find they are no longer welcome as asylum seekers and are being pushed back

Increasing numbers of Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing war, drought and poverty in their home countries face arrest, deportation and detention as they try to make their way to the south of the continent.

For most the goal is South Africa – the only country in the region where refugees and asylum seekers have freedom of movement and the right to work rather than being confined to camps. But as the number of migrants from the Horn of Africa seeking asylum in South Africa has reached unprecedented levels, border authorities have started refusing them entry.

"There's a new unofficial policy since the beginning of May where Somali and Ethiopian nationals are being informed they'll not be given asylum by the South African government," said Abdul Hakim, chairperson of the Somali Community Board, a local organisation representing the interests of Somalis.

Hakim said that before the crackdown about 1,500 Somalis were entering South Africa every month. With official borders closed to them, many were now entering the country illegally and then making their way to refugee reception centres to apply for asylum.

The deputy director general of South Africa's department of home affairs, Jackie McKay, denied there had been any change of policy but Kaajal Ramjathan-Koogh, who heads the refugee and migrant rights programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, said her organisation had also observed "a definite shift away from accepting large numbers of refugees from Somalia and Ethiopia".

"From a Home Affairs point of view ... they've been seeing very large numbers arriving in the last two months and they're not willing to accept the entire continent's refugee burden," she told IRIN.

An issue brief by Roni Amit of the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand published in June suggests that the home affairs department has been denying entry to asylum seekers based on the principle that they should have sought asylum in the first safe country they reached. Amit points out that no such principle exists in international or domestic law.

"By denying entry to asylum seekers based on the mere fact of their transit through another country, South Africa is contravening its obligations under international law," Amit writes. "This practice increases the risk that individuals will be returned to the life-threatening situations from which they fled."

Knock-on effects

South Africa's unofficial shift in policy has had a knock-on effect in neighbouring countries that previously had a fairly tolerant attitude to the movement of migrants through their countries en route to South Africa.

Zimbabwe's state-run newspaper, the Herald, reported in July that immigration officers manning the country's northern borders had been instructed not to admit illegal immigrants, especially those from Somalia and Ethiopia, who "pretend as if they want to seek refugee status" only to disappear into neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa.

Marcellin Hepie, country representative for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Zimbabwe, said the country had been receiving high numbers of migrants from the Horn of Africa in recent months.

"Before their [asylum seeker] cases are adjudicated some of them vanish, presumably for South Africa. Normally they'll wait around long enough to receive their food and non-food items and then off they go," he told IRIN. "It is eroding the asylum procedure here and it could eventually backfire."

He also noted that since mid-May crossing into South Africa for this group of migrants, "has not been as smooth as it used to be. Many have been sent back to Zimbabwe and detained at Beitbridge [border post]. No one has shared any official change of policy from South Africa, but in practice there have been changes."

According to Natalia Perez of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), in the first quarter of 2011, 7,200 asylum seekers registered at the Beitbridge border post as they crossed into South Africa. Perez said Zimbabwe had now closed its borders to "any migrant or asylum seeker who cannot produce an ID".

"Now they're being pushed backwards," she told IRIN.

Dilemma for governments

The relatively recent phenomenon of mixed migration (which IOM defines as "complex migratory population movements that include refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants and other migrants") from the Horn of Africa to the southern part of the continent presents a dilemma for governments in the region that are bound by international refugee laws but unwilling to bear the economic and security costs of allowing large numbers of undocumented migrants to travel through their countries.

The issue was the subject of a regional conference in Dar es Salaam in September last year where a number of recommendations were proposed for dealing with the influx, such as greater regional co-operation, improved national policies and better collection of data on refugees and migrants. However, according to Katherine Harris, a regional protection officer with UNHCR, progress since the conference has been "slow going", with attention and resources mainly focused on the current crisis in the Horn of Africa.

"The biggest thing is that we really need to come up with a regional approach to this issue," she told IRIN.

Until recently, Mozambique was another popular transit country for Horn of Africa migrants intent on reaching South Africa. Since 2010, a steady stream of Ethiopians and Somalis have been arriving in the country, most of them having used the services of smugglers to take them by boat to the coastal town of Palma, just across the border with Tanzania. By the beginning of 2011, the numbers had increased significantly and the Mozambican authorities started restricting the movements of asylum seekers outside of the country's one refugee camp in Nampula Province.

Mtwara prison

Starting in May, however, the number of asylum seekers reaching the camp abruptly decreased as immigration officers started intercepting them and deporting them to Tanzania where 833 Ethiopians and Somalis, 45 of them children, are now being detained in Mtwara prison in the south-east of the country.

"We're trying to find out why this is happening, and hoping to resolve the impasse in a way that will allow new arrivals to at least be screened," said Carlos Zaccagnini, UNHCR's country representative in Mozambique, who pointed out that the UN convention on refugees prohibits countries from rejecting, deporting or detaining asylum seekers.

Responding to questions from the BBC, Mozambique's interior minister said that some of the migrants were pretending to be refugees but had criminal intentions and were being turned away to guarantee the country's security.

Lin Mei Li, a protection officer with UNHCR in Tanzania, said her office had been pushing the Tanzanian authorities to allow them to interview the detainees at Mtwara prison to determine which of them have genuine asylum seeker claims. "Living conditions in the prison are not good, it's over-crowded and there are not enough medicines," she told IRIN. "We're really worried about them."

UNHCR is also trying to persuade the Tanzanian government to establish a reception centre that would provide humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers rather than imprisoning them. The Zimbabwean government has asked IOM to set up something similar on its northern border with Mozambique. But Abdul Hakim of the Somali Community Board said that Somali asylum seekers were still being imprisoned in Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi.

"They're not taken to a court, they just stay in prison and they don't know for how long. Because they entered the country illegally, they're treated as illegal immigrants."
 

(Reuters) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) almost doubled its budget for Somali aid Thursday but said it would not be able to help U.N. food supplies get through to starving Somalis.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said his independent agency was boosting its emergency operation to help 1.1 million people in the famine-stricken country and was asking donors for an extra 67 million Swiss francs ($86 million) in 2011.

He said the ICRC had good access to southern Somalia, much of which is controlled by Islamist militants, with two supply routes through Somali ports and one overland from Kenya, but the humanitarian organization needed more supplies.

That contrasts with the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which has the food but says it cannot reach more than two million Somalis in the worst-hit areas because the militant group al Shabaab has blocked access to most aid agencies.

"It's crucial that you can ensure access and have capacity to operate big food pipelines," Kellenberger told a news conference in Geneva.

He said the U.N. food agency normally used partner organizations to distribute its food aid, but it was very difficult for them to get access, and the ICRC would not distribute aid on behalf of other agencies.

"The ICRC is an independent agency, for reasons you'll understand, for its protection," said Kellenberger, a former senior Swiss diplomat.

"And I think that's important for its perception, for its personality, especially in delicate contexts like this. I have also to add that there would also be certain logistic problems."

The ICRC has not given al Shabaab any payment, taxes or concessions to get access, Kellenberger added.

EXPLORING ALL AVENUES

David Orr, a WFP spokesman in Nairobi, declined to respond to Kellenberger's comments specifically.

"WFP is exploring all avenues with all partners and exploring all channels to get access to those in need closest to the epicenter of the famine," Orr said.

Earlier this week, Washington relaxed the rules imposed on charities operating in al Shabaab-controlled regions in a bid to boost the amount of relief reaching those areas.

Bruce Wharton, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Thursday it would be a mistake to second-guess whether some aid would inevitably end up in the hands of al Shabaab.

"What we would like is for all of the food assistance to go to the innocent people who are desperately in need and for none of it to go to al Shabaab. But I think that we all recognize that the imperative right now is to save lives," Wharton told a news conference by telephone from Washington.

An ICRC spokeswoman said the situation in southern Somalia was worsening, with more than 20 percent of children under five in an emergency condition because of severe acute malnutrition.

Caught between conflict and famine, hundreds of refugees are flooding into Mogadishu every day – more than 100,000 people have arrived in the capital in the last two months – only to stumble into a raging insurgency.

In the Badbaado camp, a city of makeshift shacks home to almost 30,000 displaced people outside Mogadishu, Kalthuma Hassan mourned her three children, all of whom had succumbed to malnutrition. The last died in her arms early Thursday.

"All those trucks of food have been parked here for days. They say they cannot distribute for security reasons. We cannot work it out – maybe they want to sell the food after we die of hunger. I am afraid I will die before Ramadan ends," Hassan said, sobbing quietly.

"Foreign and local people visit you everyday. They take your photos, officials promise you food, medicine, but in fact we are just dying," she said.

Jon Brause, an official at the U.S. government's aid agency, said despite the easing of rules, it was still not safe for aid agencies to go into southern Somalia.

Kellenberger said the ICRC might be willing to accept U.N. food aid if really necessary.

"In the end the over-riding objective must be to help as many people as possible and whenever certain arrangements have to be made – in a moment where if they were not made there would be losses in human terms – I think certainly I would show a certain flexibility."

(Additional reporting by Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu)
 

Le CICR veut doubler son aide; Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (CICR), une des rares organisations à pouvoir accéder aux zones contrôlées par les insurgés somaliens, lance un appel pour doubler son aide dans les régions du centre et du sud du pays, en proie à une situation humanitaire catastrophique sur fond de conflit armé.

Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (CICR) lance un appel pour doubler son aide dans les régions du centre et du sud de la Somalie, en proie à une situation humanitaire catastrophique sur fond de conflit armé.

L'organisation veut relever de 67 millions de francs son budget pour le porter à plus de 120 millions de francs. Elle compte ainsi venir en aide à 1,1 million de personnes supplémentaires menacées de famine, pendant trois mois. Aujourd'hui, le CICR parvient à couvrir les besoins alimentaires de 162 000 personnes pour un mois.

Le défi est de taille. Le centre et le sud de la Somalie, contrôlés par les insurgés islamistes shebab, affiliés à Al-Qaida, sont l'une des zones les plus conflictuelles du monde. «Nous sommes les seuls, avec six autres organisations, à pouvoir travailler dans cette région. Nous sommes en contact avec les shebab», a indiqué jeudi lors d'un point presse le président du CICR, Jakob Kellenberger. «Notre rôle est vital», insiste-t-il. La plupart des ONG internationales, ainsi que les agences de l'ONU, considérées par les insurgés comme des émissaires des puissances occidentales, sont persona non grata depuis 2009 dans la région. Le CICR dispose d'un accès privilégié, mais il manque aujourd'hui de moyens.

Pendant ce temps, les denrées récoltées par le Programme alimentaire mondial des Nations unies (PAM) ne peuvent être acheminées vers les zones de conflit. Mais, par souci d'indépendance, condition sine qua non du maintien du contact avec les shebab, le CICR n'est pas prêt à prendre en charge les stocks du PAM. «Les besoins humanitaires hors des zones de conflit, dans les camps de réfugiés notamment, sont énormes également», souligne Jakob Kellenberger.

Comment l'organisation parvient-elle à garantir que les ressources ne tombent pas entre les mains des shebab? Le CICR affirme qu'il ne paie pas de taxe et ne se soumet à aucune autre forme de concession pour accéder aux zones contrôlées par les shebab. L'aide est acheminée par des équipes locales. «Nous disposons de différentes méthodes pour contrôler le trajet», précise Jakob Kellenberger. Un exemple? Le chauffeur chargé d'amener les vivres vers le point de distribution ne reçoit l'entier de sa paie qu'à son arrivée.

Mardi, le gouvernement américain a décidé d'atténuer les sanctions pesant sur les organisations humanitaires travaillant avec les shebab, considérés par Washington comme une organisation terroriste depuis 2008. L'objectif est d'encourager les ONG à pénétrer dans ces zones où sévit la famine. Mais l'espoir de voir affluer les humanitaires est mince, au vu des risques encourus.

Au total, plus de 12 millions de personnes sont guettées par la faim dans la Corne de l'Afrique. «La situation actuelle représente la plus sévère crise humanitaire dans le monde aujourd'hui et la pire crise de sécurité alimentaire depuis la famine de 1991-1992 en Somalie», selon l'ONU, qui déplore la réponse tardive de la communauté internationale. Malgré l'urgence, l'Union africaine a différé hier de plus de deux semaines une conférence sur l'aide nécessaire à la région.
 

(DADAAB, Kenya) – The United Nations warns that famine in southern Somalia has spread to three more regions and that all of southern Somalia will be a famine zone within the next month if there is not an urgent intervention, potentially dooming tens of thousands to death by starvation.

But getting assistance to the neediest areas has been complicated by an offensive launched by African Union and Somali government troops in Mogadishu against the al Qaeda-affiliated group al Shabaab, U.N. officials said.

The AU Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, told ABC News that it has been working to push back al Shabaab to make it easier for humanitarian groups to deliver assistance. In the last month at least 100,000 refugees have fled their drought-stricken homes to come to the war-torn capital. But two of the newly declared famine areas are both nearby and inside of the city itself.

Ej Hogendoorn, the Horn of Africa Director for the International Crisis Group, said that AMISOM has launched a pre-emptive strike against Shabaab after there were indications that the group planned to carry out a violent campaign during Ramadan. Al Shabaab launched a similar offensive last year that included a deadly suicide bombing at the Muna Hotel which killed 32 people, including government officials.

The fighting has severely hampered the ability of aid agencies to reach those who are starving.

"The ongoing offensive is negatively affecting the ability of UNHCR and other partners to deliver assistance to populations in distress at a time when their needs are most urgent," said Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba, spokesperson for UNHCR in a statement.

The complication of violence is what makes Somalia's crisis so much worse than the already serious drought the rest of the Horn of Africa is facing. The famine conditions, say humanitarian groups, are the result of a deadly equation of both drought and violence. Aid agencies don't want to get involved in the politics, they say, and just want to help people.

Lejuene-Kaba tells ABC News that the increase in fighting between pro- and anti-government forces over the last three days has been particularly disruptive to the relief effort.

Hogendoorn said that AMISOM and the Somali government's military actions have been more about securing and capturing the city from Shabaab than about delivering aid.

"We want all parties to ensure that there is humanitarian access, that humanitarian space be preserved at all times," said Lejeune-Kaba. "Without that access it's the civilians who suffer."
 

If you spend an afternoon near the Beit Bridge border, 18km from Musina, you may encounter a group of boys playing soccer in the street. Typical teenagers, they laugh and joke, exhausting every last ray of sunlight before the day's end.

Night is harsher; some sleep in a container down the road sponsored by Save the Children. Others sleep on the streets, lying on top of one another for warmth.

They may intend to go home, but for now they are on a risky adventure to reunite with family, work, study or seek asylum.

Under the current system, unaccompanied minors cannot apply for asylum or other documentation without a children's court proceeding and social worker assistance.

But many avoid the child protection system in favour of independence, and remain undocumented.

Those who do seek government assistance are often sent from pillar to post as officials shirk their responsibilities.

The reality is that these young migrants may wake up one day and find themselves stateless.

Nationality exists when a person has ties to a country either through birth, descent or long-time residence.

Migrants who leave their countries of birth as children risk losing the ties with the only country where they qualify for citizenship. The longer they remain abroad, the greater the risk that they will become stateless.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines a stateless person as "one who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law".

A broader definition, appropriate to the African context, includes those who are either unable to prove their nationality or are prevented from accessing their citizenship rights.

Without nationality, one cannot vote, work legally, attend school, marry, leave or enter any country, stand for political office, obtain an ID, own property, access social assistance, and more.

You cannot be "deported" to another state, but you cannot enjoy protection from the state where you were born. For these reasons, nationality has been said to be "the right to have rights".

Many young people travel to South Africa alone or are separated from their families during migration. Parents die. Documents are lost.

Aggravating matters, such as low rates of birth registration in Africa, mean that many migrants have never had birth certificates. Those who do have enabling documents often leave them behind or lose them in the precarious trek to South Africa. By adulthood, they may no longer be able to prove their nationality.

While denial of nationality is often linked to being a refugee, not all stateless persons meet the legal test for refugee status, and so remain unprotected.

Given the 90 percent rejection rate in South Africa's asylum system, and five to 10-year waits for a final decision, rejected asylum seekers may have to return to a country that does recognise them as citizens.

Two statelessness treaties exist, but ratification remains low. While many human rights instruments protect the right to a nationality, few states have created a domestic system of protection for stateless individuals.

Children born in South Africa to migrants are also at risk of statelessness. Recognised refugees are often refused birth certificates for their children. Undocumented parents are flatly denied and threatened with arrest at Department of Home Affairs offices.

Even children with a South African parent face obstacles.

Recently, in the Moyo case, the Pretoria High Court ordered Home Affairs to register the birth and South African citizenship of the child of an asylum-seeker mother and a South African father.

While legally entitled to citizenship, Home Affairs refused to register the child due to his mother's status and the citizen father's death. Without legal assistance, similar cases go unresolved.

Despite misconceptions, birth certificates do not entitle children of migrants to South African citizenship.

But they may enable these children to access their parents' nationality through proving citizenship by descent.

As Home Affairs restricts access to birth certificates, it creates another problem. Without this document, children born to migrants risk becoming a lost generation – with access to neither South African citizenship nor their foreign parent's nationality.

It may be impossible to deport them. And they will not benefit from section 2(2) of the Citizenship Act, which provides citizenship to children born here.

With its strong human rights framework and high rates of migration, South Africa is well positioned to take the lead in Africa with regard to statelessness.

First steps for prevention include fixing the broken system that deals with unaccompanied foreign minors to ensure that they receive documentation, and achieving universal birth registration for all children, regardless of their parents' immigration status.

Next, South Africa should establish a system to protect stateless persons that best suits our context and that can relieve the overburdened asylum system.

Co-operation with migrants' countries of origin is key to finding durable solutions and ensuring that citizens of other African nations are recognised as such.

l George is a legal counsellor for Lawyers for Human Rights' Statelessness Project
 

Evidence is piling up that genocide is taking place in the southern border region of Sudan, affecting tens of thousands of Nuba people. But the world is dillydallying, just as it did with Darfur, Rwanda, and Srebrenica.

Yet again, Sudan shows all the signs of accelerating genocide, this time on its southern border.

The question is whether the world will now respond more quickly – and effectively – than it has to the years-long atrocities in Darfur, in western Sudan. Over four years ago the International Criminal Court indicted a senior Khartoum official for crimes against humanity (2007); most recently it has indicted President Omar al-Bashir for genocide (2010). But to date Khartoum has continued to express only contempt for the ICC and human rights reporting generally.

Another test of the world's resolve to halt ethnically targeted human destruction now presents itself in a border state known as South Kordofan (like Darfur, in Sudan). Al-Bashir has unleashed a campaign against many tens of thousands of Nuba people, a grouping of indigenous African tribes. The Nuba have long made common cause with the people and former rebel fighters of the newly created country of South Sudan.

The catastrophe in South Kordofan is daily becoming more conspicuous, both in scale and in the ethnic animus defining Khartoum's military and security operations in the region.

Beginning with events of June 5, strong evidence is growing of house-to-house searches for Nuba people and those sympathizing with the northern wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Also, compelling evidence points to roadblocks that have similarly targeted Nuba. Most Nuba found were arrested or summarily executed. This has occurred primarily in the Kadugli area, capital of South Kordofan.

Most disturbingly, a great many eyewitness accounts of mass gravesites are being reported; a number of these accounts are collected in a leaked UN human rights report from late June.

The extraordinary indictment rendered in this report is confirmed by definitive satellite photography from the Satellite Sentinel Project, based at Harvard University; these photographs clearly indicate large, parallel mass gravesites – capable of holding many thousands of bodies. Evidence from the UN report, as well as eyewitness accounts from many Nuba who have escaped Kadugli, confirm the findings of the satellite project.

The Associated Press has reported on an even earlier leaked UN "situation report" indicating that some 11,000 people, virtually all Nuba, sought protective custody with the UN Mission in Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan; 7,000 of these people, including women and children, were forced on June 20 to leave the UN protective perimeter and move to an unspecified location. Those moving them were reportedly members of Khartoum's security services, disguised as Red Crescent workers. Today, the UN has no idea where these refugees are.

Bombing in the Nuba Mountains of central South Kordofan is relentless, threatening the lives and livelihoods of the African people who make up the Nuba. Fields have been abandoned at the height of planting season, when the need for crop-tending is greatest. Many tens of thousands of people have fled to the hillsides and caves, desperate to escape continuing aerial attacks. Next fall's harvest will be a disaster, and Khartoum has blocked virtually all humanitarian aid to the Nuba Mountains, including the UN's World Food Program.

Why, with so much evidence of ethnically targeted human destruction, and so many acute risks to human life and welfare, has there been no rapid or forceful international action?

The universally agreed upon UN "responsibility to protect" civilians from ethnic cleansing and genocide – not to mention attack by their own government – should be in force in South Kordofan if anywhere. Yet there is nothing of consequence coming from anyone in the UN, the European Union, the African Union, or the Obama administration – except Susan Rice, American ambassador to the UN, declaring there will be no US military commitment to the Nuba people.

This virtual policy silence on South Kordofan seems to be based on a peculiar, indeed incomprehensible skepticism about the evidence available, including the satellite photography as well as eyewitness accounts provided by the UN report and other sources.

The Obama administration spokesperson for this skepticism is Princeton Lyman, special envoy for Sudan, as The Washington Post recently reported. But his account does not square with the facts; for example, he asserts that the piles of irregular white bags near the mass gravesites, all of human anatomical dimension, have always been at the sites focused on by the satellite project; but sequential, dated satellite photographs unambiguously demonstrate otherwise.

There are in South Kordofan too many harrowing echoes of not only Darfur, but Rwanda and Srebrenica. In all these cases there was a UN military presence; in each instance this presence was completely intimidated or rendered ineffective by genocidaires bent on their task; many world leaders refused to recognize the reality of genocide; and in each case unspeakable shame followed.

Are these echoes not being heard in Washington, New York, European capitals, and African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa?

Despite Mr. Lyman's skepticism, the urgency and scale of potential human destruction demand an immediate and robust international response – and not simply moralizing pronouncements, whether from UN officials or international actors of consequence, or in the predictable and formulaic prescriptions of human rights groups. At the very least Khartoum should be warned that if its military aircraft continue to be implicated in attacks on Nuba civilians or humanitarians, they will be destroyed on the ground by cruise missiles or other means. Impunity for such atrocity crimes cannot continue.

If the world refuses to see what is occurring in South Kordofan, and refuses to respond to evidence that the destruction of the Nuba people, as such, is a primary goal of present military and security actions by Sudan, then this moment will represent definitive failure of the "responsibility to protect."

Eric Reeves is professor of English language and literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has spent the past 12 years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. He has testified several times before the Congress and is author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide."