2 R E F U G E E S

Adecade ago the then High Commissioner

Sadako Ogata told a global conference that

the “relationship between refugees and the

environment has long been overlooked.”

In what was then probably the most comprehensive

policy statement on the subject, Mrs. Ogata not only

underlined the obvious link between large scale refugee

flight and ecological destruction, but also noted that

civilians were often forced to flee in the first place

because of environmental degradation and the battle for

natural resources.

The war in Sierra Leone, for instance, was one of the

most vicious of modern times in which tens of thou-

sands of persons were killed and even larger numbers

became refugees and was partially ignited by the battle

for control of the country’s vast diamond wealth.

Ogata promised UNHCR would become more

involved and in the intervening 10 years environmental

issues in general have become more ‘newsworthy’. A

world summit on the environment and sustainable

development will be held in South Africa later this year.

UNHCR programs now cover a wide range of activi-

ties. Educational programs via eco-clubs, classroom

lectures and local theatre explain both problems and so-

lutions to refugees, local communities and government

officials. The agency and famed scientist Jane Goodall

are exploring the possibility of introducing her popular

Roots and Shoots club concept in refugee camps.

Reforestation and tree planting are cornerstones of

UNHCR’s efforts, but other activities range from simple

gardening techniques, the introduction of energy saving

stoves, supporting local game wardens to employing

high tech satellite imagery.

More needs to be done, both in practical terms and in

recognizing the importance of the issue. Environmental

projects are often still regarded as ‘luxuries’ to be imple-

mented only when more urgent matters are attended to

when, in fact, eco-related problems can be highly politi-

cal and spill over into protection, security, food and

health fields.

Programs are expensive. Manpower resources are

scarce, but this is a particularly critical time in the

refugee environmental cycle. In the Horn of Africa more

than 30 camps are scheduled to close in the near future

and the refugee agency will undertake one of its most

ambitious cleanup operations.

As hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees return

home as many as 200 sites in Pakistan, which hosted

millions of Afghans for many years, may need rehabili-

tating. Afghanistan itself is gripped by another drought

which will affect millions of people.

If Mrs. Ogata raised the alarm a decade ago, High

Commissioner Ruud Lubbers recently re-emphasized

the message that if environmental problems are ignored,

this could jeopardize the very institution of asylum.

A critical time for the environment

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Overcrowded camps = environmental degradation.

T H E E D I T O R ’ S D E S K

Correction: In issue N° 126, the quote attributed to Christine Mougne on page 6 should read: “It hadn’t entered anybody’s mind that 30 percent of all heads of family were women and girls.”

3R E F U G E E S

2 E D I T O R I A L

A very difficult life.

4A critical time for refugees and theirenvironment.

By Ray Wilkinson

SurvivalIt’s invaluable, expensive… and very controversial.

DebateShould environmental migrants beconsidered refugees?

14 P R O J E C T S

Environmental projects range from the ultra-sophisticated to the most simple programs costing a few cents.

22 A F G H A N I S T A N

Hundreds of thousands of refugees began their long journey home to Afghanistan.

By Fernando del Mundo

28 S H O R T T A K E S

A brief look at world events.

30 P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

31 Q U O T E U N Q U O T E

C O V E R S T O R Y

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4Many of the world’srefugees live in some ofthe most inhospitable

regions in the world. Therelationship between largegroups of uprooted peoplesand their environment hasnow reached a particularlycritical period.

22 The joy… and thechaos… of returninghome to Afghanistan,

sometimes after decades in arefugee camp.

14 Programs range fromthe use of the latesthigh tech gadgetry to

simple projects encouragingreforestation and vegetablegrowing.

EEddiittoorr::Ray WilkinsonFFrreenncchh eeddiittoorr::Mounira Skandrani

CCoonnttrriibbuuttoorrss::David Stone, Venazio Njuki,Valentine Ndibalema, Amare GebreEgziabher

EEddiittoorriiaall aassssiissttaanntt::Virginia Zekrya

PPhhoottoo ddeeppaarrttmmeenntt::Suzy Hopper,Anne Kellner

DDeessiiggnn::Vincent Winter Associés

PPrroodduuccttiioonn::Françoise Peyroux

AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn::Anne-Marie Le Galliard

DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn::John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot

MMaapp::UNHCR - Mapping Unit

HHiissttoorriiccaall ddooccuummeennttssUNHCR archives

RReeffuuggeeeess is published by the PublicInformation Section of the UnitedNations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily thoseof UNHCR. The designations andmaps used do not imply the expressionof any opinion or recognition on thepart of UNHCR concerning the legalstatus of a territory or of its authorities.

RReeffuuggeeeess reserves the right to edit allarticles before publication. Articlesand photos not covered by copyright ©may be reprinted without priorpermission. Please credit UNHCR andthe photographer. Glossy prints andslide duplicates of photographs notcovered by copyright © may be madeavailable for professional use only.

English and French editions printedin Italy by AMILCARE PIZZIS.p.A.,Milan.Circulation: 224,000 in English,French, German, Italian, Spanish,Arabic, Russian and Chinese.

IISSSSNN 00225522--779911 XX

CCoovveerr:: Educational posters ofrefugees and the environment.

UUNNHHCCRRP.O. Box 25001211 Geneva 2, Switzerlandwww.unhcr.org

N ° 1 2 7 - 2 0 0 2

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The relationship between refugees and the environment in which they survive has reached a particularly critical period

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LIVING on

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It is one of the world’s most stunning landscapes. Endless savannah grass-lands, dotted with the graceful silhouettes of giraffe and ponderous ele-phants, shade into deep lakes and simmering volcanoes which spike brood-ingly into the African sky. Hopelessly overcrowded villages and the lastgreat concentration of mountain gorillas cling precariously, side by side, to

mountain slopes. Peeling waterside mansions recall the corruption of 19th cen-tury colonialism and despotic 20th century post-colonial tyrants.

Hundreds of thousands of terrified people spilled into this region in 1994.Fleeing one of modern history’s worst atrocities—the killing fields of Rwanda—they set the stage for another spectacular collision, this time between man andhis environment.

On the plains of Tanzania vast cities sprung up virtually overnight as refugeescowered in hastily airlifted tents, flimsy twig huts or simply in hollows scoopedinto the ground. In the shadows of still rumbling volcanoes, other refugeesperched atop and in the fissures of ancient lava flows, the ash so hard even dy-namite had no impact on its surface. In neighboring Zaire (today the Demo-cratic Republic of Congo) towns such as Goma and Bukavu were overwhelmedby frenzied and then exhausted hordes of frightened exiles.

Armies of men, women and children slashed and felled millions of trees in the

by Ray Wilkinson

EDGEn the

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6 R E F U G E E S

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“THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REFUGEES AND THE ENVIRONMENT HAS LONG BEEN OVERLOOKED.”

previously virgin forests of Zaire’s VirungaNational Park, Africa’s oldest game sanc-tuary, in a daily search for fuel. In theKagera region of northwest Tanzania,refugees consumed more than 1,200 tons ofwood per day. Local gunmen, poachers andrefugees trapped or shot out wildlife, in-cluding the gorillas.

A WATERSHEDSuch mass flights of civilians always

have a major impact on the surroundingcountryside in which they seek safety. Butunlike earlier exoduses, events in Africa’sGreat Lakes region in the mid-1990s provedan environmental watershed of sorts.

UNHCR’s Japanese High CommissionerSadako Ogata had set the stage in 1992 withpossibly the most comprehensive statement

up to that time linking the scourge of en-vironmental degradation and refugees.

She expanded the debate before the spe-cial U.N. Conference on Environment andDevelopment in Rio de Janeiro, noting thatthough it was already well known refugeemovements could lead to ecological de-struction, environmental degradation of-ten set the whole cruel cycle in motion ascivilians increasingly were forced to flee inthe first place because of this phenomenon.

“This relationship between refugeesand the environment has long been over-looked,” she said, pledging her agency to amuch more comprehensive involvement.

Rwanda highlighted the problem to aglobal audience. The orgy of death was themost well-documented genocide in his-tory. Huge numbers of terrified people

then fled the killing fields into an ex-tremely beautiful but fragile ecosystemwhere their ongoing plight was coveredby an unprecedented media blitz. Thosefacts, plus a generally heightened aware-ness of environmental concerns resulted,perhaps for the first time, in a widespreadinternational recognition of the refugee-ecology link.

Billions of dollars worth of regular aid—food, water, shelter, medicines—weretrucked and flown into the stricken regioneven as thousands of persons died from ex-haustion, cholera and other disease. Andwhen it became clear the refugees wouldbe staying for months or years rather thanweeks, humanitarian organizations alsoturned their attention to some burgeon-ing environmental headaches.

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To prevent the further destruction ofZaire’s forests, UNHCR hired 100 trucks tohaul commercial firewood to the campsfor cooking and poured $2.5 million into asimilar project in Tanzania.

In addition to such ‘normal’ programsas planting trees, providing fuel-efficientstoves or helping people grow crops, therefugee agency promoted other unusualprojects.

It financed the retraining and re-equip-ping of park rangers to protect invaluableflora and the mountain gorillas and helpedto rehabilitate a local volcano observatory,which, among other things, tracked theominous rumblings of nearby Mount Nyi-ragongo. The volcano did not explode then,but earlier this year a vast sea of moltenlava finally spewed down its sides, virtu-

ally burying Goma town and forcing tens ofthousands of panicked civilians to flee.

GOING GLOBALEven as field workers grappled with the

uncertainties of African volcanoes and dis-appearing rain forests, the refugee agencywent ‘global’ in 1996, issuing its first all-embracing Environmental Guidelines.

These recognized that “While tradi-tional UNHCR activities have succeededin… sustaining refugee populations, therehas been an increasing realization that thenegative environmental impacts associ-ated with refugee situations must be bet-ter understood and dealt with.”

Mass flight, the guidelines acknowl-edged, could destroy entire ecosystems andeconomic infrastructures, seriously harm-

ing not only refugees but local populationsas well and causing a widening ripple ef-fect of social, economic and political chaos.The guidelines offered general advice onhow to prevent or alleviate these problems.

Underlining the increasing importanceof the issue, the Japanese governmentfunded the appointment of three succes-sive senior environmental coordinators atthe organization’s Geneva headquarters.

That program lapsed several years ago,highlighting the dilemma that no matterhow worthy the cause, programs do not au-tomatically prosper in an increasingly com-plex and competitive humanitarian world.

Projects can be expensive at a time whenbudgets are shrinking. The rehabilitation ofrefugee camps in Africa alone could cost asmuch as $150 million annually. Environ-

Refugees in Western Sahara.

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8 R E F U G E E S

A most necessary item for survival…

It is probably the most precious commodity in a refugee’s sur-vival kit. Millions need it to help them eat. Others use it toward of the sub-zero night time temperatures of a Balkan or

Russian winter’s night. The reconstruction of Afghanistan is de-pendent on it.

Which is why so much controversy surrounds the procure-ment and delivery of wood. Timber is not only invaluable, it isalso expensive and has been at the center of innumerable envi-ronmental and political debates ranging from the destruction ofvirgin forestland to the prevention of refugee camp rape.

The majority of people in developing countries use wood tocook so whenever large refugee camps are established an imme-diate priority is to locate a source of timber. When waves of ter-rified people fled Rwanda to Tanzania and Zaire in the 1990s theysolved the problem by raiding nearby game reserves and slash-ing through hundreds of square miles of forest.

Aid agencies attempted to halt the destruction by trucking insupplies, but the operations proved prohibitively expensive andonly partially successful.

In Europe, millions of dollars were spent to buy and import heat-ing wood for Kosovar refugees in 1999 and millions more have beenearmarked to purchase wood from as far away as South Africa andTanzania to help in Afghanistan’s massive rebuilding program.

But many projects involving wood, no matter how well in-tentioned, become cautionary tales as well.

When Somalia collapsed in the early 1990s many civilians fledto the semi-arid landscape of neighboring Kenya and settled in acomplex of three camps known as Dadaab.

Women and girls spent their days scouring the nearby bush

for firewood, but the area was also full ofarmed gangs intent on rape.

FIREWOOD PROGRAMIn an attempt to cut down on the num-

ber of sexual assaults by reducing the tripsfemales made outside the camps and tolessen the environmental impact of theirwood gathering excursions, the UnitedStates financed a $1.5 million firewood pro-gram to provide families with around 30percent of their cooking needs free.

UNHCR is currently spending$800,000 to continue the project which isnevertheless mired in controversy.

One recent study concluded there hadbeen little long-term environmental dam-age and that, carefully managed, there wasenough firewood within a 30-kilometer ra-dius to supply the refugees’ needs.

A second study doubted the project’s ef-fectiveness in combating rape. While there

was indeed a 45 percent decrease in the num-ber of firewood related rapes at the time free wood was being dis-tributed, it noted, there was a corresponding increase of between78% and 113% in rapes in other locations and contexts.

Critics of the program argued the funds could be used moreeffectively in promoting greater camp security and communityand cultural awareness about the issues.

That approach, however, elicited howls of protest from refugeewomen, local officials and businessmen.

At one meeting, ashaken UNHCR off icialsaid, “The women were ex-tremely vocal, shouting in-sults, talking about humanrights and insisting the pro-gram was working. I thinkthey wanted to lynch us.”

The locals were equallyindignant in defending theproject. In a dirt-poor re-gion, the firewood programis the biggest employer andit is a lucrative business for

contractors. If it were halted for any reason, there would be a ma-jor impact on the local community as well as on the refugees.

These differing concerns all stem from the need to managenatural resources in a more rational manner. “This is like a high-wire act,” one aid official said. “It’s very difficult to keep yourbalance between all the competing parties and it would be soeasy to fall off the wire.”

Many projectsinvolving wood, nomatter how wellintentioned, becomecautionary tales aswell.

It’s invaluable, expensive… and controversial

Vulnerable women receive a distribution of free firewood.

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mental schemes were viewed in the pastwith suspicion, as ‘luxuries’ to be imple-mented only when more urgent projectshad been completed—an attitude which isstill widespread today within UNHCR andthe humanitarian community.

Manpower as well as f inancial re-sources remain in short supply. Withinthe refugee agency there is one full-timeenvironmental expert in Geneva and

around 20 part-time experts in the field.An age-old debate continues on just whoshould be responsible for environmentalprojects—humanitarian or developmentorganizations—especially when programssuch as reforestation may continue foryears after the departure of the lastrefugees.

HOT POTATOThe environment has become a polit-

ical hot potato with some governmentsincreasingly vocal in their demand thatthe international community must footthe bill for cleanup and rehabilitation pro-jects even when it is unclear if refugeeswere the cause of the degradation in thefirst place.

Such dilemmas come at a particularlycritical time in the refugee environmen-tal cycle. In the Horn of Africa, a peren-nial hothouse of war and exodus, morethan 30 camps are scheduled to close ashundreds of thousands of people returnhome and UNHCR undertakes one of itsmost ambitious cleanup operations ever.

In Sudan, Africa’s largest country, asmuch as $10 million was earmarked for op-erations and Bellings Sikanda, head of theagency’s operations in Showak in the east-ern part of the country said, “We are nowat a crossroads here. The refugee programis beginning to wind down and we are leav-ing. But there is still a price tag to this.”

Reflecting the political sensitivity of thedebate, Bushra el Amin, the government’sleading coordinator told Refugees “Some

people say what you are offering is a dropin the sea. We appreciate that drop sincewe are optimists.” But he then added, inapparent contradiction, “We want lots ofmoney and lots of action.”

West and central Africa faced the op-posite problem to the Horn. As East Africawrestled with camp rehabilitation and re-settling returning refugees into fragileecosystems, Liberia, Congo and sur-rounding regions were gripped by ongo-ing conflict, renewed flights of refugees

and all of the environmental headachesproduced by war.

Across the globe, hundreds of thou-sands of Afghan refugees also began to gohome, presenting massive environmentalchallenges on several fronts. As many as200 sites in Pakistan, which hosted mil-lions of Afghans for many years, may needcleaning up.

Afghanistan itself is an economic andenvironmental nightmare with literally

everything ranging from individual vil-lage homes and fields to factories and hos-pitals needing to be rebuilt from scratch.In an indication of how one environmen-tal disaster can cause global ripple effects,Afghanistan is so short of wood millionsof dollars worth of timber will be importedfrom as far away as South Africa and Tan-zania to help rebuild the country.

Refugees and their environment mayhave only a modest impact on the earth’soverall physical well-being, but a recently

released 450-page report entitled GlobalEnvironmental Outlook, painted a verybleak picture for the future unless every-one—governments, big business and orga-nizations—radically changed their ways.

More than 1,000 scientists warned thatliving species, entire ecosystems, especiallyforests, could continue to disappear at analarming rate and more than half theworld will be affected by water shortages.As former High Commissioner Ogata

Zambia has begun to encourage the local integration of refugees, one of the few countries to do so these days.

R E F U G E E S

FLEEING ONE OF HISTORY’S WORST ATROCITIES IN RWANDA, HUNDREDSOF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE SET THE STAGE FOR ANOTHER SPECTACULAR

COLLISION, THIS TIME BETWEEN MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT.

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warned in her 1992 speech, millions ofrefugees are ‘born’ by such ongoing degra-dation and may then go on to exacerbatethe degradation themselves in their searchfor safety.

A world summit on sustainable devel-opment will discuss these issues later thisyear in South Africa.

ON THE EDGEIt is early spring in eastern Sudan and

temperatures are already in the 50s—so hotit is like walking into a Turkish bathwhere the steam has turned into solidclouds of heat. Dust tornadoes swirl acrossthe drab, flat grey-brown landscape andjust as suddenly disappear into the slate-grey sky. Cattle and goat carcasses dot thehorizon. They die where they drop. Noth-ing can be done to save them.

Around every settlement and town,low-lying spiky scrub trees are draped, likeChristmas trees for the terribly poor, withmillions of discarded plastic bags—a drearyreminder of the excess of human con-sumption and its impact on a delicateecosystem. Rusting farm machines andabandoned silos are monuments to a failedexperiment to ‘make the desert bloom’ andturn the region into the breadbasket forthe entire Middle East.

Most of the country’s estimated 120,000Eritrean refugees live in this region. In the1980s, more than one million uprootedpeople from some of the nine countrieswhich share borders with Sudan tookrefuge here. There are an additional fivemillion Sudanese who have been displacedby civil conflict in their own country—thehighest figure in the world. War seems tobe a ‘constant’ in this area.

Not all of the 20 million uprooted per-sons UNHCR currently cares for live insuch harsh surroundings, of course. Con-ditions for refugees are as variable as theclimate in different parts of the world anda converted military barracks somewherein Europe may seem almost deluxe incomparison to the east African savannah.

But the great majority do live on thevery edge of survivability. Uprooted peo-ples often escape from the world’s poorestnations and take sanctuary in equally des-titute countries. They are sometimeshoused in uninhabited parts of a countrywhere there is little or no infrastructureor on land which locals long ago decidedwas too difficult to tame.

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The severity of the landscape in east-ern Sudan, northern Kenya or parts ofPakistan is a stark reminder of a fact soglaring that it is often overlooked or ig-nored—refugees and the environment en-compass far more than a project to replanta forest or clean up a deserted camp. Vir-tually every problem faced by refugeesand the organizations trying to help themhas an ‘environmental’ connection.

NARROW FOCUS“We tend to look at the ‘environment’

through a very narrowly focused tele-scope,” says Sergio Calle-Noreña, who isnot an environmental expert himself buta senior UNHCR protection officer inKenya. “The environment involves poli-tics, protection, security, food and health—very obvious really when you think aboutit, but people often don’t connect all thedots.”

Women refugees in the Dadaab com-plex of camps in eastern Kenya, for in-stance, were terrorized for years whenthey had to scavenge for firewood in thebush. Their protection, security andhealth were all severely compromised (seestory page 8). Polluting scarce water pointsor using ‘green’ firewood cause serioushealth problems. The scarcity of wood andthe inability to cook food, even if it is avail-able, lead to malnutrition and other dis-eases.

The battle for resources can lead to so-cial and political turmoil. Difficulties be-tween refugees and local communities in-variably fall into this category. Some gov-ernments, especially in Africa, used towelcome refugees, giving them plots ofland and sometimes citizenship. But as thenumbers increased over the decades andrefugees stayed longer, new arrivals werenot allowed to ‘integrate’ with local com-munities and support themselves on do-nated farmland, but were confined to over-crowded camps.

Though such moves were designed totake the pressure off natural resources andappease local communities, they often hadthe opposite effect as the refugees wereforced to forage, often against the law, forscarce resources such as firewood andcrops.

In a move to counter that trend, Zam-bia recently announced a pilot project inwhich some of the nearly 300,000refugees the country supports will be in-tegrated into local communities and

High resolutionsatellite imagerycaptures the Beldangirefugee camp in Nepaland its surroundingforests and mountains.

| C O V E R S T O R Y |

given land to produce crops for both do-mestic use and export. The move waspartially designed to counter prevailingattitudes summed up by one local chief,who said, “We thought the refugees were(only) here to cut down our trees and useour water.”

GOOD, BAD, UGLYThe history of both economic and en-

vironmental projects in the developingworld entered journalistic folklore manyyears ago—encompassing as they do theextremes of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Projects range from the latest technol-ogy wizardry to the most down-to-earthand time-tested of programs.

Environmental education is the mostbasic tool encouraging, explaining and ca-joling refugees, especially children, localpeople and government officials througheco-clubs, classroom lectures, literatureand local theatre.

Tree planting and reforestation, espe-cially in semi-desert regions, have become

the cornerstones of environmental pro-grams. In one of the most ambitious pro-jects of its kind, the World Bank in con-junction with UNHCR and other organi-zations spent $80 million in the 1990s torehabilitate forests in Pakistan

Green belts increasingly surroundcamps in the arid Horn of Africa and re-generate despoiled areas in the tropicalcentral African regions, improving soilconservation, restoring biological diver-sity, providing building and cooking re-sources and shade.

A myriad of other projects have beenintroduced. High tech satellite imageryand GPS (global positioning systems) canchart refugee movements, camp locationsand any environmental destruction.

At the low tech end of the scale, so-called multi-storey gardening may be apartial answer in overcrowded camps,refugees needing only a burlap bag sometin cans and a little soil to produce bumpercrops in conf ined spaces. Rwandanrefugees in northern Uganda use ubiqui-tous termite mounds to help turn theirwaste into useful fertilizer and others

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There are currently 12 million refugeesaround the world. There are approx-imately double that number of peo-

ple who have fled because of floods, famineand other environmental disasters. Thereare similarities between the two groups,the most obvious being the forced natureof their flight and then their need for ma-terial assistance and permission to livesomewhere else.

So should these environmental mi-grants be officially classified as refugeeseligible to receive the same standard of in-ternational protection?

It is a debate taking place within the in-creasingly complex world of global migra-tion in which millions of people are on themove daily because of a variety of military,political, social, economic and environ-mental factors.

UNHCR was created more than a halfcentury ago to act on behalf of one specificgroup of uprooted people—refugees. Theyare legally defined as persons forced to fleeacross an international border because ofa well-founded fear of persecution basedon race, religion, nationality, political opin-ion or membership of a particular socialgroup.

Critics argue that times have changedin the last few decades. Many millions ofenvironmental migrants, an estimated 20-25 million persons internally displacedwithin their own countries, so-called IDPs,and others, they say, should also be classi-fied as refugees and receive the kind of le-gal and material assistance from the in-ternational community they would other-wise be denied.

Newspapers, officials and the general

public already routinely refer to many dis-parate groups with the all-embracing term‘refugees’ further blurring the issue.

The discussion was continued recentlyin the pages of the journal The Ecologist.

EXPANDED DEFINITIONAndrew Simms, policy director of Lon-

don’s New Economics Foundation arguedthat the term ‘persecution’ should be ap-plied not only to persons suffering politicalor other officially defined harassment, butalso to those “forced to live in worseningpoverty on land that without warningcould flood, or turn to dust.”

While widespread global climate changewas being caused principally by the ‘eco-nomic and political decisions’ of powerfulnations—policies pursued in full knowledgeof their damaging consequences, he said,

Millions of people flee because of famine or floods but should they be considered as refugees?

Education, including encouraging gender equality, is a key project.

Environmental migrants and refugees

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weave discarded plastic bags into mats andshelter materials.

CHEQUERED HISTORYThe energy efficient stove in all of its

guises has had perhaps the most chequeredcareer of any project. People in developingnations use inordinate amounts of woodfor cooking but their traditional methods—often a simple open fire—are extremely in-efficient. When tens and sometimes hun-dreds of thousands of refugees cluster to-gether in a confined space the results arepredictable—a savage assault on the sur-rounding countryside as they scour forwood.

Better stoves appear to be the answer.In some African camps, families are en-couraged first to plant several trees and arethen ‘rewarded’ with a new stove (the ra-

tionale here being that nothing should everbe given away free). Today’s stoves are sim-ple and cheap devices made from local soilsand clays, sometimes with tin liners whichexperts believe are as much as 60 percentmore fuel-efficient than traditional meth-ods. Their use should result in enormoussavings among large concentrations ofrefugees.

So far so good for the theory, but it hasproved frustratingly difficult to sustainsuch programs.

Rwandan refugees in Tanzania in the1990s received new ‘improved’ cookers, butmany abandoned them because they hadbeen built ‘in the wrong place’ in their huts,traditional stone fires could burn largepieces of wood, thus avoiding the labori-ous job of chopping timber into smallerpieces for the new stoves which also took

longer to cook maize, thus negating theirapparent fuel saving.

“We have learned many lessons,”Matthew Owen, an environmental con-sultant, told Refugees at the time. “We donot put so much faith in the improvedstove now.”

Still the experts keep trying. One Swissengineer designed a very effective grass-burning stove, but when it was field testedin Tanzania, it was quickly discovered thatrefugees would have had to plunder vir-tually all the grass in the area to feed thevoracious machines. Some solar cookersare cheap and easy to build, but they takeseveral times as long to cook a meal andmany refugees view them skeptically.

There have been other setbacks. Newlyarrived civilians at one site in Sudan were

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it was poor countries which were left to“clear up a problem that they had almostnothing to do with creating.”

“Is it right that while some states are farmore responsible for creating problemslike climate change, all states should bearequal responsibility for dealing with its dis-placed people?” Simms asked.

While there were so many internationalagreements covering the rights of capitaland goods to move freely across nationalborders, the advocate argued “No compa-rable effort is ongoing to protect the rightsof people who have to move across borders,whatever the need driving them.” In urg-ing that UNHCR take responsibility for

these people he said, “You cannot sacrificegreen refugee Peter to save conventionalrefugee Paul.”

While agreeing that the refugee agencywas already involved in a limited way inenvironmental issues and helping inter-nally displaced persons, UNHCR saidthere were fundamental differences be-tween the two groups. Refugees could notturn to their own governments for pro-tection because states were often the sourceof persecution and they therefore neededinternational assistance, it said, whereasenvironmental migrants continued to en-joy national protection whatever the stateof the landscape.

“Lumping both groups together underthe same heading would further cloud theissues and could undermine efforts to helpand protect either group and to address theroot causes of either type of displacement,”UNHCR said.

The two sides agreed on one thing:many millions of migrants did need somekind of assistance. But the question re-mained: what organization should help andhow? B

One victim of the deteriorating environment.

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THE GREAT MAJORITY OF REFUGEES LIVE ON THE VERY EDGE OF SURVIVABILITY. THEY ESCAPE FROM THE WORLD’S POOREST

NATIONS AND TAKE SANCTUARY IN EQUALLY DESTITUTE COUNTRIES.

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Projects range from the sophisticated—the use of satellite imagery to track thedegradation of forests—to the mostsimple—employing burlap bags anddiscarded tin cans to grow vegetables in small corners of a crowded refugeecamp. They can cost a few cents ormillions of dollars. They may bedesigned to help a single family to stave off malnutrition or regenerate an entire region, helping not only large populations of refugees but also nearby local ‘host’ communities. Environmental programs include:

Millions of refugees need hugeamounts of wood for cooking,heating and shelter and largeconcentrations of civilians can put amassive strain on local forests. Innorthwest Tanzania during the 1990s,for instance, uprooted peoplesconsumed 1,200 tons of firewood eachday. Reforestation, tree planting and naturalregeneration have therefore become majorcornerstones of the refugee agency’senvironmental program. Projects range from schemesto reinvigorate entire regions by replanting woodland orallowing local flora to flourish to those encouragingindividual refugee families to plant trees in theirsettlements and backyards.

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Preparing tree seedlings in Sudan.

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E D U C A T I O N

Environmental education may be the single most important policy insensitizing refugees, local communities, government officials andhumanitarian workers to environmental problems and solutions.Information is disseminated in a variety of ways, through officialworkshops and meetings, the formation of joint refugee and localcommunity groups, forming special classes in refugee schools andthrough open-air theatre in the camps such as Dadaab in eastern Kenya.

In comparison to the space-age wizardry,a simple project called multi-storeygardening involving burlap bags, old tincans and waste water, can be extremelyuseful for families in overcrowdedrefugee camps where there is little spaceto grow vegetables to supplement theirdiet. Any deep tubular bag is filled withsoil. A perforated funnel made fromscrap tins and packed with stones isinserted down the middle of the bag.Waste water poured down the funnel is

cleaned by the stonesbefore seeping into thesoil, watering a variety ofvegetables growing atseveral levels. Experts arealso exploring theeffectiveness of a systemused by Rwandan refugees whopack their waste into nearbytermite mounds where it is brokendown into a crude fertilizer which canbe used on crops.

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Open-air theatreeducates refugeeson the environment.

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High tech imagery and information from satellites andglobal positioning systems play an important role inenvironmental strategy. Space photos pinpoint thelocation and layout of camps and layered 3D images can

help establish the most effectivelocations for the installation oftelecommunications equipment forliaison with the outside world.Color-coded images pinpointchanges to the local environmentand are particularly helpful indeveloping projects to combaterosion. In before-and-aftersequences, they may help resolvepolitical sensitive issues such as howmuch damage—or how little—refugees may be responsible for.

Multi-storey gardening.

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Many refugee familiescook their meals onwasteful open fires andone of the mosteffective ways to cutdown on woodconsumption is theintroduction of fuel-efficient stoves. But thisprocess has not alwaysgone smoothly. Someearly stoves proved too

expensive or neededregular repair. Refugeesrejected them becausetheir traditional openfires were easier to useor because of culturaltaboos. But expertscontinue to refine theirmodels and insist manycan save as much as 60-70 percent of a family’senergy needs.

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As hundreds of thousands of refugees returnhome in the Horn of Africa or to Afghanistanmany camps need extensive cleanup. Costs canbe enormous. In Africa alone, it could cost $150million annually to rehabilitate existing sites. Inthe past such work was often decided on an adhoc basis with some areas rehabilitated, others

simply abandoned and great uncertainty overwho exactly was responsible. Governments andhumanitarian agencies, however, have becomemore sensitive to the issue in recent years.Particularly popular are small-scale, low-budgetprojects in which local organizations cleanup thelandscape.

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Ã

Centuries-old methods often prove to bethe most efficient in preserving theenvironment. In the overpopulated, over-worked mountains of Rwanda, terracingprevents soil erosion and expands theamount of land available for cropcultivation. In building new camp sites theconstruction of roads which follow thecontour of the landscape cause far lessdamage than those built directly up anddown hillsides. Income generating projects

such as contour trenching and watershedmanagement are encouraged amongrefugees.

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The great majority of refugees flee theworld’s poorest regions, environmentaldegradation at home sometimes being thedirect reason for their enforced departure.Their period in exile may be spent in equallydifficult physical circumstances.Environmental experts say they have onlyjust begun to ‘scratch the surface’ inpreparing these people to return to whatcould once again be very demandingphysical conditions.

I N T E G R A T I O N

Early refugees, especially in Africa, wereoften integrated into local communities,avoiding any major environmental impact.But as the number of uprooted peoplecontinued to rise during the last part of the20th century and their length of stay inexile increased, sometimes lasting decades,governments tempered their welcome.Sprawling refugee camps became the norm.Only a few countries today integrate their‘visitors.’ Zambia recently announced a newintegration initiative for some of the nearly300,000 refugees in that country who will

join local communities and be given land togrow crops both for domestic use andexport.

Helping returnees to Laos with a small fruit garden.

Terracing in Rwanda halts soil erosion.

Only a few countries such as Uganda encourage localrefugee integration and give them farming land.

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given more than 100 tractors, but to usethem efficiently they first had to uprootthe surrounding tree cover. Being pas-toralists, the refugees eventually aban-doned the machines anyway after damag-ing the environment.

Part of this, of course, goes with the ter-ritory. Projects may be experimental in na-ture and some inevitably fail. Others col-lapse because of bureaucratic bungling; thelack of an institutional memory in orga-nizations or their refusal to become in-volved in expensive, long-term projectswhich they consider development ratherthan humanitarian projects. Refugees, too,are often reluctant to embrace new ideas.

In Kenya’s Kakuma camp some were notinterested in using new stoves because theydid not expect to stay for very long. Othersshunned the stoves because they remindedthem of the shape of graves. In Sudan theyare sometimes used as flowerpots.

Cultural differences hamper other de-velopments. Some women in Kakumaavoided using more modern toilets because

they feared they would become infertile.In Sudan, some projects were stalled al-most indefinitely among Eritrean refugeesbecause it was not realized that womenwere not allowed to work outside theirhomes. That situation has radically alteredthese days to such an extent that it led toa memorable exchange between one visit-ing dignitary and a male refugee.

“I see women, women working every-where. But what are the men doing?” thevisitor asked. To which the refugee replied:“The men give the permission for thewomen to work.”

WHAT NOW?The environmental stakes are enor-

mous—on both the personal and globallevel. A carefully organized garden on atiny backplot can sustain a starving fam-ily. A replanted forest may regenerate anentire region, supporting refugees and lo-cal communities alike.

Nations, often among the world’s poor-est, which have helped millions of refugeesfor many years in the past, can be encour-aged to keep their doors open to future ar-

rivals if they can be convinced their coun-tryside will not be despoiled. Political andphysical barriers will be erected if they be-lieve otherwise, as is already happening insome countries.

Financial and physical resources willnever be enough to tackle every outstand-ing problem, but new technology andideas, the greater involvement of moreplayers, especially local communities, chil-dren and refugees themselves, and a morethorough and sustained application of ex-isting knowledge and guidelines couldhave a major impact.

World Environment Day 2002 was usedas a catalyst not only to launch thousandsof projects and exhibits around the world,but also to encourage closer working tiesbetween the refugee agency and its inter-national and local partners.

Though a large body of informationcovering the majority of refugee-environ-mental situations already exists—includ-ing their initial flight, arrival in a safecountry and ultimate repatriation—it isoften applied sparingly, if at all.

During the chaos of a refugee exodus

IT IS A PARTICULARLY CRITICAL TIME IN THE REFUGEE-ENVIRONMENTAL CYCLE WITH MANY CAMPS CLOSING IN THE HORN OF AFRICA AND ACROSS THE GLOBE

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF AFGHANS RETURNING HOME.

Before and after: The effects of a large exodus on the environment.

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environmental concerns generally take abackseat to more ‘immediate’ problemssuch as providing food, housing and wa-ter and political calculation. In some cir-cumstances this is inevitable.

A camp may not be located in the bestenvironmental position because govern-ments are often preoccupied with securityconcerns.

Harassed aid officials have little timefor ‘esoteric’ considerations such as thepreservation of trees in the race to providelife-saving water supplies.

But the two issues need not be mutu-ally exclusive and misguided emergencydecisions often return to haunt aid opera-tions leading to a degraded life style forrefugees, clashes with local communitiesover scarce natural resources, fractured re-lations with governments and expensivecleanup operations.

Even common-sense guidelines are stillignored. Forests continue to be choppeddown and other areas bulldozed clean to es-tablish camp sites causing irreparable dam-age, according to environmental experts.

There is no clearly defined exit strat-egy either among humanitarian agencies.Sites which once housed huge concentra-tions of civilians have been cleaned up—ornot—on an ad hoc basis and one expert de-scribed the humanitarian modus operandiof earlier years as: “Get out of the countryas soon as the last refugee has left.”

NOT ACCEPTABLEIn today’s environmentally aware world,

that is no longer acceptable especially ifhosting countries are expected to continueto shoulder the burden of hosting futurerefugees.

There are other areas where much re-mains to be done. Refugees often returnhome to areas which are as fragile as thecamps themselves and David Stone, UN-HCR’s senior environmental expert said,“We have only just begun to scratch thesurface” in helping prepare civilians tomeet this challenge.

No preparation or the wrong kind ofpreparation is a recipe for disaster. It wasdiscovered recently, for example, that anarea in Eritrea officially earmarked for thereturn of many of the expected 120,000 re-turnees would not be able to sustain them.A search was launched for new locations.

Rwanda is one of the most densely pop-ulated countries on earth and in itsdilemma where to house floods of return-ing refugees the government de-gazettedthe majority of the country’s 2,500 squarekilometer Akagera National Park to helpaccommodate them. To the horror of en-vironmentalists, it has been virtually de-stroyed in the intervening years.

The plight of urban refugees has hadlittle attention to date and the problemsfaced by the world’s estimated 20-25 mil-lion people internally displaced within

their own countries are often more politi-cally sensitive than those of refugees. “It iseasier for humanitarian agencies to givethese people a quick fix such as shelter andfood than even begin to think of tacklinglong-term problems with nature,” one ex-pert said. “That’s one for the developmentboys, but much of the time there is simplya vacuum.”

Some tentative steps have now beentaken, according to UNHCR’s Stone, to de-velop blueprints for a pilot ‘environmen-tally friendly’ refugee camp which wouldbalance site layout, water supplies, arablefarming plots and technology in a carefulmix. Such a plan could then be applied insituations around the world. “It may soundidealistic, but it is practical,” Stone said.“Most everything could be recycled or re-generated within a given camp.”

Wider cooperation with local commu-nities, governments and international de-velopment agencies and a more flexible andinclusive attitude within humanitarian or-ganizations must also be realized, environ-mental experts insisted. Some of these ef-forts, it must be noted, have been under-way for years with only limited success.

But as High Commissioner Ruud Lub-bers said recently: “We cannot ignore theenvironmental consequences of refugeesand refugee operations. This could jeopar-dize the basic rights and needs of refugees…the (very) institution of asylum.” B

Even when they return home, civilians face a harsh future.

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Afghanistan hasseen it all before,but hundreds ofthousands ofpeople are againheading home Rush

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Hour The chaos of return.

Abdul Khaliq has never known any-thing but war, pain and exile. As ayoungster he watched invading

Soviet soldiers destroy his family’s vine-yard, pomegranate, apple and apricot or-chards.

Laboriously, plant by plant, the familyrebuilt their farm, the Soviets withdrewbut Afghanistan’s new rulers, the Talibanwreaked vengeance on the land once more,torching houses, dynamiting centuries-oldirrigation systems and felling the trees yetagain.

Abdul Khaliq was not spared his ownpersonal hell. He lost his left leg when hestepped on a land mine in the capital,Kabul, 12 years ago before fleeing into a lifeof exile in neighboring Pakistan.

Undeterred, earlier this year he packedhis wife and five children into a rented carand headed back to his village of Qali Bibiin Afghanistan’s Shomali plain.

“The Russians destroyed Shomali inthe 1980s,” the 32-year-old recalled. “Werevived it. Then the Taliban came andrazed it. We will make it productive again.We have nowhere else to go. This is home.”

Abdul Khaliq is one of an overwhelm-ing number of refugees once more votingwith their feet and going home.

In the early 1990s an estimated two mil-lion Kurds returned to their devastatedhomeland following the Gulf War and itschaotic aftermath within a matter ofmonths.

Nearly a decade later 800,000 peoplefled or were forcibly thrown outof their towns and villages in theSerb province of Kosovo, butwithin three months most hadreturned. Perhaps never beforehad so many people left and thengone home in such a short time.

The pattern was repeated inAfghanistan this year. Follow-ing the installation of an InterimAdministration in Kabul morethan one million Afghans fromabroad and at least 160,000 civil-ians internally displaced withinthe country—a total of more thanone million people—also wentback within a similar threemonth period.

“In Afghanistan, like in the two earlieroperations, all of the political and histori-cal indicators available suggested thiswould not happen so quickly,” Ekber Men-emencioglu, UNHCR’s senior director forthe region said. “In fact, we didn’t think theconditions were right, but the people did.”

A BIZARRE PROBLEMTheir enthusiasm to go home high-

lighted a bizarre problem: the return of somany refugees was happening too quickly,almost too well, threatening to engulf thecountry’s extremely fragile recovery.

After all, this was one of the world’spoorest nations, which had endured

decades of war, including a Soviet inva-sion. At its peak in 1990, the exodus ofrefugees reached more than six millionpeople, making it the world’s single largesthumanitarian crisis. The country’s schools,hospitals, roads and farms lay in ruins. Asa new millennium dawned even theweather became a deadly enemy whenAfghanistan suffered the worst drought inliving memory affecting at least 12 millionpeople.

Well aware of the tenuous internal sit-uation, the new government in Kabul hadhoped to stage a cautious and carefullystructured return by nearly four millionrefugees—still the largest single group of

uprooted people in the worldthough their overall numbershad fallen in the last few years.

In line with this policy, theU.N. refugee agency estimated itwould assist less than one mil-lion people returning fromabroad throughout the whole of2002. But that figure was sur-passed by spring, forcing UN-HCR to double its planning es-timate and High CommissionerRuud Lubbers to admit some-what ruefully, “It is a bit scarythat the operation is going sowell and we have to live from dayto day.”

Ironically, until the Septem-

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by Fernando del Mundo

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Registering in Pakistan for an ‘assisted’ return.

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THEIR ENTHUSIASM TO GO HOME HIGHLIGHTED A SEEMINGLY BIZARRE PROBLEM: THE RETURN OF SO MANY REFUGEES WAS HAPPENING TOO QUICKLY,

ALMOST TOO WELL, THREATENING THE COUNTRY’S FRAGILE RECOVERY.

ber 11 terror attacks in the United States,Afghanistan had been a largely forgottenproblem. UNHCR’s budget was a modest$8.4 million for the year 2001 and even thatwas 40 percent under funded when thesuicide bombers struck.

With world attention suddenly focusedon the country, the agency estimated itwould need nearly $300 million in emer-gency funding to tackle the unfoldingdrama as its field staff more than trebledto around 700 personnel in nearly 30newly opened offices.

DOING BETTER?The international community, fully

aware that it had ‘abandoned’ Afghanistanonce before following the Soviet with-drawal in 1989, vowed that this time itwould do better and would never again‘walk away’ from the country.

The lack of funding, however, quicklybecame one major bottleneck among manyin trying to put Afghanistan back togetheragain. As stifling summer heat anddrought again enveloped the country, UN-HCR faced the possibility of cutting travelgrants, housing and water projects becauseit had received only 65 percent of its fi-nancial needs.

Other agencies fared even worse. At thetime this article went to press the WorldFood Program had slashed its assistance toreturnee families by two-thirds to 50 kilo-grams each and warned of a potential totalrupture in its food pipeline later in the year.The International Organization for Mi-gration suspended its entire program pro-viding transportation for returningrefugees.

The World Health Organization andHabitat received zero emergency funding.Little of the nearly $5 billion promised foreconomic development in the next fiveyears arrived. An ambitious program toreopen thousands of schools was mori-bund.

“A relief worker came here one day anddistributed two pencils and a notebook toeach of the students,” said 31-year-oldSadiqa Naroozyan who returned from ex-ile in Iran to run a women’s center for or-

phans and widows in Kabul. “There werea dozen photographers who also came andtook pictures. We have not heard fromthem again. Many countries offered to helpAfghanistan. There were many promises,but no action.”

A senior humanitarian official said sim-ply, “It’s an utter disgrace.”

LESS SECURITYA report commissioned by the U.S.

Agency for International Developmenttranslated what these problems and a wors-ening drought meant for the country’s 27

million people, including the returnees.The level of ‘diet security’—official par-lance for having enough food to eat on aregular basis—plummeted from 59 percenttwo years ago to an alarming nine percentby mid-2002. A similar measure for waterfell from 43 to 15 percent.

The country was a bewildering patch-

work of contrasts—of renovation and mas-sive destruction, of relative security andwidespread banditry.

Kabul became a frenetic hive of activ-ity full of rebuilding, cell phones, businesssuits, international meetings, spirallingrents, blaring all-night music which wasonce banned by the recent Taliban rulers,returning refugees and the comfortingpresence of international soldiers on thestreets.

The country’s few roads were congestedwith endless columns of vehicles crawlingalong like giant ants, but gunmen also rode

the highways and old time warlords heldsway in many parts of the country.

Intimidation ranged from individualacts of violence, including murder, to fearsby some ethnic groups that the country’svarious strongmen would continue anages-old custom of seeking vengeanceagainst old enemies.

Classes to warn about the millions of unexploded mines still in Afghanistan.

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AFGHANISTAN HAS SEEN IT ALL BEFORE, A SEEMINGLY UNENDING MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE SWISHING BACK AND FORTH ACROSS THE REGION

IN AN ONGOING TRAGIC GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS.

Though freed from the suffocatingstrictures of the Taliban regime when theywere under almost permanent ‘house ar-rest’, women nevertheless reacted cau-tiously to their new found freedom. Somereturned to work but many continued towear the all-enveloping burqa which hadbecome a global symbol of oppression. “Wedon’t want to try a new lifestyle just yet, tobecome recognized,” one westernizedwoman said. “Maybe there will be morechanges, this time backwards. It is goodnot to move too quickly.”

An estimated 40,000 people tried to ‘go

the other way and cross into Pakistan toseek refuge, but became trapped in asqualid strip of no man’s land on the borderwhen authorities in that country refusedthem permission to enter.

High Commissioner Lubbers said onone recent visit, “This is a country with atradition of settling disputes very easilywith a gun. This has to be reduced step bystep, but I think we are on the way.”

UNHCR’s countrywide network andthe presence of humanitarian officials of-fered a degree of stability and protectionin this volatile mix. And quiet diplomacyhelped defuse potentially dangerous secu-rity situations.

Complementing the agency’s core pro-tection activities, it was also providing shel-

ter for 96,000 families, seeds and tools foran additional 144,000 households andmini-projects to repair schools, clinics andwater facilities.

DIFFERENT SIGNALSThe speed of the returns threatened to

swamp such assistance and some harriedofficials privately suggested the repatria-tion be slowed or even halted to ‘buy time’for national recovery. Paradoxically, how-ever, some capitals saw it as an opportunetime to ‘return’ thousands of Afghans whohad sought political asylum in their coun-tries. Erika Feller, UNHCR’s senior pro-tection official told capitals that “to bringpeople back precipitously can only con-tribute to the growing destabilization of a

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Returning home and rebuilding.

very fragile country.”Her warning only underlined the re-

cent history of Afghanistan which has seenit all before.

In a seemingly unending movement ofpeople swishing back and forth across theregion in massive waves, nearly five mil-lion Afghans who fled the original Sovietinvasion had gone home, even before thelatest returns got underway. But as ongoingviolence gripped the country, equal num-bers of people left in an ongoing tragicgame of musical chairs.

The drama will not end anytime soon.Even if the current rush continues—a big‘if ’ given the extreme diff iculties inAfghanistan—it might still take severalyears for the great bulk of people to go

back. Some never will. Untold numbers ofyoung refugees were born outside a coun-try they have never seen. Others marriedand integrated into communities in othercountries.

The mood among refugees and re-turnees veers dramatically from euphoriato deep disappointment, anger even.Ainud-din Sherzai returned home fromIran but now shares one room in a housewith an extended family of 20 in Kabul. “IfI don’t find a job soon, I will probably endup there,” he said pointing to a nearbygraveyard. “Or I will go back to Iran.”

In that country, 50-year-old MahboobaNiazi who has been a refugee for 19 yearsexplains why she will not be going homeanytime soon. “I don’t have an education, I

can’t even read,” she said. “But my threechildren are in university and I am not re-turning home yet.”

When Abdul Khaliq, the farmer wholost his leg 12 years ago returned to hishome on the Shomali plain, he immedi-ately repaired one room in the ruins of hisfather’s house, spring being an ideal timeto construct mud walls. Villagers busily re-paired a 150-year-old underground watersystem of canals and channels which pro-vides drinking water and irrigates farms.

“We need tools, we need seeds, we needhelp from God to make it what it was be-fore,” a neighbor Jan Mohammad said. “Butwhen we are done, Shomali will bloomagain.” “This is our place, it is our home,”Abdul Khaliq said for emphasis. B

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY SAID IT WOULD NEVERWALK AWAY AGAIN. BUT THE LACK OF FUNDING BECAME ONE MAJOR

BOTTLENECK AMONG MANY IN TRYING TO PUT AFGHANISTAN BACK TOGETHER AGAIN.

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B UNITED NATIONS: TheInternational Criminal Court,created to try individualsaccused of genocide and warcrimes, has become a reality..

B CAIRO: High CommissionerRuud Lubbers has urged Arabgovernments and people to become more involved in refugeeissues.

S H O R T T A K E S

Seeking asylum

“We are not advocating a ‘FortressEurope’”, British Prime Minis-ter Tony Blair insisted. The

Guardian newspaper had another interpreta-tion, headlining one report: “Fortress Europepulls up the drawbridge.” Prime Minister Blairdid acknowledge that the issue of immigrationand asylum seekers was “one of the most press-ing issues of our time” and the increasingly

heated debate across Europe threatened at timesto swamp all other news. Early in the year UN-HCR generally welcomed one European Uniondirective to ensure that most asylum seekerswould receive a uniform package of benefitsthroughout member states. The directivewould regulate access to health care and educa-tion, the provision of identity documents, infor-mation on asylum procedures and introducespecial measures to protect vulnerable groupssuch as unaccompanied children.

European voters were venting their frustra-tion over what they perceived to be weak andineffective government policies. A long-time

anti-immigrant candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen,stunned Europe when he strongly challengedfor the French presidency, apparently under-lining a continent-wide shift to the hard right.Denmark, Italy and Britain unveiled toughnew immigration and asylum measures.Before the EU Council summit in Seville,Spain, on 21-22 June, High CommissionerRuud Lubbers declared that European Union

leaders had every reason to place illegal immi-gration atop their agenda, stressing the need todevelop common asylum and immigrationpolicies. “Many of those reaching Europe’s bor-ders are refugees in need of protection. Butmany more are not, travelling mainly for eco-nomic reasons,” Lubbers said. “Strict and work-able policies are needed to sort the migrantsfrom the refugees. The fundamental credibili-ty of the asylum system depends on it.” In addi-tion to domestic measures, Lubbers said EUgovernments should also focus on helping theuprooted and the dispossessed in their coun-tries and regions of origin. B

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ERITREA

No longer refugeesHundreds of thousands ofEritreans fled a 30-year war ofindependence and recent bor-der conflict with neighboringEthiopia. Many have sincereturned home, but UNHCRsaid that on December 31,those still living abroad willno longer be considered asrefugees. The 1951 GenevaRefugee Convention and the1969 Organization of AfricanUnity Convention both stipu-late the conditions in whichcivilians qualify for refugeestatus, but also state thatwhen conditions return tonormal in their own countriesand refugees no longer facethe threat of persecution, thisprotection will be removed.Individuals who believe theywould be in danger if theyreturned home will retain theright to seek continued asy-lum.

EAST TIMOR

A nation at lastAfter an independence strug-gle soaked in blood and theestablishment of a U.N. transi-tional government, East Timorbecame an independentnation in May. The process hasbeen so successful that, as inthe case of Eritrean refugees(above) UNHCR said that onDecember 31, it will endrefugee status for thoseamong 260,000 East Timoresewho fled during a wave ofviolence in 1999 and remainabroad. “Over the last yearswe’ve returned more than207,000 people without inci-dent,” High CommissionerRuud Lubbers said. “Refugeesare increasingly choosing toreturn home, and their coun-trymen are welcoming themback with open arms.”

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B UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommend-ed a 4,000-strong U.N. peace-keeping mission in DemocraticCongo be extended for one year.

Seeking asylum

B WASHINGTON: The U.S., pre-occupied by September 11, reset-tled 68,426 refugees in fiscal2001, the lowest number since1987.

B BOGOTA: More than two mil-lion people have been displacedduring 40 years of civil war inColombia.

B CANBERRA: Australia plans toexclude some off-shore islandsfrom its migration regime, mean-ing persons landing there will notbe allowed to apply for asylum.

In Africa there were 4.2million people ‘of concern’to UNHCR at the start of

2002, but by the middle of theyear there had been signifi-cant progress in trying to re-solve two of the continent’smost bloody and protractedcivil wars.

After a decade of conflictin which hundreds of thou-sands of persons fled andsome 50,000 were killed, theshooting stopped in SierraLeone and peaceful presiden-tial and parliamentary elec-tions were held under thewatchful eyes of 17,400 U.N.troops forming the largestpeacekeeping mission in theworld. As the fighting gradu-ally subsided 162,000refugees returned home, butthere was an equal numberstill living in surroundingcountries. Following the deathof rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, acease-fire agreement was alsosigned in Angola where at leastfour million people were dis-

placed within the country andnearly a half million soughtrefuge in surrounding states.Their repatriation may beginnext year and elections held in

2004, if there is norenewed fighting.Desultory talkscontinued on thefuture of theDemocratic Re-public of Congoand since the in-stallation of a tran-sitional govern-ment in Burundi,there was an in-crease in the num-ber of ‘spontaneous’returns of civiliansfrom camps inwestern Tanzania.But there were alsorenewed problems.Fresh fighting inLiberia threatenednot only the stabili-ty of that state, butalso of surroundingcountries. There

was strife in Congo Republic,Democratic Congo and in theHorn of Africa, leading to re-newed flights of refugees inthose regions. B

U N I T E D N AT I O N S

A message to the world

She was barely taller than the lectern onwhich she was speaking, but 13-year-oldGabriela Azurdy Arrieta from Bolivia

scolded some 60 national leaders and 3,000other delegates: “We are street children. Weare the children of war. We are the victims ofAIDS.” Gabriela addressed a U.N. General As-sembly Special Session on Children held thisspring to review developments since an earli-er 1990 summit and set priorities for the nextdecade. UNHCR cares for an estimated 10million youngsters (Refugees magazine N°122) and High Commissioner Ruud Lubbersreceived a petition to world leaders signed by43,000 children asking for the right to go

home. “My message… to the world is that chil-dren should not be made refugees, homelessand stateless,” 17-year-old Bhutanese refugeeGanga Adhikari said as she presented the pe-tition. The refugee agency underlined its pri-orities including reuniting separated childrenand their families, preventing sexual vio-lence, ending forced military recruitment,registering all children and increasing theiraccess to formal education. “Children are ourmirror to the future,” Lubbers said. “However,if all they know is deprivation, violence andexploitation, it is unlikely they will contributeto the development of stable, just and produc-tive societies.”

Sierra Leonean refugees en route home.

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Latin American welcomeBrazil has become the secondcountry in Latin America afterChile to officially welcomerefugees for permanent reset-tlement. A small number ofAfghans arrived in PortoAlegre and by the end of theyear Brazil will be hostingaround 100 people under anagreement signed in 1999 withthe U.N. refugee agency. Mostrefugees and asylum seekersarrive unexpectedly in a for-eign country seeking safety,but 17 nations worldwide nowparticipate in official ‘resett-lement programs’.

MEXICO

Land titlesFewer and fewer countriesnow allow refugees to inte-grate into local communities.Mexico, which helped thou-sands of people from Guate-mala starting in the 1980s, hasbeen an exception. An estima-ted 43,000 Guatemalanseventually returned home,but Mexico granted citizen-ship to others and in one re-cent ceremony continuing tostress the importance of localintegration, President VicenteFox Quesada ceremoniouslyhanded out nearly 3,000 landtitles to both former refugeesand local residents.

KOSOVO

Continuing threatsNo significant returns of mi-nority groups to Kosovo havetaken place in the last year,according to a new positionpaper released by UNHCR. Itunderlined the need formembers of these groups tocontinue to receive interna-tional protection in countriesof asylum and any returnsshould be on a purely volun-tary basis. Those minoritiesalready in the province, sceneof a major conflict in 1999involving national and inter-national forces, continue toface security problems.

30 R E F U G E E S

| P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S |

The captain, crew and owner of theNorwegian container ship Tampa

which rescued hundreds of shipwreckedasylum seekers in the Indian Ocean lastAugust have been awarded the 2002

Nansen Refugee Award, given annuallyto individuals or organizations that havedistinguished themselves on behalf ofrefugees. Captain Arne F. Rinnan and hiscolleagues received medals and certifi-cates from Queen Sonja of Norway and

High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers at aceremony in Oslo in late June. CaptainRinnan and his crew altered the course oftheir huge container ship to rescue 438boat people and the subsequent refusal of

Australia to allow them to land in thatcountry touched off an internationalfurore. The award committee announcedthe prize to honor the company’s inter-national commitment to the principle ofrescue at sea. B

He may be the world’s oldestrefugee and has a remarkable tale

of life and survival to tell. SilverKawanda says he was born in the inte-rior of Angola in the late 19th centuryand today is 105 years old. He has seenthe rise and fall of colonial empiresand the emergence of modern dayAfrica. He escaped at least some of theearlier wars which constantly ravagedhis country, but in January, 2000,when he was already more than 100years old, Silver was eventually forcedto flee as clashes between government

forces and UNITA rebels engulfed theregion. “I spent four months coveringmore than 150 kilometers” from histown to the Nangweshi refugee campin neighboring Zambia, SilverKawanda told visiting High Commis-sioner Ruud Lubbers recently. To-gether with his 80-year-old wife,Paulina Chivela, “we survived on wildfruits and roots and at times we wentwithout food. We followed birds whichled us to fruit which we ate. When onefound a dead animal, that was a specialmeal. We were lucky sometimes when

tree leaves spread on the ground be-came our mattresses.” He was unableto walk long distances and other flee-ing civilians carried him to safety onimprovised stretchers made of polesand tree fibers. Many times they hadto cross rivers full of crocodiles. Aftertalking with Silver and also visitingsome of the young mothers in thecamp, Lubbers said, “It was a remark-able experience—seeing a man who ismore than a century old and who rep-resents such a rich history and seeingbabies who represent the future.”

Pavarotti’s Angolan children

Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti dedicat-ed his annual charity concert in Mode-

na, Italy, this year to Angolan refugeechildren. The concert will raise funds forthe youngsters and, according to Pavarot-ti, remind the world of the plight of vic-tims of one of Africa’s longest and mostforgotten civil wars. Around five millionpeople have been forced to flee by the con-flict and untold numbers have died. Atthe same concert, High CommissionerRuud Lubbers announced that Italianfashion designer Giorgio Armani hadbeen appointed a UNHCR Goodwill Am-bassador. Armani will visit refugee campsin the near future and said he accepted hisnew role “with humility, recognizing thechallenges for the world’s refugees aresignificant.” B

The 2002 Nansen Award

Pavarotti and friends.

The world’s oldest refugee?

The 2002 Nansen Refugee Award ceremony.

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“The relationship betweenrefugees and the environ-ment has long been over-looked.”UNHCR High CommissionerSadako Ogata in 1992 in per-haps the most comprehensivestatement until that time on thelinks between refugees and theenvironment.

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“We need to tackle what isone of the most pressing is-sues of our time, which isthe issue of immigration andasylum.”British Prime Minister TonyBlair.

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“We thought they were here

to cut our trees down anduse our water.”A Zambian elder about the ar-rival of Angolan refugees. Zam-bia has announced a new initia-tive to integrate refugees into lo-cal communities.

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“We cannot ignore the envi-ronmental consequences ofrefugee crises because thiscould jeopardize the basicrights and needs ofrefugees… the institution ofasylum.”UNHCR High CommissionerRuud Lubbers.

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“We are not advocating a‘Fortress Europe’. But there

has to be some order andsome rules brought into thesystem whereby peoplecome into Europe.”British Prime Minister TonyBlair on proposed new measuresto crack down on illegal immi-gration.

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“At discussions on global fi-nance and the economy, theenvironment is still treatedas an unwelcome guest.”U.N. Secretary-General KofîAnnan launching a new cam-paign to raise awareness for thisAugust’s World Summit on Sus-tainable Development.

FFF

“What does the refugeeminister call a refugee on

the moon? ‘An astronaut.’What does the refugee min-ister call 100,000 refugeeson the moon? A hell of agood idea.”Danish parliamentarian KamalQureshi attacking tougher gov-ernment measures towards im-migrants.

FFF

“We tend to look at the en-vironment through a verynarrowly focused telescope.It involves politics, protec-tion, security, food andhealth.”UNHCR field protection offi-cer Sergio Calle-Noreña.

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“The prospect of returningto the type of war Angolahas witnessed in the lastdecade is almost zero.”Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. specialadvisor for Africa on the futureof the west African state of An-gola.

FFF

“You don’t change the dev-astation of 1999 into a Gar-den of Eden overnight. Butwe have laid solid bases forthe country to l ive inpeace.”Sergio Vieira de Mello, U.N. ad-ministrator for East Timorshortly before the territory be-came independent on May 20.

FFF

“We came back because weheard there was peace andsecurity. But there is nowork and no place we canafford to live. We have free-dom now, but we cannot eatthat.”Malik Rahman and his 14-member family returning toAfghanistan after an absence of20 years.

“I used to vote with my hands. I did ittoday with my toe.”A voter in Sierra Leone’s recent elections who had been mutilated by rebels during the country’s civil war.

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