Refugees who early arrived in the morning from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, crossing the border to the Nyakabande Transit Centre in search of a better life. Credit: Bastian Schnabel/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Jun 21 2013 (IPS)

Tuyisenge*, a former teacher from the Democratic Republic of Congo province of North Kivu, sat on a tree stump watching his fellow refugees go about their lives along the terraces of the hillside Kigeme Refugee Camp in southern Rwanda.

He is one of some 14,000 Congolese refugees living at the camp.

“I decided to flee after my wife and two daughters were raped by the army before my eyes,” he told IPS, his voice choking with sobs.

Ngutuye, 33, lies on a mat in front of her tent. She also fled North Kivu province in eastern DRC, in April 2012, after her civilian husband was killed in the crossfire between the Congolese army and the M23 rebels.

A 20-year cycle of violence in eastern DRC has forced hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge beyond this Central African country’s borders.

Since April 2012, fighting in North Kivu province has displaced some 2.2 million people and caused almost 70,000 to flee to neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Of these refugees, 24,123 fled to Rwanda.

According to the Rwandan government, this has added to the existing population of 43,000 refugees in the country, 99 percent of whom are Congolese.

The majority of these refugees live in the four Rwandan camps of Kigeme, Gihembe, Kiziba and Nyabiheke. A few urban refugees also live in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

But the 2012 exodus is just the latest in a mass displacement of Congolese that began almost two decades ago. It first started in March 1993 when thousands fled the DRC after violent ethnic clashes erupted in Ntoto, North Kivu, and spread to rural areas in South Kivu province.

The second group of Congolese refugees, who were mostly Tutsis, left the DRC in 1994 upon the arrival of some 1.2 million Rwandan Hutus in the country after the Rwandan genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, were killed by Hutus in 100 days.

More people fled the DRC during the First Congo War, from 1996 to 1997, when Rwanda invaded the Central African nation to oust then President Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997).

A year later, the Second Congo War began and more Congolese fled the country from 1998 to 2003. According to World Genocide Watch, an international NGO that works to protect people from genocide, more than 5.4 million people died in the two Congo wars.

But returning Congolese refugees to their homes remains a pressing issue. It is a topic that lies at the heart of a number of negotiations and agreements between the Congolese government and rebels in eastern DRC.

On Mar. 6 Ugandan Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga, who is also chair of the Kampala negotiations between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels, said the repatriation of refugees based in Rwanda had not been effective.

Others in the DRC agree. “The return of refugees based in Rwanda has always been a touchy issue,” Emmanuel Kamanzi, a Tutsi community leader in Goma, told IPS.

Kamanzi believes that local communities in the DRC are afraid that if Congolese Tutsi refugees return from Rwanda, it will create competition for land. In 2010, Masti Nots, the head of the North Kivu UNHCR office, predicted that “the land issue will be one of the main obstacles to the return of refugees.”

Jean-Claude Chito, a lawyer at the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Goma, concurred.

“The ambiguities of the 1973 Land Act are the source of land conflicts in the DRC,” he told IPS.

The act provides for the co-existence of two land tenure systems, one based on traditional customs and the other on statutory law. Under the traditional land tenure system, a traditional chief, who is the custodian of ancestral lands, is authorised to allocate land to community members. Under the other, the government has the power to appropriate land. However, conflicts arise when both traditional chief and the state allocate land titles to the same property.

The situation is further complicated by a stipulation that allows any individual in the rebel-held area in eastern DRC to obtain a title deed. It has resulted in an influx of people to these areas and created a competition for land with local communities.

But Bahati Kahembe, one of the four traditional chiefs appointed to the provincial assembly in North Kivu, told IPS: “That is not true.”

It seems however that for now, authorities do not have to worry about the competition for land, because the refugees are not returning.

Simplice Kpanji, the communications director at the UNHCR regional office in Kinshasa, the DRC capital, told IPS “the security situation is not favourable for the repatriation of (Congolese) refugees.”

*Name changed to protect identity.

Remains of some of the over 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s genocide. Credit: Edwin Musoni/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
Goma, DRC , May 2 2013 (IPS)

The Congolese government is demanding a comprehensive strategy for a lasting solution for the repatriation of 127,537 Rwandan refugees estimated to be in the country.

This is according to Congolese Minister of Home Affairs Richard Muyej. He said the government believes that the cessation of refugee status for Rwandese nationals exiled in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is premature. The DRC neighbours the East African state of Rwanda.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has designated Jun. 30 as the worldwide cessation of refugee status for Rwandese nationals.

The UNHCR accords this status to refugees who fled Rwanda between 1959 and 1998. The cessation clause, which is binding on refugees and their host countries, requires refugees to choose between voluntary repatriation and residency in their host countries. They can also apply for a continuation of their refugee status on an individual basis.

However, the DRC is opposed to the move.

The Congolese government’s position reinforces the stance taken by Rwandese diaspora meeting at the International Conference on Rwandan Refugees held from Apr. 19 to 20 in Brussels. It called upon the UNHCR and asylum countries to consider the safety of Rwandese refugees.

Gervais Condo, the president of the United States-based Rwanda National Congress (CNR), who chaired the Brussels conference, told IPS: “There are no circumstances under which refugee status is a viable long-term solution.”

“But we cannot expect refugees to return home when the reasons they went into exile have not been addressed,” said Condo, an ally of General Kayumba Nyamwasa, the former chief of staff of the Rwandese army and a founder president of the CNR who is now living in exile in South Africa.

Between 1994, when the Rwanda Patriotic Front came to power following the genocide, and February 2013, the UNHCR has repatriated about 3.5 million Rwandese refugees.

While there are no conclusive figures, it is estimated that the 1994 Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of almost one million people, mostly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Meanwhile, Muyej stated that the DRC would only apply the cessation clause after the implementation of the Tripartite Agreement signed between the UNHCR and the Rwandese and DRC governments to ensure that Rwandese refugees wishing to be repatriated are able to return to their country of origin safely and with dignity.

Muyej made these remarks on Apr. 18 at a conference of Ministers of Home Affairs of 11 African countries hosting Rwandese refugees.

However, Rwanda and the UNHCR have declared that there is no justification for extending the status for the refugees after Jun. 30. The Rwandese government has given guarantees that the situation in the Great Lakes country is now safe, and wants the cessation clause provided for in the 1951 Geneva Convention to come into force.

In October 2009, Rwandese President Paul Kagame and Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, agreed that Rwandese refugee status would be terminated in June 2011. But opposition from refugees and NGOs prompted the UNHCR to continue discussions with all concerned parties until June 2013.

Refugees remain worried that the situation of freedom of expression and association in Rwanda has not changed, and feel this concern is borne out by the large number of former dignitaries in exile, including former attorney general Gérard Gahima and former Rwandan ambassador Théogène Rudasingwa.

The arrest and trial of Victoire Ingabire, an opposition party candidate during the 2010 presidential elections who was tried and sentenced to eight years in prison for conspiracy against the country, has been cause for concern. On Mar. 25, Amnesty International called for a fair trial for Ingabire that met international standards. The human rights organisation stated that the court failed to test the evidence of the prosecution.

“A number of high-level officials have indicated that Europe does not consider Rwanda to be safe enough for the return of refugees,” Condo stressed.

Rwanda’s Minister for Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs Séraphine Mukantabana, a former genocide refugee in Congo-Brazzaville who was repatriated in May 2011, declared that Rwandese refugees could not benefit from limitless refugee status when there was peace in the country.

“We have been encouraging voluntary repatriation, as many refugees will find it difficult to remain in their host countries. Those who wish to apply for refugee status on an individual basis will not have grounds to appeal to the UNHCR,” said Mukantabana, who was also the president of the Rwandese refugees’ association in Congo-Brazzaville.

To ease the situation, Rwanda will deliver national passports to Rwandese who wish to stay in their country of asylum after Jun. 30.

Junior Mayema says that discrimination against gay people is just as bad in South Africa as in his home Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: Davison Mudzingwa/IPS

By Davison Mudzingwa
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jun 26 2012 (IPS)

When Junior Mayema boarded a plane to South Africa from his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 2010, he cried tears of joy because he was finally heading to a country where he could live openly as a gay man.

South Africa is the only African country to recognise same-sex unions, and the country’s constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, gender or sexual orientation.

However, when he arrived in South Africa Mayema shed even more tears. But this time they were tears of pain because of the exclusion and harassment he had to endure.

“It’s a very hard life I’m living, a very hard life,” the 24-year-old told IPS.

In South Africa Mayema has been verbally abused and beaten up several times for being gay. And he has lost confidence in the justice system because of apathetic law enforcers.

“I was beaten up last year and when I went to report it to the police they started laughing asking ‘Why are you gay? Just go to the hospital.’”

The prejudicial attacks are one of the reasons why Mayema left DRC. Being gay in his home country means finding work is almost impossible, and it means being discriminated against in education institutions and even being killed.

Mayema, a university drop out, had a close brush with death when his own family beat him up because of his sexual orientation. He said that he was starved for seven days, as his family attempted “to exorcise his demon.”

But he never expected to experience similar discrimination in South Africa. He told IPS that he was ejected from several shelters for being a gay man and a foreigner. The situation is sometimes so bad that he said he misses home.

“In South Africa it’s worse, there is xenophobia, homophobia and racism,” Mayema told IPS, lamenting his fading hope for a new life here.

But his story is sadly not unique. His is just one of many cases of hardships that refugee Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people experience here according to a report titled “Dream Deferred: Is the Equality Clause in the South African Constitution Bill of Rights just a far-off hope for LGBTI Asylum Seekers and Refugees”.

The report, produced by the People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), was released on Tuesday Jun. 26. It found that at the root of the plight of refugee LGBTI people in South Africa was their lack of legal residential status. The report recommends that the government of South Africa sensitise its Department of Home Affairs staff to properly handle the application for refugee status by LGBTI people.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency guide for adjudicating LGBTI refugee and asylum claims, threatened people should be granted legal status in their country of refugee. But this is not the case in South Africa.

“Out of 35 people we interviewed who applied, only two were granted refugee status,” said Guillain Koko, coordinator of the PASSOP LGBTI advocacy project.

Koko said that the lack of residence status jeopardises the chances of employment for refugee LGBTI people.

“They are the most vulnerable people,” he said. He added that the difficulties of being unemployed resulted in “two of those interviewed trying to commit suicide, while some were driven into sex work.”

Unemployment, Koko said, slows down social integration and even acceptance into local LGBTI social groups.

“They can’t go to gay clubs or restaurants because it’s expensive.”

Robinah Kintu, a former Uganda national soccer player who resides in Mandalay Township near Cape Town, is a case in point. She has a tenuous future in the country and she may soon be unemployed because she has not been granted residence here.

Kintu currently plays provincial league soccer for the Red Eagles Football Club in Cape Town. However, the South African Football Association has refused to grant her permission to continue playing since she only has asylum in the country. “When you are a foreigner and also a lesbian, for me, I call it war,” she told IPS.

“It’s dangerous.”

She has been living in the country since 2009 and said that there is little to distinguish between South Africa and her East African home, a country notorious for its homophobia, when it comes to people’s attitudes towards LGBTIs.

“The people there treat you, if you are lesbian or gay, like a pig,” she said. “The sentence is death, when they find out that you are a lesbian.

“In South Africa, it’s still the same. There is a law but people do not follow the law…even South African lesbians are raped and killed.”

In February four South African men were sentenced to 18 years in jail for stoning and stabbing to death an openly lesbian teenager, 19-year-old Zoliswa Nkonyana, in 2006. Violence against lesbians is common here, with high incidences of “corrective rape”, where men believe they can “cure” lesbians of their sexual orientation.

Kintu has been subjected to her fair share of harassment, and fears for her safety.

“If I had money I would move from this place, it’s not safe. That’s why you can’t find me walking out at night…they can kill or rape you,” she said, her voice breaking.

The PASSOP report calls for tighter law enforcement regarding the rights of LGBTI refugees in South Africa. It urges the government “to take affirmative measures to prevent, stop and prosecute acts of violence against LGBTI refugees.”

Refugees dig for water in a dried up watering hole in Jamam camp, in South Sudan's Upper Nile state. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Jared Ferrie
JUBA, Jun 14 2012 (IPS)

Sudanese refugees have started dying as a camp in South Sudan ran out of water four days ago after a massive influx of people fled across the border to escape war and hunger.

The refugees are fleeing Sudan’s Blue Nile state where insurgents are fighting to overthrow the Sudanese government.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said earlier in an April report that civilians are suffering from an indiscriminate aerial bombing campaign.

Voitek Asztabski, an emergency coordinator with Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), said some refugees died as they walked seven to 10 hours to a new site in search of water after camp Kilometer 48 in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state ran out of it on Jun 11.

The agency is still carrying out a mortality survey to find out how many adults and children have died and what the causes are. However, MSF estimates that an average of five to 10 people have died each day since water ran out at the Kilometer 48 camp.

MSF said in a statement on Jun. 13 that “the 15,000 refugees remaining at this location walked en masse the 25 km to the nearest location with available water.”

Heavy rains prevented agencies from moving them by truck on flooded roads.

“We observed people dying of thirst, of dehydration,” Asztabski said by satellite phone from camp Kilometer 18, the new site with limited available water. “That was quite a horrifying activity being witnessed by us here.”

Some people were too weak to respond to medical care.

“We went early on Tuesday morning to provide medical assistance and rehydration points along the route,” said MSF’s Dr. Erna Rijnierse in the statement.

“It was a truly shocking sight as we witnessed some of the weakest dying as they walked – too dehydrated for even the most urgent medical care to save them.”

There are now 105,000 Sudanese refugees from Blue Nile state in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, according the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, while another 15,000 are on their way.

Asztabski said that refugees are arriving malnourished, dehydrated and diseased after walking from their homes in Blue Nile. Common conditions include pneumonia and other respiratory infections contracted from sleeping outdoors without any shelter, as well as diarrhoea from drinking contaminated water.

He called for a “proactive” approach to the crisis, saying that agencies have instead been reacting to the emergency without putting contingency plans in place. For example, there is no plan for what to do after water runs out at camp Kilometer 18, which will likely happen in about two and a half weeks.

Aid agencies have been warning for months that refugees needed to be relocated before potable water ran out and the rainy season began, making transport extremely difficult. In March, Andrew Omale, an emergency coordinator with Oxfam International, told IPS that the refugee situation in Upper Nile was a “forgotten emergency” and called for more support.

Asztabski said agencies continue to be hampered by a lack of capacity and resources. He compared the scale of the crisis to an area in Ethiopia where he was based last year when famine in Somalia sent refugees over the border into that country as well as Kenya. About 10 million people were affected by the drought in the Horn of Africa. But he said there are fewer resources available for this emergency.

“Everyone is overstretched in this situation,” said Asztabski. “This crisis needs more attention, more investment.”

The refugees began streaming from Blue Nile into South Sudan and Ethiopia in early September after Sudan ousted Blue Nile’s elected state governor, Malik Agar, and replaced him with a military appointee. Agar’s forces have been fighting the government since then, and HRW says civilians have borne the brunt of military abuses.

In its April report, HRW documented reported violations against civilians including arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, beatings and torture. HRW said government forces targeted people they suspected of connections to the group led by Agar, which is known as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N).

The SPLM-N is active in Blue Nile as well as neighbouring Southern Kordofan state, where the U.N. says 47,000 refugees have fled across the border into South Sudan’s Unity state.

The rebels were formerly part of the SPLM, which fought a two-decade civil war against Khartoum that resulted in South Sudan’s secession. When the South declared independence last July, the SPLM in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile added “North” to their name and declared themselves a separate political party in Sudan. But the SPLM-N took up arms again after accusing Khartoum of cracking down on them.

Sudan has repeatedly denied targeting civilians during its fight against the SPLM-N. But rights groups as well as the British and United States governments have called on Khartoum to stop bombing civilians.

Asztabski said refugees also tell of fleeing the bombing with very few possessions and having to walk for as many as two months to reach the border. “They are telling us horrific stories,” he said. “It’s a very treacherous and exhausting journey.”