REFUGEES: Burundi Massacre Highlights Lack of Rights – Group

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ushani Agalawatta

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 23 2004 (IPS) - In the aftermath of this month’s horrific massacre of 160 Congolese refugees in a temporary camp in Burundi, some advocacy groups say too little is being done to ensure the basic human rights of refugees as outlined in the U.N.’s 1951 convention.

“The massacre is the latest in the region’s history of refugee camp disasters,” says the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR). “It highlights yet again one of the dangers of refugee warehousing, the practice of confining refugees to camps or segregated settlements or otherwise depriving them of basic human rights.”

USCR launched a campaign against refugee warehousing in May, with a report titled, ‘World Refugee Survey 2004 – Warehousing Issue’. At the launch, the U.S.-based organisation reported that more than seven million of the estimated 12 million refugees worldwide have been “warehoused.”

Burundi appears to be the latest example of warehousing and its increased risk to already marginalized and displaced populations.

“Refugees are frequently warehoused in remote, desolate and dangerous border areas in conditions of hopelessness and despair, subject to aggression, sexual exploitation, and risk of attack and murder,” said USCR’s statement, issued last week.

In the case of the Burundi massacre, “Had the victims not been concentrated in Gatumba camp, they might be alive today,” suggested the group.

“We had been trying to get the refugees in the Gatumba Camp to move even before this massacre occurred,” said Joung-Ah Ghedini, senior public information officer at the Washington, DC office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“Even now, up to 300 refugees won’t move – the further they move, they believe the further they are from returning to their villages and their land,” Ghedini added in an interview.

According to UNHCR, on the day of the slaughter, Aug. 13, the camp housed 1,700 Congolese refugees. Ethnic Hutu rebels armed with machetes and automatic weapons raided the camp, torching it as they entered, and massacred, at last count, 160 ethnic Tutsi women, babies and men.

“While camps are vivid emblems of refugee warehousing, the essential aspect is deprivation of basic convention rights to live as normal a life as possible while in exile, the right to work and freedom of mobility being the most often denied among them. So (the problem) is broader than mere encampment,” says Merrill Smith, USCR expert and editor of the ‘World Refugee Survey 2004’.

He told IPS the distinction is important because “we don’t want to suggest that simply emptying out camps will fulfil the convention.”

“It’s about the rights deprivation not its duration. We don’t generally make a fuss about it in truly temporary, emergency situations but here (Gatumba Camp) the aspect of encamping this particularly vulnerable group of refugees with their armed extremist enemies roaming at large was too dangerous to let it slide,” Smith added.

USCR has received no official comment from the United Nations or UNHCR since it released the report in May, but according to Smith, many informal conversations have taken place in Washington and Geneva.

According to U.N. officials, 142 countries, including Burundi, have signed the Refugee Convention.

“We appreciate the observations of civil society groups such as USCR,” said Ghedini. “Our mandate is to protect refugees.”

Of the group’s survey, she added, “We do recognise the points USCR are making – of course we do – but the question is how do we move from a theoretical discussion to reality? … Practical solutions are not being offered.”

In light of the massacre, when asked what the United Nations and UNHCR are doing that puts refugees at increased risk, Smith said, “the issue is perhaps better framed not so much as what the U.N. is doing as what the U.N., Burundi, and the donor nations are not doing.”

The obstacles to ensuring refugee’s basic human rights are “mainly political,” he added. While host nations are primarily responsible for securing the rights of refugees within their borders, “refugee protection is really an international responsibility,” according to Smith.

“The much greater monies now spent on encampment should be shifted to such assistance in a non-institutional, rights-friendly mode of hosting – “freedom” would be a nice, short word for it,” he adds.

But, Ghedini countered, “Most countries do not have the resources or capacity to effectively deal with absorption of refugees into society. Also, most governments will not want to give full rights because they fear that if the first 10,000 refugees are allowed in then another 30,000 will arrive.”

Expressing her frustration, Ghedini added, “I wish we could say with a clear conscience that there has never been a situations where host countries who are signatories to the 1951 convention have not returned refugees or mistreated them in any fashion.”