Adama Dieng (centre), visited Yei River State in South Sudan while he was the United Nations Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. He now calls for urgent action to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, Aug 18 2021 (IPS)

Despite a June 30 unilateral ceasefire declaration by Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed, United Nations agencies say a recent escalation in fighting has been ‘disastrous’ for children, amid reports of over 100 children being killed in an attack on displaced families.

It follows continuing reports of human rights abuses and warnings that over 400,000 face famine. Recently, a group of renowned peace leaders wrote to the President, urging him to take immediate action to end the crisis in the northern Tigray region.

The region has been embroiled in conflict since November 2020, when long-standing tensions between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) came to a head, with the Prime Minister launching a military operation he described at the time as a ‘law and order operation.’ He had accused the TPLF of targeting government military units and holding illegal elections.

“Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was praised as a great reformer when he assumed office in 2018. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for a peace deal that ended a two-decade war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But today, he is presiding over a civil war that has escalated out of control, with reports of mass atrocities committed by Ethiopian forces, and no end in sight,” former president of East Timor-Leste and Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos-Horta wrote in Newsweek.

The group of concerned peace leaders includes Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former Slovenian President Danilo Turk, Former President of Finland Tarja Halonen, former UN and Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, Former Member of the Nobel Peace Committee, Chair of Religions for Peace Emeritus Bishop of Oslo Dr Gunnar Stålsett and former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng.

They called on the leader to end this war – along with the suffering on the people of the region ‘which has already been too great.”

The following is an interview with Adama Dieng.

Inter Press Service (IPS): What are some of your biggest concerns regarding the situation in Tigray?

Adama Dieng (AD): What is happening in Tigray is a tragedy. It is a reminder that conflict is never a solution to any dispute! Dialogue is the way out of any such situation.
My biggest worry is the well-being and safety of the people of Tigray. Innocent lives have been lost unnecessarily. Women and children, and people with disabilities have been clamped into IDP makeshift camps with little or no access to vital humanitarian support.

Humanitarian access is a challenge that warring parties need to address. The United Nations and other partners should be granted unequivocal access to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance to the population in need.

But also, the looming, indeed actual famine that is threatening the livelihood of the local population. All reports we get from the region indicate that famine is looming. How do we avert this?

This is a farming/planting season in the region. Yet, people are in camps, unable to go back to their homes ready for planting season. Without addressing the conflict, it is evident that there is a looming catastrophe because people cannot go back to their homes.

(IPS): The UN Secretary-General expressed shock at the murder of 3 humanitarian workers in Tigray, stating that this was ‘an appalling violation of International Humanitarian Law.’ With this development, along with the casualties over the past eight months, is it time for the international community to take a firmer stance?

(AD): As you may know, very well, the Secretary-General and the United Nations family have called for an unconditional ceasefire to allow free and unhindered access to humanitarians. These voices should be heeded by both parties.

Any death is tragic. Leave alone humanitarian workers who sacrifice their comfort and life to work in such dangerous and insecure areas. People who commit such heinous crimes should be held to account and face the full force of the law.

The warring parties should know very clearly that there are consequences for the ongoing and continued violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. I have no doubt that those responsible will be held to account for these violations. Unfortunately, accountability will come when people have suffered and continue to endure suffering. It is critical that the conflict stops.

I understand, some member states and regional organizations continue to put pressure on the government of Ethiopia to stop this war. By ensuring the full withdrawal of foreign forces and ensure safety and security of the people in Tigray.

The priority should be to stop the war and guarantee peace and safety for the people to resume their normal lives. As we speak, The United Nations in Ethiopia has reported a spiraling number of IDPs running to seek sanctuary in other areas of Ethiopia and indeed in Sudan. We need to return to normal to allow people to return to their homes. And people can’t return without a guarantee of peace and security.

(IPS): Many aid agencies have expressed concern over the plight of Eritrean refugees in the Region. What must be done now to do right by the thousands of refugees in urgent need of assistance?

(AD): Of course, I share this concern. However, Eritrean refugees are protected under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 OAU Convention. Ethiopia has an inherent obligation to ensure that these refugees on its territory are afforded protection as required under international law. I believe, Ethiopia as a signatory to these critical documents, understands this obligation and will ensure that Eritrean refugees are afforded requisite protection under national and international law.

(IPS): Do you support calls for independent investigators to probe allegations of human rights abuses?

(AD): Certainly. Ethiopia is a signatory to a wide range of international and regional human rights treaties. It is a headquarter of the African Union and other regional institutions. It has an obligation to ensure that those who commit crimes on its territory are investigated and punished in accordance with these international laws and standards, which are part of Ethiopian laws. I am therefore confident that the Ethiopian government is willing and will be fully supportive of independent investigations for alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law that may have been committed on its territory.

(IPS): Does the declaration of a ceasefire bring hope to this situation?

(DG): This ceasefire gives me hope. But again, as you know, declaring the ceasefire and respecting the ceasefire are two different things. My primary concern is whether, both parties will respect the ceasefire. The key aspect is that we need to support all efforts that end this war which, has tragically led to the loss of life, livelihood, and dignity of innocent people in the region. If warring parties feel that they may need external support to action this, I am sure the international community, through wide range of tools and mechanisms, would be happy and ready to support them to ensure that the ceasefire endures!

(IPS): As someone who has helped establish mechanisms like early warning systems to prevent genocide and atrocity crimes, what comes to mind when you assess this situation?

(AD): The situation in the Tigray reminds us that early warning can be successful only if it is linked to early action. If we are serious about prevention, we must be prepared to act earlier, when we see the first signs of concern. One can say that we are failing the populations in Tigray.

The primary responsibility to protect the Tigrean populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement, lies first and foremost with the State of Ethiopia. Such responsibility to protect was reaffirmed by the United Nations Member States when adopting, in 2005, the World Summit Outcome Document. They committed to assisting each other to fulfill this responsibility and to act collectively when States “manifestly failed” to protect their populations from these crimes. This was the first such international commitment to protect populations from atrocity crimes. It is deplorable that many states use the principle of sovereignty to resist external assistance to their affected populations.

In case leaders are serious about preventing violent conflict, they must be open to seek assistance to protect their populations in the framework of the Summit Outcome Document. Failure or unwillingness to seek such assistance, may imply that the state is either implicitly or explicitly responsible for the violence. That is why I always caution leaders around the world that if they don’t take demonstrable action to prevent atrocities against their own citizens, then under the principle of command responsibility, they could be held accountable.

It is urgent also to remind African leaders that the African Union, under its Constitutive Act, has one of the most developed early warning mechanisms with a requisite legal framework for prevention. The Act under Article 2 obligates AU Member states to intervene in situations to prevent genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. This legal framework, if put into practice, goes way ahead of the United Nations to prevent armed conflicts. The serious crimes being committed in Tigray could have been prevented as there were credible assessments of imminent threats to populations.

It would mean that our governments, regional and international organizations build resilient and cohesive societies. And when we see signs of fragility, we should take early preventative actions. We should be open to mediation, dialogue, and technical assistance in areas that could trigger conflict, for example, in electoral processes or constitution-making.

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WFP has launched an operation including the use of helicopters to bring urgently-needed food assistance to tens of thousands of people who have fled to hard-to-reach areas to escape violence in Pibor County, Jonglei State. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 2013 (IPS)

Following fighting in the South Sudan state of Jonglei , the United Nations is trying to coordinate a humanitarian effort to help tens of thousands of people who have fled to the bush. The World Food Programme (WFP) has launched an operation to provide food for those who have escaped the conflict.

“We believe these people need food now and cannot wait for much longer after hiding in the bush for weeks,” said Chris Nikoi, WFP South Sudan country director, in a statement on Tuesday.

The agency is requesting 20 million dollars to fund emergency assistance for 60,000 people through December.

“The Lou Nuer have a longstanding grudge against the Murle, which of course is a two-way street,” Sudan expert Eric Reeves told IPS. “But over the past years these tensions have come to a boil and mutual retaliations are extremely violent.” Retaliation is often in response to cattle looting by neighbouring communities, he said.

It has proven difficult for humanitarian groups to gain access to the large number of people who have been affected by the conflict in the state, South Sudan’s largest, in part because of the fighting and in part due to the lack of passable roads.

The international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières says it has “treated scores of people and is attempting to reach thousands more who are hiding in the bush… [an] MSF emergency team is attempting to reach tens of thousands of people hiding in unsafe, malaria-infested swamps, without access to safe drinking water, food, or medical care.”

John Tzanos, who heads the MSF team in Pibor County, said in a statement, “They [civilians] are afraid to seek medical care in towns so it is essential for us to intervene where they are so that all those in need can access treatment.” With the latest wave of violence over, there is still no word on the number of casualties.

“We don’t have any figures [on fatalities] at all,” the acting humanitarian coordinator of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Jonglei, Dr. Yasmin Haque, told IPS.

“The challenge has been access, and now we have been able to secure additional funding which has improved our air transport capacity. We have also had a strengthening and better communication in getting security clearances and information in getting our flights to those areas.

“The biggest need is going to be food, and getting the amounts required into the areas is going to be many trips over many days,” she said. Haque said U.N. agencies were working with the government, especially the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, and were also coordinating aircraft with the army, the SPLA.

“People have been afraid to return to the more populated areas where they have been [living],” she said. “Fear of insecurity and fighting is keeping people away from the main county locations.”

Another spokesperson for OCHA told IPS, “We have already begun to register the people displaced, and have begun to distribute household items and emergency shelter to people who have been living in the bush, exposed to the elements.”

OCHA has appealed for more resources from the international community, and noted that during the rainy season, which lasts from May to October, up to 90 percent of roads in Jonglei state are inaccessible, so aid must be delivered by air.

There are also allegations that the Sudanese government in Khartoum has been exacerbating the conflict by supplying rebel Murle leader David Yauyau with weapons.

The difficulty in tracking Yauyau’s rebels has made it hard for U.N. agencies to keep the peace and supply civilians with necessary aid. Yauyau’s current rebellion has been running since April 2012, for what he claims to be the rights of the Murle.

In an interview last year, Yauyau said, “This time around, we are fighting for the people of South Sudan, the minority communities like the Murle and the others…They don’t have a voice… they don’t have rights to live on the land. We don’t have a voice in the government. We are struggling together with them and we’ve lost some of our sons.”

There are also allegations of human rights abuses perpetrated by the government.

In an open letter to the government written in June, Reeves and three other signatories said that “over the past several years – but the last six months in particular – South Sudan government security forces have engaged in a campaign of violence against civilians simply because they belonged to a different ethnic group or they were viewed as opponents of the current government.”

The U.N. has also condemned the government for what it calls “serious human rights violations” allegedly committed by elements within the South Sudanese Army in Pibor County.

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

Untold thousands dead and thousands more stranded or missing – these are the latest figures from various reports on the devastation caused by flash floods in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Susan Martin. Credit: ISIM

According to the United Nations, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami displaced 2.2 million people in 12 countries. In Bangladesh, 4.4 million people were displaced by Cyclone Sidr and floods in 2007, estimates the world body.

And an estimated additional 200 million people will be displaced due to climate change and natural disaster by 2050, according to Refugees International.

Experts say that the assessment of damage in natural disasters becomes all the more difficult simply because of the underlying uncertainty that accompanies such calamities.

The international community has long been mulling over the impact of climate change on migration.  It is high time that climate refugees or environmental migrants get some serious attention, said Susan F. Martin, director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) in Washington, tells IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How can climate change affect migration? Is it mostly internal displacement or is it large-scale country-to-country displacement?

A: The first point is that environmental factors are seldom the principal reason that people move. People generally migrate when environmental problems intersect with other factors, such as economic (loss of livelihoods), political (lack of governmental safety nets), and social (networks of people who have already migrated) ones.

There are four pathways through which climate change is likely to increase the propensity of human mobility in the context of these other factors:

Changes in weather patterns that contribute to longer-term drying trends that affect access to essential resources such as water and negatively impact the sustainability of a variety of environment-related livelihoods including agriculture, forestry, fishing, etc.

Rising sea levels and glacier melt that cause massive and repeated flooding that render coastal and low-lying areas uninhabitable in the longer-term.

Increased frequency and magnitude of weather-related acute natural hazards.

Competition over natural resources that may exacerbate pressures, which contribute to conflict, which in turn precipitates movements of people.

The first two are slow-onset processes that are likely to lead to gradual increases in migration.

The latter two involve acute events and are likely to lead to more immediate, large-scale displacement.

We expect most of these movements to be within the borders of countries but in some cases, the migration and displacement is likely to be across international borders.

Much of the international migration is likely to be into neighbouring countries – for example, Bangladesh to India. A minority of the movements will likely be to more distant countries. There are cases, however, in which whole communities and even countries may need to be relocated, particularly in the small island states facing significant levels of rising sea levels and no interior to which people can move.

Q: Are the displaced mostly farmers and workforce from the rural sector whenever we talk about migration due to climate change?

A: It depends on the specific ways in which the impacts of climate change manifest themselves. In situations of prolonged drought, for example, the displaced are likely to be farmers and others dependent on rain-fed agriculture.

On the other hand, intense and frequent cyclones and hurricanes may displace thousands of people from urban areas along the coast. Generally, though, the extent of displacement in both rural and urban areas is tied to the way in which governments and communities prepare for and respond to these events.

With advanced planning, communities can increase their resilience to adapt to the effects of climate change in situ.

Q: Critics often argue that it is too soon to take climate change seriously. What will you tell them?

A: Ignoring the migration implications of climate change has considerable risks. If we wait too long, more people will move in emergency circumstances with little choice of destination and few opportunities to protect themselves from harm.

Policies should avoid situations where affected populations are forced to move (distress migration) or move in emergency situations. Special attention should be paid to providing alternatives to irregular migration through targeted temporary and circular work programmes. In cases, however, where the impacts of climate change preclude return to home countries, the focus should be on permanent admissions.

Q: Has there been enough documentation that can establish the link between climate change and migration?

A: There are still many gaps in our understanding of the interconnections between climate change and migration. Perhaps the most important involves numbers. As of today, there are no credible projections of the number or characteristics of persons who are likely to migrate principally as a result of environmental change.

Many of the estimates that have been published conflate different forms of movement: short-distance movements, longer-distance internal movements, cross-border movements into neighbouring countries, and longer distance international movements.

The estimates do not distinguish between temporary displacement and permanent relocation within each of these forms of migration. Nor do they provide information about the gender, sex, age, or socio-economic characteristics of those who are likely to migrate in each of these categories. And, there is little information about the likely migration corridors – that is, projecting from where and to where people will migrate.

We need considerably more empirical research on communities already experiencing significant environmental impacts to help develop the evidence base needed to make more accurate projections, not only of overall levels of migration but, more importantly, of how migration is likely to manifest itself.

Q: Which are the regions to be worst affected by climate change?

A: Climate change will have impacts on both developing and developed countries. The difference is that developed countries generally have the financial resources to be able to prepare, respond and recover from the effects of climate change.

The impacts will be felt more acutely in poor countries and, especially, in those weak governance or experiencing conflict and political instability.

If the experience with the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile is a harbinger of what is likely to happen, particularly in acute events, it is worth noting that a much stronger earthquake in Chile led to little loss of life, largely because of building codes and other preparatory actions, whereas a weaker earthquake in Haiti led to devastating loss of life and displaced millions.

The natural hazard (the earthquake) was not the principal culprit; poor governance and poverty made people in Haiti much more vulnerable.

Excerpt:

Tourists from southern Sri Lanka walk past the gutted remains of the Jordanian cargo vessel Farah III, which was commandeered by the LTTE. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka, Nov 24 2012 (IPS)

The tour guide’s voice echoes around the dark, musty room, three stories underground. Fifty visitors – among them mothers holding infants, youths snapping pictures on mobile phones and grandparents leaning against the walls – are crammed into the narrow stairwell that leads down into the chamber, listening attentively to his every word.

The tourists have travelled hundreds of kilometres to see this underground bunker, once home to the most feared man in Sri Lanka: the leader of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Located a short drive south of the town of Puthukkudiyiruppu, a former LTTE operations hub in the northern Mullaitivu District, some 330 kilometres from the capital Colombo, the bunker complex is nestled deep within the jungle.

The massive compound boasts a firing range, a semi-underground garage, a jogging path, a film hall and a small funeral parlor where the Tiger leader paid his final respects to fallen cadres.

“This is out of this world, how did they ever build something like this?” a woman who gave her name as Ranjini asked while walking down the narrow stairs.

Other attractions on the tour of former rebel-held areas include the shipyard where the Tigers experimented with building submersibles, complete with a dry dock and the skeletal remains of the Farah III, a Jordanian cargo vessel that was commandeered by the LTTE.

What is sidelined, however, are details of the beleaguered Tamil population that lived in this region throughout 30 years of civil war, and is now struggling to survive.

Beneath war attractions, suffering continues

The Sri Lankan military came across the bunker complex after the Tigers were defeated in May 2009, signaling the end of a three-decade-long civil war in which the LTTE fought the Sri Lankan government for control over the north and east of the island in order to establish a separate state for the minority Tamil population.

Puthukkudiyiruppu and Mullaitivu, once the central command headquarters of a massive guerilla operation, now play host to thousands of visitors, mostly from the majority-Sinhalese southern regions of the country.

But while these guided tours offer locals a rare glance into the inner workings of the Tigers’ de facto state and the extent of its former military capacity, rights activists fear that many tourists are missing the “bigger picture” – the horrors of the aftermath of the war and the suffering that has become an everyday experience for tens of thousands who were displaced during the last bouts of fighting.

“I feel the (tourists) don’t have sense of what really happened here, or they don’t want to know,” Ruki Fernando, a rights activist who formerly headed the Human Rights in Conflict Programme at the national rights body, the Law and Society Trust, told IPS.

The facts surrounding the final stages of the war have been hotly contested in and outside the country: local rights groups, international humanitarian observers and aid workers claim at least 40,000 were killed, while the government insists that figure is closer to 7,000.

An internal review of the United Nations’ actions in Sri Lanka during the last phase of the war, released in early November, has reignited the furor over what happened here during the first half of 2009 and who was responsible.

The government has maintained a firm line that the Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire of the conclusive battle were “rescued” in a humanitarian operation and moved to safety in government “welfare camps”, while U.N. officials and aid workers classified this process as mass incarceration of Tamil civilian survivors in open-air detention centres, in violation of international law.

These unresolved questions are now being sidelined as the tourists arrive in droves, intent on one thing only – seeing as many of the war relics as possible, according to Saroja Sivachandaran, head of the Centre for Women and Development, a gender-based rights group in northern Jaffna.

“They fail to see that they are travelling through an area of absolute destruction where thousands still live in makeshift shelters,” she told IPS.

Some 450,000 displaced people, including around 236,000 who were rendered homeless during the last months of the war, are only now returning to their home villages in the north, even though basic amenities are still scarce in the region.

So far, just 21,000 permanent houses have been constructed for the roughly 170,000 still in search of homes.

The latest U.N. situation reports warn of serious funding shortfalls for rehabilitation work, a bleak forecast for the displaced.

Prashan de Visser, president of the national youth movement ‘Sri Lanka Unites’, told IPS that the gulf between visitors and those living in the former war zone stems from language barriers and a long history of cultural and social.

Sri Lanka Unites has engaged its island-wide base of 10,000 members to breach the ethnic divides, but there is still a long way to go since misconceptions are deeply “ingrained in the (social) system”, de Visser told IPS.

Sri Lanka Unites organises field tours and conferences for youth from all over the island, and for members of the vast Sri Lankan diaspora. Its main annual event, the Future Leaders’ Conference, was held in Jaffna this year, brining over 10,000 youth together for a week of activities.

During these intimate interactions, de Visser said, youth from different ethnic groups begin to see through the cultural and social barriers that have held them apart for so long.

This year, a group of youth leaders from the southern-most district of Hambantota pledged to raise 300,000 rupees (about 2,300 dollars) for work in the north after taking a field tour of the war-affected areas.

But most of the visitors flocking to the region are unlikely to make similar pledges.

Fernando warned that ‘gawking tourists’ will only reinforce ethnic divides instead of bridging them.

“This is still a massive curiosity park for the visitors, they really don’t want to see beyond the (thrills) offered by attractions like the bunker,” said Mahendran Sivakumar, a 61-year-old retired government education official who lived in the war zone throughout the entire conflict.

(END)

A family inside its home in Cannon Camp in Haiti. Credit: Susan Robens-Brannon/IPS

By Susan Robens-Brannon
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 21 2012 (IPS)

In the remote, dusty and barren area of northern Port-au-Prince, Cannon Camp houses nearly 6,000 displaced Haitians in tiny and cramped spaces. Nestled among the smattering of tents is the home of a 50-something-year-old mother of 12.

The mother, who asked that her name not be used, was moved to the camp after she lost her small home after the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. Her new home is a battered one-room tent extended by a partial tarp to make a second room.

Inside are two broken chairs, some blankets, a yellow laundry basket and a small charcoal grill. The hard-packed floor has been neatly swept thousands of times in the attempt to keep away dust so that the mother and her family can sleep and eat on the ground.

After the earthquake in 2010, international donations allowed the Haitian government to help displaced Haitians, with United Nations (U.N.) countries pledging a total of 9.9 billion dollars over three years. The money was to be deposited into the World Bank and distributed by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC).

But after a few years, the flow of money stopped. Unlike other camps, Cannon Camp is on government land, so navigating bureaucratic processes renders negotiating and providing assistance even more difficult for non-profit organisations. Many Haitians have been left to their own devices, forced to cobble together a hardscrabble existence under brutal conditions.

Life in Cannon Camp

Cannon camp has no running water and no electricity. Rarely cleaned, the camp’s toilets are small and cramped and dirty. The roads are terrible and there is no place to store food.

The mother’s 22-year-old daughter is propped up against a wall of the tent, sitting on the ground on a cotton sheet, in pain during her last trimester of pregnancy with twins. She already has two other children. Her three-year-old daughter sits at her feet with a runny nose and semi-watery eyes.

Another of the mother’s daughters, this one younger, stands against a pole inside the tent, holding a crying one-year-old. Sitting on the floor near the laundry basket is another daughter trying to find the energy to fold the clean clothes that are tucked inside.

Not all of the mother’s children live in the same tent. The pregnant daughter has her own tent nearby. The mother informs me that her pregnant daughter, who is unmarried, is going to have the baby at the camp because the hospital will not take her until her water is broken.

“The camp is owned by the Haitian government,” she begins when asked whether the camp had any medical assistance. “At first they supplied water, medical assistance, food, and schools.  However, today these services have stopped and we do not receive any assistance of any kind. All the non-profits left too; we are left on our own without any help.”

As a result, the families in the camp, living in an utterly impoverished environment, must spend their own resources on critical supplies and services. It costs about 200 Haitian dollars to have a baby in the hospital, the mother tells IPS. “I don’t have the money.”

“I have had 12 children,” she adds. “I know what to expect.”

If the daughter had the money to go to the hospital, it would be difficult for her to get there while in labor, after her water breaks. The camp’s tents seem to have been arranged randomly, without any consideration for the terrain, and her tent is located near the top of a hill, about a kilometer away from the camp’s exist. The way down is rugged, torturous either by car or on foot in the hot and dusty climate.

The makeshift roads are laden with potholes of all sizes. And even if the daughter could exit the camp and can reach the asphalt road, the hospital is located near the centre of Port-au-Prince. It could take her hours to get to the hospital, depending on traffic and the time of day.

Ultimately, there seem to be only two possible solutions. One is to come up with the money so the daughter can go to the hospital early. The other is to give birth in the tent.

Water shortages

Water is not easily accessible in the camp, as residents must walk down the same treacherous road to the outside of the walled camp to purchase non-potable water. The return journey is even more difficult with a five-gallon bucket of water.

Fortunately, the government has done a good job educating Haitians about water safety. It has become routine for them to add chlorine tablets to the water to make it potable, and it is hoped that the number of deaths from cholera will be greatly reduced this rainy season in July.

One non-profit installed a container that would hold drinking water, but it was only filled one time. “They never came back to refill it,” says the mother. Filling it costs 300 U.S. dollars, and given the number of people living in the camp, the water does not last long. In many camps, violence often breaks out over control of this critical resource.

A few residents have learnt to be economically creative, converting their tents into shops to resell water at a higher price. Others are selling rice, beans and other items to help earn an income and to make it easier for residents to gather items without having to travel outside of the camp.

In this camp, everyone must find his or her own creative way to earn an income. Many of the residents sit at the base of the camp and sell various items on the streets.

Asked what she thought the camp needed most, the mother replies, “I want a new home,” then pauses and adds, “How can I say what is the most important? Everything is important – just look around. All of us are going to be here for a very long time…maybe forever.”

Civil conflicts in four African nations helped push some 800,000 people to seek safe haven in foreign countries during 2011, according to the annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), released Monday.

It was the highest one-year total of new refugees so far this century, according to the report, “Year of Crises: UNHCR Global Trends 2011”.

It found that 4.3 million people around the world were newly displaced during the year, due to conflict and persecution. The vast majority of the newly uprooted, however, were so-called IDPs, or internally displaced persons who were forced to find shelter within their country’s borders.

“2011 saw suffering on an epic scale,” said High Commissioner Antonio Guterres, who released the report at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “For so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time means enormous personal cost for all who were affected.”

Worldwide, some 42.5 million people ended last year as refugees (15.2 million) or IDPs (26.4 million) or were in the process of applying for asylum in foreign countries (895,000), according to the 47-page report, which includes a country-by-country breakdown of all three categories.

That total was slightly below the 2010 total of 43.7 million people. The report attributed the decline primarily to large numbers of IDPs who returned to their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (823,000), Pakistan (620,000), Cote d’Ivoire (467,000) and Libya (458,000).

Pushed out by conflict

The biggest new sources of refugees during 2011 were Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Sudan and Somalia, where civil conflicts forced thousands to flee their countries. Tens of thousands of Somalis also crossed into Kenya and Ethiopia as a result of severe drought conditions in their home regions.

While significant repatriations are ongoing in all these countries, the knock-on effects of such large displacements continue.

Indeed, tens of thousands of Malians have reportedly left their homes in the northern part of the country in the wake of the attempted secession by Tuareg rebels, who had served in the army of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Similarly, South Sudan’s independence nearly one year ago and the low-level border conflicts that followed it have also displaced tens of thousands more people on both sides of the frontier, even as repatriations to both countries have continued.

Just over half a million refugees returned home last year, most of them from Syria to Iraq and from Iran and Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Permanent refugees?

While an advance, these returns obscured a more worrisome long-term trend in which refugees are increasingly likely to stay in foreign countries – often in camps or in very difficult situations in urban locations where their ability to get an education or find jobs may be severely restricted – for ever longer periods of time.

Almost 75 percent of the 10.4 million refugees who fall under UNHCR’s mandate, according to the report, have been in protracted exile for at least five years.

That figure, however, does not include the nearly five million Palestinian refugees and their descendants served by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Aside from Palestine, by far the largest source of the world’s refugees continued to be Afghanistan as of the end of 2011. By the end of 2011, nearly 2.7 million Afghan refugees were living abroad, the vast majority in Pakistan and Iran.

Not surprisingly, the latter two countries were also the countries currently providing safe haven to refugees – Pakistan, with 1.7 million, and Iran, with nearly 900,000.

The second biggest source country for refugees was Iraq, the original home to more than 1.4 million refugees; followed by Somalia (1.08 million), Sudan (500,000), closely followed by the DRC (490,000), Myanmar (415,000) and Colombia (395,000).

Besides Pakistan and Iran, the major refugee-hosting countries included Syria (755,000), Germany (571,000), Kenya (567,000), Jordan (451,000) and Chad (366,000).

About 80 percent of the world’s refugees find safe haven in neighbouring countries rather than more distant lands, particularly in the industrialized West. It noted that, for the fourth year in a row, South Africa was the largest recipient of individual asylum claims.

A disproportionate burden

While wealthy economies are better able to provide support for refugees, the report noted that global refugee burden falls overwhelmingly on poor countries that can least afford it.

In a calculation based on per capita GDP Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), Pakistan is currently supporting 605 refugees for every U.S. dollar of GDP, followed by the DRC (399 refugees/USD; Kenya (321 refugees/USD); Liberia (290 refugees/USD); Ethiopia (253 refugees/USD); and Chad (211 refugees/USD.

Compared to the previous year, the UNHCR said it was caring for more than 800,000 new IDPs at the end of 2011. It attributed the increase in part to significant new displacements in Afghanistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

Colombia had the largest number of UNHCR-registered IDPs by the end of 2011. It was followed by Sudan with 2.4 million IDPs, and Somalia with an estimated 1.4 million.