RIGHTS-EAST AFRICA: Urban Refugees Abused

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Nov 21 2002 (IPS) - A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that many refugees in Kenya and Uganda are being subjected to beatings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest. They point the finger at the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and the governments of Kenya and Uganda for failing to protect these vulnerable people.

According to the report, ‘Hidden in Plain View’, many of the 110,000 urban refugees living in the Kenyan and Ugandan capitals are suffering serious human rights abuses. They are often harassed, tortured, sometimes even murdered, by criminals, security forces and persecutors trailing them from their countries of origin.

Last April, two Rwandan children were murdered in the UNHCR’s only safe house in Nairobi. They had been waiting for 11 months for the Australian government to resettle them.

‘’In Uganda, one young man that I interviewed had been detained for 11 months in a home that was owned by the Rwandan government. He was tortured in order that he would reveal the whereabouts of his brother who was very much involved in opposition activities in Rwanda,” says Alison Parker, the author of the report.

Many refugees coming from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) into neighbouring Uganda are fleeing from areas where the Ugandan military was operating.

‘’They are living under the power of the same individuals who are responsible for their original suffering,” says Parker.

‘’Human rights activists that opposed the Rally for Congolese Democracy (rebel group in eastern DRC) would find leaders from that organisation on the streets of Kampala trailing them and harassing them,” she says.

In neighbouring Kenya, it is Ethiopians who are most often targeted by political rivals from their own country.

The report calls on UNHCR to ‘’consider deploying personnel to neighbourhoods where refugees live” and to ‘’consider setting up temporary accommodating for women and girls and individuals at risk so that they do not fall prey to further abuse”.

Refugees are also abused by Ugandan soldiers and the Kenyan police. ‘’In Kampala, refugees who are also human rights activists were detained by the Ugandan military and beaten in detention,” says Parker.

‘’In no place is police abuse more acute than on the streets of Nairobi,’ ‘ she continues. ‘’Refugees pay bribes more frequently. They spend more time in jail. They more frequently fall prey to sexual abuse at the hands of Kenyan police. Women are raped in prison. And children are jailed with their mothers,” she explains.

HRW fear this harassment could get worse as Kenya approaches the Dec 27 elections.

‘’In the run up to the current elections, HRW calls on the Kenyan government to refrain from scape-goating refugees. There should be no swoops against refugees or foreigners,” it urges.

Many Kenyans complain of police harassment, not just refugees. But refugees are more vulnerable because they do not have identity cards to prove that they have a right to be in the country.

UNHCR spokesperson Emmanuel Nyabera says they are in the process of producing special identity cards for both refugees and asylum seekers, which should lessen their problems with the police. The cards will have a Kenyan government and a UN stamp on them.

‘’Steps are being taken,” he assures.

Kenya’s police spokesperson was not available for comment.

HRW charges that the UNHCR is neglecting those that it is supposed to be protecting. ‘’One young woman that I interviewed had been transferred by the UNHCR itself because she had contracted tuberculosis in the refugee camps. UNHCR did not house her,” says Parker.

‘’She slept on the street outside of UNHCR’s offices. And she was gang-raped one night. This kind of abuse cannot be tolerated and must be stopped by UNHCR itself,” she urges.

UNHCR says it does provide accommodation to refugees who have been brought to Nairobi for medical treatment. ‘’It is not correct to say that refugees are neglected. We try to give the protection that refugees deserve but with a lot of challenges,” says Nyabera.

One of the biggest problems is that many urban refugees living in Nairobi are not supposed to be there. Kenyan government policy, since 1993, is for refugees to live in one of two designated camps on the Sudanese and Somali borders. They are only supposed to come to Nairobi under exceptional circumstances – if they are waiting for their refugee status to be determined, if they are sick or studying or if they are waiting for resettlement.

The UN’s status determination process is extremely slow, leaving refugees in limbo for months on end.

UNHCR is changing its policy so that status determination will be done in the refugee camps, not in Nairobi.

‘’By the end of this year, all interviews will be carried out in the camps where we are in a better position to protect and assist them,” says Nyabera.

But refugees complain that the camps are not safe. Many prefer to fend for themselves in the capital, rather than waste away in dusty camps living off food rations.

‘’Boys and men who had been forcibly recruited by armed factions were meeting the same military commanders that they had originally fought with and escaped in the camps,” says Parker.

‘’They did not feel safe there. For these kind of refugees, the city is not a place of economic opportunity, it is a better place to hide,” she adds.

HRW is calling on the government of Kenya to consider adopting refugee legislation that recognises there should be exceptions for some refugees to leave the camps. Uganda has written a draft bill along those line, which it is hoped will be passed into law in 2003.

‘’Not all the refugees ought to be encamped. There are those refugees who have skills and who ought to be able to sustain themselves in the urban areas,” says Abi Gitari of the Refugee Consortium of Kenya.

While HRW estimates there are 60,000 refugees living in Nairobi, UNHCR says only 15,000 of those are legitimate, and therefore fall under its mandate.

The report is based on 150 in-depth interviews with refugees from Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan.