Malian Refugees in a Desperate State After UN Halts Services

By Marcy Hersh, Refugees International

  

Mbera is the biggest refugee camp that you've never heard of. With a population of more than 70,000 refugees, Mbera is the sixth largest camp in the world. It is located in a remote area of Mauritania near the border with Mali, and since early 2012, a mix of Tuareg and Arab refugees from northern Mali have fled across the border into this highly arid region.

 

Mauritania’s Malian refugee population is the largest in the region, and due to the extremely challenging environmental conditions in and around Mbera, these refugees rely completely on outside aid for food, water, shelter and medical care. Their needs are immense and merit a similarly immense response.

Children drinking at a water point in Mbera (credit: UNHCR / B. Malum)

Unfortunately, so far, the humanitarian effort in Mbera has been far from adequate. Recent reports from the camp have identified a number of extremely worrying trends. For example, while the majority of refugees did not have major health problems before arriving in Mbera, their condition has since deteriorated rapidly – the result of poor living conditions, inadequate food, and severe water shortages. Most distressingly, more than 13 percent of children under five are suffering from global acute malnutrition, a level globally recognized as “serious” and demanding urgent intervention.

 

Shelter materials have not been readily available and refugees have had to wait for more than four weeks to receive them. In the meantime, refugees are living in makeshift shelters constructed from sticks and debris that provide little privacy, safety, or protection from the searing sun.

 

In the desert region where Mbera is located, neither refugees nor their Mauritanian neighbors have sufficient access to clean drinking water. An international NGO working in the camp reports that refugees receive just 11 liters of water per person per day, instead of the 20 liters recommended by international standards.

 

Distributing food has been particularly challenging, since the refugees’ traditional diet of milk and meat cannot be replicated by the World Food Program, who has been distributing its usual rations of grains and pulses. Refugees admit to selling some of these rations in local markets to buy milk and meat for their family.

 

This insufficient response has fomented extreme tension between refugees and some humanitarians working in the camp. Things came to a head this month, when a UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) exercise concluded that there were many fewer refugees living in Mbera relative to the number of ration cards distributed. On September 5th, UNHCR confiscated 6,500 ration cards, claiming that refugees had registered more than once or had left the camp without notifying camp authorities. This led to a violent reaction from certain groups of refugees, who stormed humanitarian warehouses and stole 15 tons of food and other supplies.

 

As a result of this violence, UNHCR significantly reduced its activities in Mbera, to the frustration of the refugees. The most problematic element of the drawdown is that UNHCR suspended its activities in the middle of the September food ration distribution. As a result, 15,000 refugees failed to receive their rations and are surviving only because other refugees have been generous enough to share their own food.  These rations are not designed to be shared amongst so many people, which means that malnutrition rates in Mbera are sure to rise, further endangering this already vulnerable population.

 

The needs in Mbera are severe and immediate, and humanitarians must work urgently to restore all emergency aid, including food distributions. But a short-term fix will not be enough. The camp will continue to be a home to tens of thousands of refugees for a significant amount of time. Northern Mali’s ethnic and political divisions remain unresolved, and few basic services in the region have been restored, so there is little prospect of Mbera’s refugees returning home in the near future. The bigger challenge for aid agencies will be to put in place long-term plans that will bring living conditions in the camp up to acceptable humanitarian standards.

 Marcy Hersh is Senior Advocate for Women and Girls’ Rights at Refugees International, a non-profit organization that works to end displacement and stateless crises worldwide and accepts no government or UN funding.

 

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For Malian Refugees, Peace Deal Does Not Guarantee Safe Return

By Alice Thomas, Refugees International

Under a corrugated metal roof at the Goudebou refugee camp in Burkina Faso, eight or nine families huddle in small groups awaiting a food distribution. These are the “new arrivals,” a UN Refugee Agency worker explains – people who recently fled Mali, Burkina’s northern neighbor, and arrived at the camp in recent days.

 

As I study their faces, I notice the rich ethnic diversity reflected in their eyes, skin color, features, and dress. A group of Songhai women sit silently, their eyes taking in their new surroundings. Next to them, a young Tuareg woman prepares tea for her husband and mother while two small children toddle about. But while their language, religions, and ethnicities may be different, they share a common nationality – Malian.

 

Malian refugees wait for a food distribution in Goudebou camp, Burkina Faso
Credit: Refugees International

 

Goudebou sits on the outskirts of the town of Dori in northern Burkina Faso, and at the edge of the Sahelian zone – a semi-arid landscape where tree cover and water are scarce. Opened last year, the camp is now home to 10,000 refugees who have fled violence between the Malian military, Tuareg separatists, and Islamic extremists. A French-led military intervention in January succeeded in retaking the north’s major towns, but led to additional displacement.

 

I ask the Songhai women when they arrived. “Last night,” the daughter, who is about 18, replies in French. When I ask why they fled, she shifts her eyes about nervously, looking to see who is around her. I ask her again and she looks away, not wanting to answer.

 

Later, I sit under a large tent talking to a group of Tuareg men who fled Mali last March. We talk about the peace negotiations taking place in Burkina’s capital city that day, which produced a provisional peace deal between the Malian government and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg separatist group.

 

I ask the men if they will return to Mali if an agreement is reached. They scoff at my question, shaking their heads. “We cannot return – it is not safe.” 

 

One of the men recounts a story. “Two or three months ago, two Tuareg traders who had been with us here in the camp decided to return to Mali to check their herds,” he says. “We heard that they were killed by members of the Malian army.” Another adds, “Several weeks ago, a young man who was recently married decided to go back to check whether it was safe to bring his wife back. We heard he was also killed. He has not come back. His widow is here in the camp.”

 

A Tuareg man from Mali now living as a refugee in Goudebou camp
Credit: Refugees International

“Don’t you see?” the man explains, “We are guilty by implication. If we return, the Malian army will assume that we fled because we are MNLA. ” Though their individual stories of retribution cannot be confirmed, they fit a troubling pattern of abuses by Malian soldiers – as well as Tuareg rebels – against civilians documented by human rights groups. The very act of return makes these refugees suspect, so creating a safe environment for return could be long and difficult; perceptions will have to change and trust will have to be rebuilt.

 

The next day, I discuss the refugees’ fate with the head of an aid group which has assisted displaced Malians since the crisis began. “There is a great deal of distrust now,” he said, “not just between the Malian army and the Tuaregs, but among local populations – those who fled and those who stayed.” Civilians who sympathized with, or merely submitted to, Islamist groups could also be viewed as collaborators, leading neighbor to turn against neighbor. We discuss whether the implications of this distrust have been fully recognized by the international community as it seeks to move forward with a peace deal and elections in late July.

 

The recent agreement between Mali and the MNLA is certainly a welcome step towards ending the Mali conflict. But the ethnically- and religiously-charged violence that exploded last year not only left deep wounds but also sowed suspicion and distrust, meaning the road to lasting peace in Mali will be a long one.

 

Abuses by all sides must be fully investigated and prosecuted. The UN peacekeeping mission that is now being deployed must also ensure that civilians are protected and peace enforced. But this must be accompanied by a robust reconciliation process led by civil society that has the full support of the Malian government and the international community.

 

Alice Thomas is the Climate Displacement Program Manager at Refugees International, a non-profit organization that works to end displacement and stateless crises worldwide and accepts no government or UN funding.

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The Dying Breeds

By Michael Boyce, Refugees International

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso --  If you drive along the roads of northern Burkina Faso, as my colleagues and I have these past two weeks, you won’t always see the usual signs of human activity. While the population here is growing rapidly, the Sahel remains a sparsely populated region, and desiccated savannah dominates the landscape – stretching for miles into the distance.

 

But look a bit closer, and you will see that the Sahel is really one big, busy highway - traversed not by humans, but by their massive herds of livestock.

 

Cattle, sheep, and goats patrol this area year-round in search of grass, leaving in their wake close-shorn fields and huge volumes of manure. For untold generations, people here have consumed their milk and meat or sold it in nearby markets. Now however, as climate change has begun to hit the Sahel, herds are thinning out and their owners are suffering.

 

 

Mamadou, who lives in the town of Boulyiba, is one of many residents who lost livestock in the last two years. “Right now it’s so dry that we have a hard time feeding our animals,” he said, walking through a barren, brick-red field. “But if we sell an animal, that’s a year’s worth of work gone. So if you have a bad season and sell a number of animals, it’s almost impossible to recover.”

 

In centuries past, steady rains from May to September replenished the Sahelian grasslands, turning them from a dusty grey to a lush green. But in the last two decades, the rains have shifted. Now they come early or late, providing either too much water or too little. Good pasture is getting harder to find, and families have to sell their livestock to buy enough food in-between the harvests.

 

To most people in the West, saving for an emergency means funding a bank account or buying a savings bond. In the Sahel, however, people buy livestock to accumulate and store their wealth. So as people here lose their herds, they become poorer and less able to bounce back after a crisis.

 

A few hours north of Birguin, the 2,000 residents of Gourtoure are still reeling from an unprecedented flood in 2012 which washed away their entire village.  More than 3,000 goats and sheep were swept up in six-foot-high floodwaters, their carcasses left dangling from the trees. “Things are miserable here,” one of the village elders told us. “AGED [a local aid agency] gave us two animals after the floods, but they can’t give us what we lost.”

 

Residents of Gourtoure are still reeling from an unprecedented flood in 2012
Credit: Refugees International (Burkina Faso - 2013)

 

If global climate change continues as experts predict, then the Sahel will be badly affected. Weather events that are extreme today will become the norm. Drought will alternate with flood as rains grow more erratic, and rising temperatures will scorch land that was once productive. That will mean more hardships for the people of this region. And as the livestock on which they depend dwindle, they may have no choice but to leave the Sahel for good.

 

Michael Boyce is the Press & Information Officer for Refugees International, a non-profit organization that works to end displacement and stateless crises worldwide and accepts no government or UN funding.

 

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