The Longest Journey: Resettling Refugees from Africa [paperback ed.] 0868408263, 9780868408262

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY RESETTLING REFUGEES FROM AFRICA

Peter Browne is editor of Australian Policy Online at the Swinbume Institute for Social Research.

BRIEFINGS A series of topical books exploring social, political land cultural issues in contemporary Australia Series editors: Peter Browne and-Julian Thomas

Australian Polity Online (www.ago. org.au) Institute f or Social Research, Swinburne University Of Technology

Details of recent Briefings titles appear at the back of this book

The Longest Journey RESETTLING REFUGEES FROM AFRICA

PETER BROWNE

E

A UNsl^r Press book Published by

University of New South Wales Press I.td

University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswprcss.com.au © I'eter Browne 2006

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

NationalLibraryofAustralia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Browne, Peter, 1957-.

The longest journey: resettling refugees from Africa. ISBN 0 86840 826 3.

I. Refngees -Africa. 2. Refugees -Australia. 3., Refugees -Government

policy -Australia. 4. Australia -Emigration and immigration. 5. Affica -Emigration and inmigration.I. Title. (Series: Briefings (University of New South Wales Press) ). 305.906914

Edited by Kate Manton CoverpJ]ofograpJ!: Peter Marial, a 14 year old Sudanese boy assisted by the

World Food Program at Kal(uma. WFP/Francesco Broli

Printed by Hyde Park Press

Contents Introduction

7

1. Melbourne

14

2. Kckuma

32

3. The promised land

55

4. Nairobi

78

5. Geneva

106

6. Canberra

130

References

145

Acknowledgements

165

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Intl.oduction

the countries in the north-east of sub-Saharan Africa were at war or on the verge of conflict. During those years violence contin-

ued, intensified or broke out in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia,

Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. In the midst of these countries Kenya, with its long,

unpatrolled borders and relatively stable government, was a sanctuary. Between 1990 and 1992 the country's refugee population

grew from fewer than 15,000 to over 400,000, stabilising at

around a quarter of a million - the number estimated to be living there still in late 2005.

Among the people who fled to Kenya during those years were

a Rwandan woman and her two sons. The woman (her name was never revealed in the coverage of the case) was a close relative of

the former Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu politician whose death was the pretext for the genocidal violence in 1994. Two (or three, according to some reports) of her children

had been killed in Rwanda, and she had escaped to Uganda with

thetwoyoungerboysin2000.Whenitwascleartheywerenotsafe there, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, transferred the family to Nairobi. By early 2002 they were living in a refugee accommodation centre and waiting for a final decision on their application to resettle in Australia.

7

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

Early one morning in April 2002 the three were attacked as they slept. The boys were killed and their mother badly injured. According to a short report in the Melbourne Age, the family had been scheduled for a medical check the following day as a final stepinpreparingtoleaveKenya.Despitetheurgencyoftheircase - Human Rights Watch reported that the family had been

attacked before - they had waited over a year for the resettlement process to reach this point. AlthoughthefustreportintheKenyanDCH.JyNaf!.of!described theattackasa"fight,"theevidencethatemergedoverthenextfew days suggests that the sleeping children were sedated and then

stabbed. Their mother said that she was woken by two attackers who held her down while they stabbed her repeatedly. Police fi.om the nearby Kilimani station reported no evidence Of a break-in; a kitchen knife fi-om the centre, believed to have been used in the attack, was found two days later. Acting on the assumption that the attackers were among the other 180 or more people housed at the centre, the police eventually arrested two men who claimed to be deserters fi.om the Rwandan army.

in Canberra, an unnamed official denied that Australia had dragged its feet in dealing with the woman's request for resettlement. Australia, he added, was one of "only a. handful of countries" resettling refugees from 'that region. According to Human Rights Watch, the case highlighted "the current failure of the UNHCR in Nairobi to provide speedy resettlement for' refugees whose lives are at risk."

Over the previous two years the federal government's policies

towards refugees and asylum seekers had developed into the most contentious issue in Australian politics. The immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, had repeatedly argued that asylum seekers arriving by boat were queue jumpers, taking places from the

needier refugees waiting patiently in canps or lined up outside local offices of the UNHCR. Yet here, just a few ldiometres from the UNHCR's Nairobi office and not far from the Australian High 8

INTRODUCTION

Commission, was a compelling example of how the official route by which refugees\ can settle in Australia is far from orderly, or even safe. So it was surprising that the Agr was the only Australian newspaper to report the incident in any detail. The coverage of the attack also highlighted another important fact. For many years Australia has been one of only ten countries accepting refugees through the UNHCR's resettlement program.

(Those ten - the United States, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and New Zealand - have' recently been joined by another group of countries offering smaller quotas.) Judged by the size of its population, Australia now takes more refugees through the program

than any other country. The origins of the attack lay in the history and circumstances of an influential and high-profile Rwandan family. But it seemed to me that the details of the case might help to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the resettlement process itself. So,

with an advance from the, magazine E#reha Sfreef to help cover costs, I flew to Kenya in mid 2002 to find out more about the attack and get an idea of what life was like for refugees waiting in Philip Ruddock's "queue.'' A year later, again writing for Ewrcka Sfreef, I visited the Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenya, near the border with Sudan and talked to UNHCR staff there and at the organisation's headquarters in Geneva, and another year later I made a third trip to Nairobi. When I first arrived in the Kenyan capital the UNHGR office was still recovering from a UN investigation that had uncovered extensive corruption. Thousands of resettlement case files had been tainted and ,needed to be reassessed, adding to the backlog of applications. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees were living in Nairobi in dire circumstances, treated as criminals by the Kenyan government and harassed by police. And another 200,000 or more refugees -mainly Somalis and Sudanese -were living in two large camps in remote, arid areas. Although it

9

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

wasn't clear at the time, Kenya itself was living through the dying days of the increasingly corrupt and inept government of Danid arap Moi. The head of refugee protection at the UNHCR's Nairobi office, Sergio Calle-Norefia, was treating the murder of the two children vel.y seriously. He had visited their mother in hospital early on the moming after the attack to try to find out what had happened, and described in great detail the speculation about how and why the attack had taken place. He told me that although the familywas classified as an urgent case, the UNHCR hadn't realised they faced any immediate danger. "You must remember," he said, "that the wife and daughter of I'resident Habyarimana are moving around in the streets of Belgium with no problems." But he conceded that the family had been attacked more than once when they lived in Uganda. In Nairobi the family had been living in a centre run by Goal, an Irish aid agency. Under an agreement with the UNHCR, no one at Goal would talk to me about the case, but later I was told that staff there felt that the UNHGR had not made it clear the family was potentially in danger. This failure on the part of the UNHCR could well have been a symptom of the pressure the office had been under following the corruption inquiry. No one I spoke to questioned Calle-Norefia's competence or his dedication to the job;I one aid worker described him as among "the best" of the UNHCR people she'dmet during a long career working in the field. Nor did anyone I spoke to in Nairobi blame the Australian authorities for the delays in processing the family. A few days after the attack the woman was shifted to a convent, where she was lo oked after while the police investigation proceeded. She was now classified as an emergency case, and her

approval for travel cane through quickly from the Australian High Commission. She left Kenya for Australia at around the same time that the police, lacking evidence, released the two Rwandan suspects from custody. 10

INTRODUCTION

Apart from Calle-Norefia, the localAgence France Presse correspondent and, off the record, an aid ageney employee, no one was willing to talk about the case, so it was difficult to socketsofresistanceanaforcingouttheSPLA.Largenunbersof refugees fled back into southern Sudan.

Alongtheway,accordingtoaReutersdispatchfromNairobi, refugees were harassed and killed by roving militias. A dangerous, unpredictable new element in the north-south war, the militias were bankrolled by Khartoum, working in tandem with

government forces to intimidate civilians and undermine support for the SPI.A. During their journey out of the camps, according to the London OZ7server, the refugees were "robbed

and murdered in Ethiopia and strafed by Sudanese government boinbersintheirowncountry."Manypossessednotmuchmore thantheclothestheywerewearing.Heavyraincutofffoodsupplies and hampered the relief effort. The reti.eat into Sudan was a humanitarian disaster and an enorlnous setback for the SPLA, adding to the tensions that ultimately split the southern forces.

Sarah, her husband and their son were among the 'first wave ofrefugeestocrosstheborder."Firstwewentuptoatownonthe other side of Gambena. But they were still coming behind us so we went towards the River Gilo. At the river there were so many

people, and there weren't enough canoes to cross, so in the process a lot of people, maybe half our people, died..." She paused."Yes-somanypeopleweretakenbythewaters." Sarah and her family stopped at Kapoeta, inside Sudan. But soontheyencounteredmorefighting."Weleftperhapstwodays before the town was bombed by the government,» she said. "Two of ny brothers-in-Jaw stayed behind, and one of them was killed." Eventually they worked their way back to their village near Rumbek. Government forces were in the province, but Sarali's viuage was stm held by the SPLA. Not that this made it safe for them: "The SPI,A wanted to force my husband to fight, butbewasnotinterested.Hesaidhecouldcontributebyteachingchildrenbutnotbyfighting."

Sarahwasn'thappyinthevillage.Shewantedtoteach,buthad notfinishedherformaltraining."Whennyhusbandmarl.iedme,

23

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

when1wasinsecondaryschool,hepromisedmypeoplehewould let me go on studying. But when we moved to Ethiopia I couldn't continue my education. So when we came home and he decided to stay and teach in the vinage I told him, `No, I did not complete myeducationandmyeldestsoncannotstayherewithoutanedhcation,wehavetogotoKenya.'Herefused.So1camewithmytwo boys"-herownsonandanephewwho'dbeensenttoltangbyhis mother -"to Kenya in 1994." For the next two years Sarah lived in Nairobi with her cousin, a doctor. Her husband was still in Sudan, teaching' not far fi-om where the government and southern forces were fighting. But after her cousin left Nairobi, life in the city was too dangerous for a single woman with no legal status. So, late in 1996, Sarah and the two boys travelled the 600 kilometres north-west to the UNHCR camp at Kakuma, about 125 kilometres inside the Kenyan b order. Kakuna was a small but growing settlement in a flat, sunbaked landscape, far from the nearest large town. The heat was intense and the residents of the camp - refugees from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Uganda. and the Democra.tic Republic of the Congo - seemed to lJe barely surviving. To Sarah, the fortnightly ration looked like barely enough food for two days. The possibflity of violence, especially against women, was constant. Tens of thousands of refugees lived in a collection of small mudbrick houses with plastic and grass roofs, the recent arrivals sleeping under blue UNHCR tents. Set up four years eahier, the camp had developed a rudimentary market economy and a weatherbeaten infrastructure. Sugar, shoes, batteries, torches and a chaotic array of `other goods were on sale at market stalls. A tailor repaired clothes; an electrician fixed watches and radios; a tiny cinema screened videos. A couection of secondhand books was available for loan under the corru-

gated il.on roof of the library. "At the Turkana Cafe," wrote a journalist in mid 1996 - beguiled, perhaps, by the contrast 24

MELBOURNE

betweenthebusymarketandtheausterebeautyofthelandscape -"mendiscus§poetryandpolitics,sippingsweet,milkyEthiopian coffee`from saucers."

For a few months after they arrived Sarah and her children lived in a small house with five teenage Sudanese boys, relatives

who had been separated from their parents back in Sudan. But Sarah was pregnant and needed a home of her own, so she sold her jewellery at the market to pay for building materials, and the boyshelpedhertobuildthemudbrickhouse1:hatshelivedin,on and off, for the next six years.

Inrawnunbers,Australiaoffersmoreresettlementplacesthanany othercountryexcepttheUhitedStates;inpercapitaterms,itoffers the largest number of places. Many other western countries France, Germany and Italy, for example - don't participate in the resettlement program at all, and show no signs of beginning to do so. Until recently, Britain was also a non-participant, but in 2003 the Blair government announced an annual quota of 500 places (although only 150 refugees wet.e resettled in 2004, the first year of the new program). This doesn't mean that these countries reject refugees; most of them receive many more onshore applications for asylum than Australia does, I)artly because of their

proximity to eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East., Britain, for example, received over 390,000 applications for asylum between 2000 and 2004. "Resettlement under UNHCR auspices," according to the organisation's aperational handbook, "is geared primarily to the special needs of refugees. .. whose life, liberty, safety, health or fundamental human rights are at risk in the country where they soughtrefuge.Itisalsoconsideredadurablesolutionforrefugees

who, although not in need of immediate protection, have compelling reasons to be removed from their country of refuge." Thosecompellingreasonscanextendtobeingstrandedforyears

25

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

Main resettlement countries 2004 United States

52,868

Finland

Australia

15,967

Denmark

Canada

10,521

Sweden

I,801

Norway

942

Ireland

New Zealand

825

Chile

Netherlands

Britain

Soui'ce.. Refugees by Numbers 20o5, UNHCR, 2oo5

on end in camps like Kakuma where, "in the absence of other options such as voluntary repatriation and local integration," refugees' prospects of living autonomous, satisfying lives are severely limited.

Some European countries offer a similar scheme independently of the UNHCR. Under "protected entry p].ocedures," Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Britain (three of which also participate in the resettlement

program) give non-citizens the option of seeldng asylum via their overseas diplomatic missions. rn fact, under international law it is pretty clear that aJJ countries are required to consider such approaches and to offer entry visas where appropriate. But only these seven European countries, as well as most of the resettlement countries, make this right explicit and have established' procedures for dealing with applicants. Six of the countries offering "protected entry" are members of the European Union, and

in 2002 a proposal was put forward in a. UNHGR-funded report for a uniform, Europe-wide approach. Part of 'the rationale for a single system was the argument that, by .not offering a formal, recognised offshore route to asylum, European countries were encouraging legitimate refugees to join the unauthorised (and often dangerous) flow of non-citizens into Europe. European Union members responded without enthusiasm to the proposal. 26

MELBOURNE

ResettlementisjustoneoptionamongwhattheuNHCRcalls the three "durable solutions" for refugees; the others are repatriation(aretumtotherefugee'shomecountryoncethedangerhas

passed) and local integration (resettlement in the country to which the refugee first fled). Repatriation is a less predictable

optionthanresettlement,butitcaninvolvemuchlargernunbers and quite dramatic movements of refugees back to their homelands. During 2004, according to the most recent UNHGR figures, around 1.5 minion refugees returned home. Nearly twothirds of them were Afghans. The largest groups of African returneeswerearound90,000Ango'lansrespondingtotheimplementation of the 2002 peace accord, and a similar number of Burundians returning home despite the fragility of the peace agreement there. Smaller numbers of other nationalities, including Rwandans, Eritreans, Somahis and Liberians, also repatriated voluntarily.

As these figures suggest, most refugees prefer, where they can,

to retun to their home country rather than settle permanently elsewhere. But this can involve waiting years, and for children in

particular it can mean that links to their home town or village, or even to their home country, are broken. The evidence shows that thelongerrefugeeshavebeenawayfromtheirhomesthelesslikely they are to repatriate; nevertheless, there have been many cases in which, the ink barely dry on a peace agreement, large numbers of refugeeshavespontaneouslycrossedtheborderforhome. But not all of these returns are voluntary. In recent years, for example, the UNHCR has criticised the Rwandan government forforciblyrepatriatingrefugeesbacktotheDemocraticRepublic of the Congo, Tanzania and Burundi. The UNHCR itself was accused of blurring the line between voluntary and forced repatriation by announcing on East Timor's inde|>endence day that Timorese remaining in Indonesia_ would lose their refugee status attheendof2002.InPakistan,thegovemmentpressuredAfghan refugees to leave camps to make way for urban development.

27

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

In East Africa the flows of refugees have been complex, with a series of protracted conflicts flaring up and dying down, creating both short- and long-term movements. As Sarah's experience shows, individual refugees can move back and forth across

borders a number of times, depending on conditions at home and in the country of refuge. And, as mentioned earlier, a refugeeexporting country can also be a refuge for other nationalities: at

thesametimethat90,500SudaneseweretakingrefugeinEthiopia in late 2004, for example, a smaller but significant number of Ethiopians -around 14,800 people -were sheltering in Sudan. In Kenya the total number of refugees has been comparatively stable at between 220,000 and 250,000 over the past decade, reflecting the continuing conffict or repression in most neighbouring countries. Up until recently, opportunities for repatriation have been very limited. When I first visited Nairobi in mid 2002, the UNHGR's Sergio Calle-Norefia was pessimistic about the prospects for repatriation among the major refugee, groups in Kenya. "Somalia is still in chaos. Sudan is still in chaos," he said.

"The persecution going on in Ethiopia doesn't open opportuni-

ties for repatriation. The old cases have already gone back to

Uganda but we have new cases; most of them are members of the opposition who are certainly not going to be able to go at this point." Some refugees had been able to return to Burundi, but Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had been at war until very recently, with no guarantee that their peace agreement would stick. Two years later, when I spoke to Galle-Norefia's successor, Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, on a third visit to Nairobi, the

peace process was advancing in Sudan, but not enough had changed for there to be any significant movement of refugees back from Kenya. Despite the progress in Suda.n, she said, refugees in Kenya were viewing the prospects cautiously. The third of the UNHCR's solutions, local integration, has long been a significant feature of the refugee landscape in Africa - although, as I found out at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva,

28

MEI,BOURNE

itspopularityhasdecreasedamongthecontinent'sgoverrments. For the more than 200,000 refugees in Kenya -mainly Sudanese and Somalis - settling there has not been an option. Following the enormous influx of refugees from Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopiain1991,theKenyangovemmenthandedallrefugeeprocessing over to the UNHCR and declared that refugees could not stay p ermanently. Kenya's apparent hostility to refugees reflected its own growing economic, political and social difficulties - not tomentionasenseofpanicatthesuddenincreaseinpopulation. Afterthe2002electionthenewgovemmentpromisedacomprehensive reform of refugee policy; but progress has been slow. Of course, these three "durable solutions" don't add up to a comprehensive set of options for refugees, especially when their home country is in the grip of a protracted conflict. This is why large numbers of people are forced to spend long periods in camps or among the local populations of neighbouring countries. Thousands of refugees - the estimates range from 15,000

(theUNHCR)to60,000(HunanRIghtsWatch)-liveinNairobi, for example, in defiance of the Kenyan govemment's policy that all refugees should be in either of the country's two remote camps, at Kalcuma and Dadaab. And smaller numbers embark on the risky journey to lodge an onshore asylum application in a western country.

Australia's relative isolation means that it misses out on most of the major, and often complex, refugee flows that affect many othercountries.ThisisespeciallyapparentwhenAustraliaiscontrasted with frontline countries like Pakistan, Iran or Tanzania. The period between mid 1999 and mid 2002 saw the largest numberofasylumseekersarrivinginAustralia,unannounced,by boat. And yet, during those peck years, the total was fewer than 10,000asylumseekers;itwasonthisrelativelysmallnumberthat the federal government built its case for unprecedented border

29

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

controls and a vasdy expanded detention regime. Elsewhere, flowsofrefugeeswerelargerandmuchlessorderly.Attheendof 2004, Iran's refugee population was over one million, Pakistan's was 960,600 and Tanzania's was 602,000. (These UNHCR statistics are based on the organisation's standard definition of a refugee population: arrivals over the preceding five years.) Althoughthosefigureshadstabilisedorwerefahing,during2004 four African countries recorded increases of 10,000 or more in the number of refugees they were hosting, including 131,000 in Chad and 20,700 in Burundi. In these countries, the refugee populationissolargethatgenerallynoattemptismadetojudgeeach individual against the criteria in the Refugee Convention. Some European governments have also had to contend with large numbers of asylum seekers. According to the UNHCR, by the end of 2004 Germany was hosting 876,600 refugees and the Uulted Kingdom 289,100, most of them informal arrivals, with the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland all recording 100,000 or more Spontaneous arrivals. Australia was

hosting 63,476 refugees, most of whom had arrived via the resettlement program. New applications for asylum in the west fell by one-fiflh in 2004, mainly because of the changed conditions in Iraq and Afghanista.n. But the figures were still significant. France, for example, received 58,500 new requests during the year, the United Kingdom 40,200, Germany 35,600, Austria 24,600 and Sweden 23,100. Compared with Australia, not only were the numbers of unofficial arrivals often much greater but the asylum-seeking population was more complex, mainly because of 'these countries' proximity to eastern European countries rebuilding after the collapse of communism.

During 2002 and 2003, as the Australian government was beginning to shift the focus of its humanitarian immigration program towards Africa, peace talks were under way between the SPIA 30

MELBOUIINE

the military arm of the southern resistance movement - and the Sudanese government. Over the past decade the talks had made sporadic progress, then faltered, but this tine around they had. beengivenextraimpetusbyanincreaseinintemationalpressure after the 11 September 2001 atta.cks in New York and Washington. Not only did Sudan's militant Islamic government have an appalling human rights record, but it had also hosted Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996 and maintained links with al-Qaeda at least until late 2001. The extra scrutiny from western governments threatened to upset the regime's plans to develop the relativelynewoilfieldsofsouthernSudan.Thegovernmentitselfhad split at the end of 1999, with the military wing expelling the militant cleric Hassan al Turabi, bringing to an end the potent alliance that had helped fuel the war and recruit religious enthusiasts to fight for the government. For Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries life Kenya, though, reports of a breakthrough in talks had a familiar and not

particularly encouraging ring. Negotiations between Khartoum andthesouthemforceshadstalledrepeatedly,anditwasdifficult to imagine the current round making any more progress than its predecessors. At Kakuma, Sarali Mulual was applying for a resettlement place in Australia.

31

CHAPTER 2

I(akuma

I.om the air, the Turkana settlement near the Kakuma refugee camp in north-western Kenya looks like a collection of enormous, grey eggs, partly buried in the red soil, their surfaces covered in haihine cracks. As we circle to land after an hour's flight from Nairobi, these shelters are almost all that interrupts the vast expanse of dry country, speckled with low,

F

twisted vegetation. Near the end of the dry season in 2003, it's

hard to believe that this part of Turkana - the name of the region as well as its inhabitants - could support more than a handful of people.

Year round, the temperature in the middle of the day is rarely lower than 35 degrees celsius. When rain does fall, it can cause flash floods before disappearing into the sandy soil. "The people

are tall and thin," write American, anthropologists Michael Little and Paul Leslie. "The dogs are scrawny, the rocks are sharp, and the trees are covered with thorns. To a Westerner, this is an arid

and inhospitable, perhaps inpossible, climate. To Turkana, it is their place and the place where they wish to live." Into this remote region, in the early 1990s, poured tens of thousands of refugees

from the west and the north. Superficially, this lo oks like an unchanging human landscape. But the appearance is deceptive. The Turkana arrived in this 32

KAKUMA

corner of Kenya less than 300 years ago, from further west in

present-day Uganda. First, they established a small community with access to the intermittent headwaters of' the Tarash River. Then, at around the beginning of the nineteenth century, ecological pressures forced them to move northwards along the river, taking in the area around present-day Kakuma, and east towards Lake Turkana and south across the Tul.kwel River. In his book about the Turkana, the historian John Lamphear describes a remarkably flexible culture, well suited to this harsh, unpredictable environment. But it wasn't long until outside influences began to distort the finely balanced economy of the region. In the last years of the nineteenth century Swaliili traders and European explorers, adventurers and traders became increasingly frequent visitors, and not far behind were the British imperial forces, determined to subdue the Turkana but encountering unexpectedly stiff resistance. Lamphear estimates that over the next 25 'years, until they were ultimately defeated in the early 1920s, around 14 per cent of the population died in military clashes or from the disease, starvation and attacks by northern neighbours that resulted from the British military campaign. The region's population grew significantly over the rest of the century, but many of the Turkana abandoned pastoral life. Some left by choice, others were driven out by catastro|)hes or by a gradual loss of stock, and others could see little hope of establishing their own herd. Behind each of these reasons was the chronicunrdiat}ilityofrainfall.WhenthefirstSudaneserefugees

began crossing the border into Kenya in 1991, Turkana was in the middle of another major drought. Although the Turkana are relatively recent arrivals, the region

provides a record of key moments in human evolution. Fossils dating back millions of years were first found in the sedinentary rock surrounding Lake Turkana in the late 1960s, and a team of geologists, anthropologists, archaeologists and biologists set up a

semi-permanent camp on the shore of the lake in 1968 -not far 33

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

fi.om where the murders take place in John le Carr6's novel, T7ie

Constant Gardener. Among their discoveries were a Homo habilisi skull, about 1.9 mmion years old, and the skeleton of "Turkana boy," the most intact example of Hor#o crecrfufs yet found, esti-

mated to have been buried in mud 1.6 million years ago.

Vlien the Sudanese refugees began arriving, the tiny town of Kakuma and its surrounding area had a population of about 7000, all of them Turkana. Twelve years later, more than 40,000 Turkana and 85,000 refugees lived in and around the settlement. The village had become a large town with an increasingly complex economy. But Kakuma is different from most other Kenyan towns in one important way: it is almost entirely sustained by a flow of aid and remittances from outside Kenya. Although they help to explain why the Turkana population has grown so fast, the funds also contribute to the conflict between refugees and the local people.

Dozens of people watched from outside the perineter fence as the group of us - UNHCR staff, aid workers and visitors stepped onto the gravel runway. It was an awkward moment, dramatising the most basic difference between them and us -our easy access to the outside world. Their expressions were intent but resigned, as if they were waiting for something to happen without any expectation that it would. A small convoy of vehicles was waiting to whisk us off to the UNHCR compound, a few minutes' drive along an unsealed road. Despite the heat, the movement of people along the road between the town and the camp was constant, the numbers increasing as we approached the camp. Most were on foot; others were riding, often two at a time, on bikes. A surprising number were wearing clean, brightly coloured clothes. We dipped into a dryriverbed,then|]assedagroupofteenagerssittingintheshade of a cluster of twisted trees. 34

KAKURA

The UNHCR offices and living quarters sprawled across the flatterrain,surroundedbyawirefencecoveredindriedgrassand

toppedwithbarbedwire.Beyondthefence,innearlyeverydirection, the landscape stretched uninterrupted to the horizon. To the east was the dense grey-blue bulk of the Pelekech Range, strikinglysimilarinprofiletotheGrampiansinAustralia.Not far away were tens of thousands of refugees, yet the UNHCR com-

pound seemed unnaturally quiet. The staff were friendly but guarded. Waiting for me was Jose Kaippananickal, who works for Don Bosco, one of the non-government agencies providing services to theresidentsofthecamp,mainlyusingfundsfromtheAustralian refugee charity Austcare. Don Bosco is a Catholic welfare organi-

sation specialising in vocational training, and has been running

programs for teenagers and young adults at Kakuma almost since thecanpwasestablished.I'dhadaslightlyinconclusiveexchange of emails with the Don Bosco office in Nairobi, so I wasn't sure whether rose would ,be expecting me, but he had set aside the moming to show me around the classrooms and workshops. The temperature had climbed to near 35 degrees and the vast sky was cloudless. We drove across the highway and into the oldest part of the camp, swerving to avoid people and bikes, past a graveyard, a primary school and the busy, scrufty Somali market. It was landscape that seemed remarkably finiliar from television news footage of famine and displacement in Africa, and exactly the s.ort of landscape we most commonly associate with refugees - which ndght' be why many Australians were so easily persuaded that fighter-skinned asylum seekers arriving from Afghanistan or Iraq by boat, without obvious signs of malnourishment, could be sham refugees. Yet many of the people at Kakuma would not qualify as refugees according to the relatively narrow definition in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Along with its 1967 Protocol, this is

the key international instrument for defining the rights of

35

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

refugees. According to the Convention, a refugee is a person

who has fled his or her home country "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. . ." Because it restricts the term "refugee" to those who have a fear of "persecution" (in other words, that the danger is specific to an individual or a distinct group), the Convention definition has been interpreted to exclude people who are fleeing from more generalised violence or from famine - people who don't face persecution so much as death or injury as a result of conflict or starvation. The definition reflects the Convention's origins in response to the the refugee crisis in Europe after the second world war. The Organisation of African Unity, or OAU, the forerunner of the African Union, believed that the Convention excluded many Afi.icans who clearly were ,refugees, and developed its own deft-

nition in 1969, covering anyone who flees his or her homeland "owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination

or events seriously disturbing public order in either part of or the

whole country." This definition still doesn't explicitly include

people fleeing from famine, but in practice the UNHCR regards them as "persons of concern" and in many cases gives them a§§istance. In its operations in Africa, the UNHCR uses the OAU definition.

Although some of the refugees at Kakuma seek "Convention status" as part of a bid for resettlement, the UNHCR treats the Somali and Sudanese residents of the camp as prj"a /c]cie refugees - in other words, they are refugees because they are members of a group of people who fled across a border in such large numbers that an individual process of estal]Hshing refugee status is impractical. Many have been waiting a decade or more for the danger to recede so that they can return home. Quietly spoken and intense, Jose seemed oblivious to the heat in his long-sleeved shirt and crisply ironed black trousers. Some36

RAKUMA

times it was hard to hear his voice above the noise of the car's engine as he described his work at Kakuma since he arrived in 1995. As we pulled up outside his office - and, later, each time we stoppedtolookatafeatureofthecamp-asmallcrowdofteachers and students quickly gathered to ask him questions. The office and living quarters, where the program first began in 1993, are in the oldest section of the camp, a long, narrow settlement bounded by two intermittent rivers. Tall dusty-green neem and lusina trees take the edge off the heat and I-elieved the flat expanse beyond the riverbeds. The landscape, dotted with small mudbrick houses roofed with corrugated iron, sometimes covered in grass to insulate against the heat, is much less bleak than in the newer parts of the camp, where the dwellings (or, in some places, plastic tents) are ranged in rows on flat, bare earth. On the day I visited, young men were leaning carpentry in a large workshop near the office, alongside five permanent staff and dozens of casual employees assembling tables, beds and solar cookers for the camp. The cookers, which trap and concentrate heat using the reflective surfaces of a small, foil-lined box, are cheap,intriguinglysimpleandeasilyassembled.Buttheyarealso vitally important for the safety of camp residents, especially womenandgirls,whoformanyyearsriskedbeingattackedwhen they ventured outside the camp for scarce firewood. Nearby, a dozen young men were leaming to make mudbrick walls. In another building, young men and women were being taught tailoring and dressmaking. In another, we found twenty teenagers, mainly boys, armed with spanners and screwdrivers, on and around an old truck they had dismantled and were now reassembling.

Don Bosco has given in-kind loans -bicycles, groceries, small

pieces of equipment - to 370 small groups of refugees to help themstarttheirownbusinesses.Mostofthebikeswesaw,usually withapassengerperchedontheback,wererunasbicycletaxisby

37

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

these groups. About 80 graduates of the masonry course were working in the World Vision teams, funded mainly by the UNHCR, which have helped refugees to build many of the mudbrick houses in the camp.

Manymore young men than women seemed to be participat-I ing in the program. rose said that this was because women find it hardertogettimeawayfromtheirfamilies,especiallyiftheyhave children themselves. Women teachers visit them in their homes to encourage them to attend classes or discussion groups, and offer help with arranging childcare. Because Don Bosco is a Catholic order as well as a humanitarian organisation, there's probably some proselytising going on, but the organisation provides hundreds of refugees with an occupation, a govemmentrecognised qualification or, at least, some relief from the burden of daily life in the camp.

By the time Sarah Mutual arrived at Kakuma in 1996, the camp had grown significantly. The daily food ration, supplied by the World Food Programme, was meagre and monotonous -"Maize, wheat flour, sometimes oil, sometimes salt, sometimes beans,, but mainly malze" - and the understaffed, corrupt Kenyan police force was failing to maintain safe conditions. Different nationalities, and even different Sudanese communities, were in conflict, and Turkana clashed with refugees frequently on the fringes of the camp. ``It affected everybody," Sarah told me. "We were always

worried because they can come at night, knock on your door - or just shoot inside and kill someone. It was almost like, if tomorrow comes, you say thank God, then you wait for tomorrow again." Not long after Sarah arrived at Kakuma her husband came to the border to visit her. They met at Lokichokio, the busy UN aid base on the Kenyan side of the border. They disagreed again about where they should live, so Sarali returned to Kakuma. By 38

RAKUMA

that time she was expecting another child, a daughter. Her husbandwentbacktoteachinNorthernBdralGhazal,nearthe borderwithnorthemSudan,butsoonletSarahknowthathewas coming to live in Kenya. "But there was a fight between the SPLA and the government of Sudan," Sarah said, "and he was killed."

Since the influx began in 1991 the Kenyan government has insisted that refugees must live in remote camps rather than in cities and towns. This isn't unusual; in many African countries, and in Asia and Latin America, most refugees who register with the UNHCR or with the host government are forced or at least strongly encouraged to live in camps or rural settlements. AlthoughKenya'sencampmentpolicyhasn'tentirelyworked-at least 15,000 refugees live in Nairobi, for example -it has forced large numbers of refugees to remain, sometimes for a decade or more, in arid border areas. Because of the exti.eme environment, thecorruptanduncertaingripoftheKenyanpoliceandtensions associated with contested national borders, these regions have been perilous for decades. Siting UNHCR-run camps in these settings more or less guarantees that security will be a constant problem. Kenya's other camp, Dadaab in the north-east, has a less diverse population than Kakuma's, and many of the refugees

theresharea]anguageandaculturewiththelocalpeople,whose homeland straddles the Kenya-Somalia border. But a.t Kakuna, the Sudanese, who make up a little over two-thirds of the carnp's

population, don't have much in common with the local po|]ulation - except that cattle are a central element in the cultures and economies of both the Turkana and the Dinka (the largest group of Sudanese in the camp). Rivalry between the two groups, together with the natural resistance of the Turkana to the refugees' claims on land and resources, has created the constant threat of violence.

39

THE LONGEST /OUIINEY

When Jeff Crisp, a senior UNHCR researcher, made a detailed study of Kalcuma in late 1999 he found that, far from the situation improving with time, the level of violence appeared to be rising. An internal UNHCR document fi-om the camp talked of "frequent outbursts of violence" and "a marked increase in the

number of incidents in the camps and the surrounding areas." The sharp rise in the number of refugees in the camp over the previous half decade obviously accounted for part of the increase in tension. In 1994, the UNHCR put the camp's population at 37,542; by early 2000, after the Kenyan government had forced the organisation to consolidate half a dozen camps into two large camps, Kakuma's population had reached an estimated Ilo,000, although it subsequently fell to around 85,000. (The UNHCR considers 20,000 to be the maximum desirable size for any one camp.) Antagonists fi-om wars in the region and rival ethnic groups lived side by side; the food supply was uncertain and lacked variety. Most refugees had no work within the camp and were prohibited under Kenyan law from working outside `the' camp. In these conditions, refugees from civil war, protracted famine or torture could hardly be expected to be other than "traumatised," "aggressive" or "highly stressed," as a UNHCR report described the Kakuma population in 1999. The conflict between refugees and the Turkana was also used as a cover by local politicians trying to deflect discontent about the fulings of the central government or to create trouble among

the locals. The Turkana must compete for jobs in the camp with better-educated Kenyans from other I,parts of the country. As a result, according to Jeff Crisp, "Kakuma has become a hotbed of intrigue, where discontented individuals and groups of people have an interest in fomenting unrest." To deal with the, violence and secure a reliable fuel supply, the UNHCR eventually conti.acted a local group to supply firewood to the camp. It also helped to establish health, education and income-generatingprojectsfortheTurkana,inrecognitionofthe 40

KAKUMA

inequalities emerging between refugees and local residents; even the modest rations in the camp seemed generous from outside.

The Turkana. also benefited from job opportunities and from a

growing trade with organisations working in the camp. As it expanded, Kakuma also became more diverse -perhaps the,mostdiverseUNHCRcampintheworld.Sudanesestillmake up around two-thirds of the residents, but there are now significant numbers of Somalis (around a quarter of the camp population) and smaller numbers from Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic 'Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere: a total of at least nine nationalities and 23 major ethnic groups. Adding to the pressures on the camp is its relative proximity to the border with Sudan, 125 kilometres to the north-west. Dadaab is also in border country, around loo kilometres from Somalia and well inside the area considered by many Somalis 1:o

be part of their country. Both regions are subject to banditry, cattle rustling and conflict between insurgents and the Kenyan army. Weapons flow across the borders from Ethiopia, Somalia, southern Sudan and northern Uganda - all of them regions in which, despite peace efforts and in some cases ceasefires, a culture of violence has taken hold. Kckuma'hasnotbeen"militarised"inthesensethatthecamps in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) were after theRwandangenocide,whenlargenumbersofperpetratorssheltered among refugees, manipulating the camp population and hijackingald.ButtheSPLAhasbeenarealpresenceinthecamp andinthehierarchyoftheSudanesecommunitythere."Kckurm provides recruits (and possibly conscripts) for the rebel forces," writes Jeff Crisp. "It acts as a safe refuge for the wives and children of men who are fighting in southern Sudan. It is visited on

a regular basis by SPLA commanders.'' But in mid 2003 the UNHCR's Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor told me that there was "no evi(lence of direct rebel recruitment" at Kakuma. She' said that there

41

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

was "a general consensus" that minors were not being targeted and were less likely to join the SPLA forces voluntarily now that schooling was more widespread in the camp. "The refugee leadership itself, on its side, actively discourages children from leaving." With the peace talks making progress during 2004, the pressure for recruits declined significandy. Opinions about violence and crime varied widely among the people ,I spoke to. ]ose Kaippananickal said that security had improved since the change of goverrment. Another aid worker

told me that, with nearly 85,000 people forced into close proximity, most of them with no regular work, it was surprising the campwasn'ta77€oreviolentplace."Butpeopledoliveinfear,"she added.

For extended periods the daily ration distributed to refugees at

Kakuna by the World Food Programme, or WFP, at Kakuma has fallen below the World Health Organization's recommended minimum of 2100 calories a day. In the month after I visited the camp the WFP was providing 1700 calories per day for each refugee, with the UNHGR providing an extra 100 calories out of funds earmarked for other programs. The main reason for the shortfall, I was told, was a slowdonm in supplies from the United States, which provides up to two-thirds of 'the food aid in the camp out of its surplus agricultural production. In December 2004 and again in June 2005, the WFP appealed for extra food for Kakuna and Dadaab after being forced to cut the ration distributed to fanilies. Testifying before a US Senate committee in mid 2002, Jason PhillipsfromtheNairobiofficeofthelntemationalRescueCommittee quoted figures showihg that the rate of malnutrition at

Kckunahadnotdroppedbelow14|)ercentduringthepreceding sixyears,andhadpeakedat18.3percentinmid1999.Buttheraw

figures don't reveal the full problem. The food distributed by the 42

RAKUMA

WFP lacks variety and is low in important micronutrients; although the UNHGR tries to compensate with complementary food items, it doesn't have funds to provide anything like a fully rounded diet. An analysis of the ration in 2001 found that it provided only 64 per cent of daily recommended vitamin A, 54 per cent of riboflavin and 89 per cent of vitamin C. "Vitamin A deficiency was found in 47.2 per cent of children under 5, and anaemia was present in 61.3 per cent of children." Why, Phillips asked, hadn't this critical situation led to a largescalelossoflife?Hedescribedhowrefugeestradefoodwithother refugees and with the Turkana, not only to diversify their diet but also to buy firewood and charcoal. Some refugees have extra rations, either because they've registered more than once with the UNHCR or because they've inherited a ration card when someone else has left the camp.

These observations provide a glimpse of the complexity of Kakuma'seconomy,whichbegantogrowsignificantlyasrefugees

found ways of supplementing their incomes. Although they aren't allowed to take jobs or engage in subsistence agriculture, several thousand refugees receive "incentive payments» of between 700 and 2000 Kenyan shillings a month (up.to SA35) for

their work with the non-government agencies operating in the camp. The Jesuit Refugee Service, for example, has 160 trained refugees providing counselling, childcare and other services. The

payments are modest, but they do provide the means to shop at the camp's market stalls. Of those stalls, the one that had the greatest impact was undoubtedly the Western Union agency. During 2001 it served as a conduit for an injection Of funds into the camp from a large group of young Sudanese men who had resettled in the United States. Accompanied by a publicity blitz in late 2000, the US government accepted a first group of just over 3000 of the "lost boys of Sudan,» the young, unaccompanied Sudanese who had formed the original nucleus of the camp. Soon after they arrived in the 43

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

United States there was an appreciable increase in funds circulating within Kakuma, according to Jose Kaippananickal, which

accelerated the growth of the camp economy. Observing the phenomenon from Atlanta, where some of the young Sudanese were living,journalistMarkBixlerdescribedwhathappenedwhenthe six young men he was monitoring received their first US government assistance cheques: The I.ost Boys in apartment 40-G did not say they felt guilty at having been plucked from windswept desolation and delivered to

inerica, but they did not have to ,say it. The words of a Dinka elder,spokenthedaybeforetheyleftAfrica,echoedintheirminds: "What we want to ten you, these people who are going, is don't forget people left behind. Don't forget southern Sudan. Don't

forget your country." And so Jacob, I'eter, Daniel, Marko, John, and William took the first two hundred dollars in spending money.. . marched to the

money-wiringbusiness,andsentittopeoplestillinKakuna.They didthatafterreceivingtwohundreddollarsthesecondmonth,too.

These young men were not unusual. A study of 500 young Sudanese who arrived in the United States in December 2000 found that, six months later, many were sending money to those left behind. Somali traders in search of commercial opportunities rather than refugee status were also helping to drive the development of an anazingly varied local econonry, with benefits for a growing minority. "Don't come to Kakuma expecting to see only the destitute and vulnerable," Jason Phillips wrote in 2002. "It is a fully fledged municipality with the class and i'ncome divisions one would find in any complex society." The American journalist Encarnacion Pyle, who visited the camp in late 2004, captured some of this complexity when she reported the words of two refugees: 44

KAKtJRA

Camp existence doesn't have to be bleak, said Bekele Ayalew Kassa, 31. "Life is what you ,make it."

A former mathematics student in Ethiopia, Kassa borrowed 5000 Kenyan shillings [around SA82] from one of the humanitarian groups and opened a small restaurant in 1997. Business has

more than doubled since then. Kassa dreams of the day he can open an eatery in Atlanta, where his wife land newborn son, Tamer ("miracle»), wait for bin. Yet for many, the camp is a |]rison. "It's worse than hell," said Mulugela Dade Kusa, a 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee who has lived in Kalcumai for a decade. ``The

schools are too crowded. There are few jobs. Meals come once a

day. And I have no future."

Late on my second day at Kakuma, just after nightfall, I joined Christina MCGlynn for a meal in the non-government agencies' compound. A member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, a Catholic order, Christina was the head of the program run by the Jesuit Refugee Service, or ]RS, in the camp. Christina has worked in Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Papua New Guinea and Aus-

tralia - where she became a citizen - but it was six months working with Angolan refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that triggered her interest in working with refugees. We chatted over a glass of beer in the JRS's austere living quarters, then walked under an enormous black sky to the communal cafeteria. nearby. The air was warm and heavy; despite the loud music playing in the background, the small groups eating dinner on the veranda were subdued. Set into the lawn below us, as if in a decaying colonial out|>ost, was an enormous, empty' concrete swimming pool. I,ike a. lot of the facilities at the camp, none of

which were much more than, ten years old, the pool and the nearby buildings looked as though they'd been weathered by decades of heat and wind. 45

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

Based in this part of the camp are most of the agencies that

handle the day-to-day operation of Kakuma - a mix of rehigionbased charities, life Don Bosco, and secular organisations. The Lutheran World Federation is the UNHCR's main "inplementing partner," distributing food, running schools (the camp has over 3o, butmanyarepoorlyequipped),providingsocialservices,andeven managing the UNHCR compound; its role has expanded as the UNHCR has cut back its staff and concentrated on supervision I and protection. The International Rescue Committee handles health cat.e, nutrition and skins development. The World Food Programme brings in the daily food ration. The National Council

of Churches of Kenya runs reproductive health-care programs. Solar Cookers lnternational is encouraging refugees to switch from open fires. FilmAid International shows educational and fea.ture films and teaches filmmaking and technical slchls. The Netherlands Olympic Committee has organised s|)orts programs.

Christinahadastaffofnearly170people,allbutnineofthem

refugees, who provided counselling and natural therapies throughout the camp. The services are aimed at women, who are especially vulnerable to violence, sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive illnesses. Some are suffering the psychological or physical effects of sexual assault, experienced either before

they arrived at Kakuma or at the camp itself. Others are I)regnant teenagers, ostracised by their community or family, with no access to safe alternatives.

Women generally face greater dangers than men at every stage of their experiences as refugees. As they flee from their homes and during their journeys across borders they are vulnerable to violence and intimidation; in the camps they bear much of the impact of changes to family and gender relations that inevitably follow displacement; in cities and towns they're especially vulnerable to poor health services, corrupt offici'als, violence and poverty. It was the recognition of these obstacles that led to the creation of the UNHCR's Women-at-Risk program, which pro46

KAKUMA

vides targeted help to women who face threats to their health and safety. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have established their own women-at-risk progranis, but the quotas are still relatively small and most women seeking resettlement must compete for a place in the general prograni. At Kal{uma, part of the risk derives fi-om the cultural and

social practices of some refugee communities. A survey by the International Rescue Committee in 1998 found that 57 |>er cent

of women and 76 per cent of men in the camp believed that husbands were entitled to beat their wives; 12 per cent of women said they had been beaten during the previous month. Despite campaigns by aid agencies, female circumcision is still practised in

the Somali and Ethiopian communities at the camp - though the UNHCR says it believes the incidence is falling - and polygamy is allowed in some Sudanese and Somali communities. Arranged marriages are common. Earlier in the day Christina and I had toured the service's three counselling centres, where 300 or more women are seen each week. Two courses each year train new counsellors; already over 100 refugees had applied for the 40 positions in the next course. The JRS also runs three day-care centres, providing

support and activities for women with severe psychological conditions, childcare for women students, and a safe haven for women who have been rejected by their parents, treated violently or forced into marriage. Australian researchers Eileen Pittaway and Linda Bartolomei visited Kakuma in 2002 and 2003 as part of a research project evaluating the Women-at-Risk program. They found that there was no female doctor in the camp and that the hospitals and clinics were understaffed and the pharmacies understocked. The JRS's safe haven, with olily six beds, was commonly providing accommodation for around twenty women and children. Women

who had left violent husbands found it difficult to find safety for themselves and their children. The UNHCR's protection areas, 47

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

where accommodation had been upgraded from tents to mudbrick houses, was housing nearly 150 families, most headed by a woman, some of them in their fourth year in the facility.

AlthoughdealingwithsomeoftheproblemsatKckuma-1ikethe danger of collecting firewood - need not l)e expensive, other measures are more costly. The UNHCR's constant funding problems are partly to blame for the longstanding inadequacy of services such as fuel, sanitation, water and housing. But there is another contributing factor: the fact that it took so long for the UNHCR and governments to recognise that Kakuma is not simply a tem]]oray camp set up to deal with an emergency. The camp has become a semi-permanent settlement, and once that happens the needs of its residents move beyond short term survival. This is not to say that providing more sophisticated services and facilities is simple or inexpensive. Bringing tens of thousands of displaced people together in a hostile environment inevitably creates a volatile situation; providing an adequate quality of life in such a setting is difficult.

Arafat Jamal, a researcher at the UNHCR, uses Kakuma as a case study .in a report, Minimum Standards and Essential Needs for Refugees in a Protracted Refugee Sitwation, puhished in late 2000. He sums up the situation in this way: Kakuna camp, a forlom agglomeration at the best of times, has been subjected to drastic measures taken by UNHCR to comply

with financial prioritisation requirements. The amount spent per refugee has dropped from $54 [per year] in 1997 to $42 in 1999.

The refugees are in a terrible state. And yet, minimum emergency standards' have, by and large, been 'attained.

When Tamal visited the camp the refugees were still living in temporary dwellings made of earth, branches and strips of blue

48

RAKUMA

plastic sheeting. Education spending was $25 per capita in 1999,

much lower even than the inadequate amount of $200 spent by the Kenyan government on each student in its own school system. Just 1800 teenagers were receiving secondary education.

According to Jamal, the reason the UNHCR focuses on "minimum standards" rather than "essential needs» is that it is

preoccupied with emergencies rather than with the needs of refugees stranded for years in camps. As the organisation's Ha7!cZZ)oak/orEmerger!c!.esputsit,"bydefinition,theneedsofarefugee

emergeney must be given priority over other work of UNHCR.» As much as anything, this reflects the pressures - political and financial - on the UNHCR to deal with the refugee flows that happen to be gripping the attention of the international community. "Scenes of mass movement dominate the media, while protracted situations are covered in the arid reports of international agencies, more readily evoking' fatigue than funds," writes ]amal. With much of its funding earmarked by donor governments for specific emergencies -Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001-02 and its core funding dependent on the support of those same donors,theUNHCRhaslittlechoiceibuttodevoteseeminglydisproportionate funds and efforts to those locations. Although it's difficult to make comparisons because of the different costs of

working in different settings, both the previous High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, and his predecessor, Sadako Ogata, made it clear that the result of donors' funding decisions has been a clear relative underfunding of the organisation's Afi-ican operations. In 2000, Ogata told the UN Security Council that "what is provided to refugees in Africa, including food and basic survival items, is far less than other parts of the world." In mid 2003] soon after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Lubbers observed that funds for Afi.ican refugees were declining rather than increasing. As Tamal observes, camps like Kckuma remain in a state of "emergency" because the resources are never available to stabhise

49

THE LONGEST )OURNEY

thesituationforthelongerterm.TheattitudeoftheKenyangovernmeui - at least up until the end of 2002, when the Moi regime was voted out of office - made matters worse. The camps win onlyenablerefugeestoregainasenseof'dignityiftheyofferthem the opportunity to to develop their 5ldlls and pursue their own livelihoods. Some host countries in Africa. still allow refugees to

work in the mainstream economy; but a growing number, like Kenya, do not. Meanwhile, the new govemment's promise to relax its strict "encampment" policy was taking a long time to result in action.

Responding to circumstances at Kckuma, the UNHCR has encouraged refugee communities to become involved in planning,carryingoutandmonitoringthemainassistanceprograms. Elected representatives of each community liaise with aid agencies and the UNHCR. "We're working towards handing over more management control to the communities themselves," the UNHCR's Programme Officer at Kckuma, Khalid Shall, told me. According to Arafat lamal, these efforts are inpressive: Refugee communities are well-organised, and participate in the

planning of assistance deliveries, and in strategic planning - the latter infrequently encountered in refugee programmes. UNHCR

has gone further than merely involving existing leaders, it has

actively attempted to redress inequalities by promoting the role of women, and encouraging multinationality asso ciations.

But |amal cautions against the potential for a false kind of selfmanagementinwhichtherefugeeshavelittlepowerwhfleshouldering a greater bui.den of day-to-day management. Theattempttointroduceself-managementandcustomarylaw within carp communities brings its own problems. Although self-management is undoubtedly a desirable goal, tra.ditional forms of justice and governance can be oppressive and inequitable. Community councils "have been unable to resolve 50

KAKUVA

humanrightsproblemsarisingfromtheabductionofyounggirls, forced marriages, female circumcision, wife beating and illegal incarceration," according to the Kenyan refugee I)oliey analysts Monica Kathina Juma and Peter Mwangi Kagwanja, who also argue that the traditional courts "often violate human rights." Traditional decision-malchg structures can trap refugees in "a virtual time warp," according to refugee specialist Susan Forbes Martin. "The role of women in their own countries might be changing dramatically (or might have had the events leading up to the population uprooting not occurred), but the refugees remain isolated from these developments," she writes in the 2004 edition of her book, Re¢gt?e Wome#. "To further complicate matters, Western agencies sometimes impose their concept of what traditional women's roles were or should be, even romanticising the dependency of women." When the US-based Women's Cominission for Refugee Women and Children visited camps in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zambia, Pakistan and Turkey, its findings provided some support for Forbes Martin's argument. At all these camps, the commission reported, "officials agreed that refugee consultations with both men and women were essential to effective camp governance and reported positive results from involving women in decisionmaking." But, it added, "refugee women expressed frustration at their inabihity to act collectively to improve their living conditions. A narrow cadre Of male political leaders or tribal elders dominated refugee leadership." The commission concluded: "Overall,theassessmentfoundthatsignificantprogresshasbeen inade but much more can be \done to implement the Gt£7.deJ¢.7zes

o# f#e Profecfz.o# a/Re/tfgee Wome# and improve protection for refugee women, and girls." Forbes Martin also credits the UNHCR with improvements: Much has changed in the past decade. There is greatly increased

awareness that a large majority of forced migrants, particularly in

51

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

developing countries, are women and their dependent children. .. [T]he UN High Commissioner for Refugees has promulgated Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women, as well as more specific guidance in addressing sexual and gender-based violence

targeted at refugee women and children. . .

The ,special needs and resources of refugee women are now

well-documented. The challenge for the future is to translate our

improved understanding of their situation into concrete, effective

programs which will help them hve in safety and dignity;

In 1997 there seemed little prospect of peace in southern Sudan, so Sarah started trying to find a resettlement place in the west. "I

would have gone anywhere," she said, "but mainly I was thinking of Australia. It sounded better than America - we heard crazy things about America!" While waiting for resettlement, she trained as a community health worker, specialising in family planning, and was quickly employed by the International Rescue Committee. Within a few months She was promoted to a job as a fanily planning supervisor in the carp. At that time, resettlement applications were handled at the Nairobi office of the UNHGR, which would determine whether an applicant was entitled to refugee status and whether resettlement was the most appropriate o|>tion. (Since early 2003, appli-

cationshavebeenhandledwithinthecamps.)IftheUNHCRsees resettlement as desirable, it refers the icase to one of the resettlement countries, which have their own criteria for choosing who to accept.

Along with the adult members of eleven other families, Sarah was selected to be interviewed for resettlement later in 1997. Four of the interviewees, including Sarah, headed single-parent families, and three of those families received rejection letters. Sarah and her children were accepted. But it wasn't until late the following year that the UNHCR contacted her to say that the Aus52

KAKUMA

tralian High Commission had asked for her photos and was considering her case. ``1 was so excited, but I waited, waited, until

2000. They had not called me. So I went back myself to Nairobi, to the Australian High Commission, and asked them. They checked the system and said, no, there's nothing Ike that, your

name is not there." It\ seems likely that Sarah was a victim of the corruptionamongresettlementstaffattheUNHCRoffice,which brought processing to a halt in 2ool. Eventually, in May 2002, Sarah went to Nairobi again. She applied for a resettlement place and received a file number in

June. Suddenlythe process accelerated, and within a few months she was leaving for Australia. Yet even for someone as articulate ns Sarah the process had been a long one with no guarantee of success. Although resettlement could become more widely accessible now that the UNHCR has decentralised the application I)rocess to the camps, many of the refugees at Kckuma, regardless of the strength of their case, simply haven't got to frst base.

Des|)ite the signs that the peace talks between the Sudanese gov-

cmment and the SPLA were making progress, the mood among l`iost Sudanese at the camp during 2004 seems to have been cautious. When the I)rospects began to look promising in late 2004 theUNHCR'splanningforrepatriationintensified,thoughitwas cni.eful not to encourage too much optimism about large-scale a,1l.ly returns.

A year later, in September 2005, the Sudanese population at

Kakuma had grown rather than decreased. Visiting in late August, the new High Commissioner for Refugees, Ant6nio Guterres, met with representatives of about 5000 southern Sudanese who had crossed the border into Kenya, fleeing from militia violence, in the months since the peace deal had been 8lgned.TheUNHCRputtheSudanesepopulationof'thecampat 66,000. Food shortages were once again acute throughout the

53

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

African camps, not only causing hunger but also slowing down repatriation by reducing the World Food Programme's capacity to provide a ration to tide over returnees. SomeoftherefugeesatKakunahavenowbeenlivingthere"warehoused," as the US Committee for Refugees and Immi-

grantsputsit-formorethanadecade.Anestimated40percent of refugees, worldwide, live in camps like the one at Kckuma. Australian inmigration ministers Phhip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone have repeatedly argued that refugees in the camps are themostdeservingofAustralia'shelp-farmoreso,theysay,than asylum seekers arriving by boat. Yet in 2002-03, fewer than one in five of Australia's humanitarian entrants had lived in a refugee carl). In the following year the proportion of ex-camp residents in the Australian program rose slightly, to just over one in five, still well short of 40 per cent. ThisisnottosaythattheAustralianprogramshouldattempt to replicate the exact proportions of camp and non-camp po|)ulations. Refugees in different places - different camps, different rural and urban non-camp locations -face a variety of obstacles and dangers. But the needs of the camp populations were reduced to an empty debating point amid the dismaying hyperbole that has surrounded refugee policy in Australia.

54

CHAPTER 3

The promised land

had grown up in the Western Upper Nile region near the border betweennorthemandsouthernSudan.Bothhisparentshaddied a fewyears earlier -he isn't sure how -and Joseph, his sister and his two brothers had been living with his grandmother near a large town called Bentiu. The SPLA controlled most of the region, but there was government-sponsored militia activity to the west, and the sound of gunfire reached Joseph's viuage one evening as he and his brother were sitting outside talking. To begin with, the boys sat quietly, waiting to see what would happen next. Soon there was more gunfire, and people l)egan to flee. "Many people ran in different direc'tions," Joseph said. "So I ran with the crowd. I was crying, and I wanted to find my sister.» That night, many of the houses in the village were burned down. When Joseph told me about his journey we were sitting in a tiny brick office in the non-government agency compound at Kakuma in 2003. Overhead, a single fluorescent tube suspended from the ceiling swayed as the airconditioner fought noisily ngainst the heat. A tall, lean man in his late twenties, Joseph wore a pair of running shoes, dark-blue cotton trousers and a loose,

55

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

open-necked shirt. He leaned towards me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, as he spcke. The attack on Joseph's village came during a confusing phase of the war between the government and the SPLA. In Aprd 1985 a popular uprising had overthrown the sixteen-year regime of General |aafar al-Nimeiri. The regime's increasingly hardline Islamistpolicieshadfueuedtherenewedwarinthesouthwhileits corruption and economic rismanagement alienated many in the north.Thenewcoalitiongovernmentwasintensifyingitsmflitary offensive while secretly exploring the means to bring the conflict to a negotiated end. Its decision to bankroll anti-SPIA militias had introduced a dangerous and unpredictable new dynamic into the conflict. Famine-relief efforts were being disrupted by both sides.Meanwhile,talkswereprogressingbetweentheSPLAandan ahiance of northern opposition groups, and the government had declared a state of emergency after demonstrations in Khartoum protesting about the continued economic slide. As part of a large group fleeing the fighting, Joseph began walkingtowardstheEthiopianborder,risingintheearlyhoursof

the moming and sleeping in the middle of the day, following a similar route to the one that tens of thousands of southern Sudanese had travelled since the war had resumed in 1983. Most of the refugees walked 400 kilometres Qr' more - and some 'as far

as 900 kilometres - to reach refuge in Ethiopia. Like Sarali and her travelling companions, Joseph's group ended up at Itang. For young male refugees, the camp there was not particularly

safe. Despite the enormous inflow of refugees, the UNHCR maintained no more than a "skeleton staff," in the words of one of its senior officials. This helps to explain wly, according to some accounts, the SPLA was effectively running the camps -

and using them as a source of recruits, voluntary or forced. After

Joseph had been at Itang for a few weeks, a large group of boys wastakenawayforamonth'smilitarytraining."Thoseofuswho were small were taken to I'anyidu camp by some elders," he said. 56

THE PROMISED I,AND

"That's where I started school. We were all minors, no parents.

We were together with our teachers. We cooked,for ourselves and our teachers."

Suffering repeated setbacks in its war against the Eritreans

and the Tigrayans, the Ethiopian government turned to the southern Sudanese forces for help. According to accounts provided to Human Rights Watch, among the troops sent to fight were between 900 and 2000 Sudanese children as young as eleven

years old. Ofle SPIA commander told Human RIghts Watch that the boys were organised into a separate "Red Arny," which suffered enormous casualties and was eventually taken off the fi.ont line. "The SPLA has engaged in recruitment of underage soldiers," Human Rights Watch concluded. "It has maintained large campsofboysseparatefromtheirfamfliesandtribes,giventhem

some education and military training and from these camps has drawn fresh recruits." A senior SPLA commander later said that the use of children as soldiers was one of the factors that l'ed to the split in the SPLA later in 1991.

I,ike Sarah and her family, `]oseph and his friends fled back towards the Sudanese border after Mengistu fell. Their route, like

Sarali's, took them to the banks of the Gilo River, which flows west, parallel to the border, and eventually ifeeds into the Nile system."Wewereyoung,allofus,andwewerenotknowinghow to swim," said Joseph. "Some elders were thinking wisely, so they put a rope across, from_ a tree to another tree." It seemed like thousands were trying to cross at once, all of them clinging to the

rope. "The history of Gilo is jn all our minds because so many people drowned.;' Eventually the group arrived at Pochala, a village in sc)uth-eastern Sudan. It was there, in January 1992, that Scott Peterson, a correspondent for the London DajJy TczegrapJi, encountered this large

groupofrefugees,mostofthemteenageboys.Petersonestimated that there were 12,000. "In Pochala," he writes in his book j\4le Agrf.#sf My Bro£71er, "the boys threw together a motley array of

57

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

grass huts, or f#ktJJs, but even here the fighting was never far away." He goes on: Seen through the haze of smoke from raging bush fires, the camp spread away from the crocodile-infested Akobo River like the farreaching tentacles of a thirsty root system. . . As I picked my way

through, boys gathered ai-ound like curious children do everywhere else. But they were silent, and hap|)y enough just to observe

-unlike most children, I found, who felt they must participate in yourpresence.Plasticcrucifixeshungfromsomeneck§.Mostboys

wore the sane rags they had won for a year or two, and others werenaked,theirclotheslongsincerottedundertheconstantpressure of equatorial sun or steaming heavy rain.

Peterson could smell "legumes of some kind" coolchg. Joseph

saidtheyhadalmostnofoodfortheirfirstsixweeksinthecamp, and survived on roots and fruit from trees. ``So people grew slim liketrees,"hesaid,"likepeoplewhorosefi.omthedead."Thenthe Red Cross arrived with food and medicine, saving many of the group from disease and starvation. Apart from the hunger it wasn'tsuchabadplace,andmuchcoolerthanwherethey'dbeen.

Joseph and his group stayed at Pochala for two months, unth another government offensive began. ``1 remember the plane came at around twelve noon," Joseph told me. "I was eating maize. We were bombed by planes from Khartoum." After encouraging militias to attack the camps the Sudanese govemmenthad decided on a major attack on Pochala aspartofadry-seasonoffensiveacrossthesouth.Evenbeforethe

anticipated attacks took place, evacuation had begun, assisted by the Red Cross, which the government later expelled from the south. For Joseph, this meant another journey, partly by tmck, this time across marshlands and drier country, then through a dangerous area controlled by government-backed militias, to a town called Narus on the Kenyan border. There, a census con58

THE PROMISED LAND

ducted by the United Nations and aid agencies counted 12,241 minors and 6600 "teachers and dependents." A month later they 'were on the move again. A government attack on nearby Kapoeta had driven a new group to Narus and the refugees already there fled, in turn, into Kenya. Joseph and his

group walked all day and night, without water, into the arid north-west of Kenya, arriving at Lokichokio, the headquarters of the UN relief effort for southern Sudan. "When I tried to eat and drink," Joseph said, "blood came u|). I sipped boiled water until I felt better." An estimated 300,000 refugees had entered Kenya mainly from Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia - in the preceding months. It was la.te in May 1992. "The influx of Sudanese was startling for its suddenness," reported the Eco7!omz.sf. "The day after the fall of Kapoeta to gov-

ernment troops, some 22,500 people walked across the border. About 12,500 of them are young boys, at special risk of being pressed into military service or murdered." At least 1500 of the boys left or disappeared from the group over 'the following weeks - some of them, the evidence suggests, driven back into Sudan by

the southern military, others reunited with relatives. The rest were sent to the new refugee camp at Kakuma, 125 kilometres from the border. Kakuma was still a relatively small camp. But within a few monthsitspopulationgrewtonearly20,000people,three-quarters

ofwhomwerechildren.Usingrefugeelabour,theUNHCRandthe Lutheran World Federation set up basic amenities, including a water supply, a soccer field and a mudbrick community centre. The refugees lived in makeshift huts. Schools had opened but there were no classrooms, so the teachers taught their classes under the trees. At the camp in Ethiopia Joseph had got as far as grade three; over the ne}ct few years at Kckuma he finished his I.rinaryschooling. By mid 1993 there were 320 teachers in the camp, and the

population had ,grown to around 30,000. The Red Cross had 59

THE LONGEST IOUIINEY

beguntryingtotracethefamiliesoftheunaccompaniedchildren and teenagers, but although the Sudanese government had agreed to cooperate, fighting in the south of Sudan was hindering any kind of humanitarian activity.

Although he didn't use the term himself, Joseph Wadar's story soundedverymuchliketheexperiencesofthethousandsof"lost boys of Sudan" who arrived at Kakuma in 1992. The important details all matched the most reliable `accounts of what those young Sudanese had experienced in the late 1980s and early '90s.

But when I asked a UNHGR staff member how many of the "boys"-nowmostlyintheirtwenties-stillremainedatKakuma, he said that all of them had been resettled, mainly in the United States.

Until then ltd had no doubt at all that loseph's account of his life over the preceding decade' and a half was true, but this made me wonder. Back in Nairobi 1 asked another UNHCR official whether Joseph'§ story was tine. "Welcome to one of the challenges of this job!" she exclaimed. I.ater again, back in Australia,

I talked to an aid worker who had worked closely with Joseph at Kakuma. She had no doubt tha.t he had described his experiences truthfully, and she explained to me how some of the young Sudanese had moved out of the area where the lost boys were concentrated, preferring to live in parts of the camp where there was a mixture of age groups. Joseph, she was certain, was one of these. Then a group of American and European researchers reportedthata"residualcaseloadofSudanese`lostboys"-upto 4000 - remained in Kenya, mainly at the camp, at around the time I visited.

At Kakuma, from 1999 onwards, a great deal hinged on whether or not you were one of the lost boys. In July of that year the US government announced that it would resettle thousands of the young Sudanese on the, basis of their membership of that 60

THE PROMISED LAND

group. Not surprisingly, the young men were anxious to get their stories right for the US officials who came to Kckuma in 1999 to select a first group of over 3000 to travel to the United S,tates. "Before the interviews began," writes joumalist Mark Binder, who interviewed officials from the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, "word got back to refugee-resettlement officials in Washington that many of the young men were being coachedonwhattosay."Someofthelostboysweretellingothers to make sure they mentioned that they'd been tending cattle as boys in southern Sudan when their villages were attacked, that their relatives had been killed by militias, and that they'd had to walk in the wild to find safety. Bixler continues: [T]he State Department was well aware in 1999 of accounts that the SPIA trained child soldiers in Ethiopia in the late 1980s and

early'90s.Thatdidnotmaketherefugeesanylessdigibleforreset-

tlement, but there was a perception in Kckuma that it might. An official in the refugee admissions program in the State Department

travelled to Kakuma just before the INS interviews and urged the Lost Boys she met to ignore whatever advice they had received and "just be honest." Nevertheless, after the INS began questioning the

young men, the refugees seemed "very uncomfortable" talking to o much about what happened in Ethiopia.

Attempts by legitinate refugees to second-guess officials are a

feature of the resettlement process. The United States took the attitude, in Bixler's words, that "no one" disputed that these

young Sudanese "were separated from their parents or that thousands had died iof starvation, disease, or aninal attacks while trekking from Sudan to Ethiopia and then back into southern Sudan and into Kenya. If the United States was looking for a group to welcome on humanitarian grounds, the Lost Boys were perfect candidates." For refugee authorities in the Uulted States, juggling competing imperatives and anxious not to alienate the 61

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEy

public, the lost boys offered a unique opportunity. They were exactlythekindofrefugeeswhowouldwinwidesympathyinthe United States: young, innocent and, it was safe to assume, gratefur. Jind the extraordinary story of their flight from Sudan was the material from which myths are made. "They 'are known as the lost boys," reported the Bosfo77 GJoZ7e

inatypicalarticleinJuly2000,"severalthousandyoungSudanese men who have spent their adolescences on the run, fleeing war, famine, and slavery. Now, according to officials at the State

DepartmentandtheUSCatholicConference,theUSgovemment will soon admit most of the young Sudanese men as refugees." Uhlike many later reports, this one made it clear that the "boys" were now men. But it gave the misleading impression that the grouphadspentmanyyearsconstantlyonthemove,anditsgrasp of the numbers involved is a bit shaky (around 10,500 unaccompanied Sudanese minors arrived at Kakuma in 1992). Like a game of Chinese whispers, the true story - dramatic

enough, you'd think - had begun its transformation into something like a legend. The children had walked "across Africa,"

wrote a journalist with the online magazine SJcife. Fourteen-yearold Sudanese boy Maker Mabior Marial "had been running for five years when he arrived at Kckuma refugee camp in Kenya in 1992," reported Associated Press. The main themes of this new versionwerespelledoutinthis2003reportfromCBSTelevision's Sixty Mimties 11..

inPeferPa#,therewerelostboyswhofoughtoffpiratesandcrocodiles before flying off to Never Never Land.

In Sudan, thousands of lost boys fought off crocodiles and other dangers we can barely imagine and, as 60 M!.ri#fes JJ first

reported 18 months 'ago, are happily flying off to a new life in the United States.

Their incredible journey began 15 years ago, Correspondent

Bob Simon reports, in the midst of Sudan's civil war in which two

62

THE PROMISED LAND

mihionpeopledied.Theirparentswerekilled;manyoftheirsisters werei sold into slavery. Many boys died, too.

But the survivors started walking. How many more died of starvation or thirst or enemy fire in the years that followed will

never be known. But in 1992, five years after their long march

began, thousands walked into a refugee camp in Kenya. And for

more than a year, many have been getting ready for another journey to a strange and foreign land. . . Sasha Chanoff, anAmerican at the camp who helps prepare the

boysfortheirjoumey,saysmanyhaveneverbeenexposedtolights or to a fork or a knife or to a TV: "It's a group that's lost in time," he says.

Althoughit'snotcertainthatthejournalistoraidworkerwho coined the phrase "lost boys of Sudan" had Peter P#77 in mind, I.eports like this assumed that it was the source of the phrase. But thereferencehidesmorethanitreveals.InPeferP#73thelostboys live in a timeless place, never growing up. By the time they reachedAmerica most of the Sudanese lost boys were men. The "lost in time" theme recurs throughout the press reports from mid 2000 onwards. In her analysis of the initial newspaper coverage of the lost boys, the media researcher Melinda Robins writes, "Every reporter without exception describes how the refugeeshaveJnevelseenaflushtoilet,anelectriclight,arefrigeralor, a TV, a computer.» The A7.I.zo#cz Repwz7Zz.c, for example,

.cported,

N}rak stands in his west Phoenix apartment studying the mysterious chunk of white plastic. He lifts it off the floor, spins it round,

raisesthelid,tugsatthethinwhitelopecomingoutofthebottom. "One of our friends gave this to us," Michael says graciously, "but we don't know the use of it". . . The mystery gift is a coffeemaker,

but it might as weu have dropped from the sky - like the apartment's stove, refrigerator, table lamp and toilet.

63

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

Using an improbable series of images, a teacher told the Bosfora GZoZJe's Ellen Barry: "They don't know the Earth goes around the

sun. They don't know who Elvis Presley is. They don't lmow who Hitler is, they don't know World War 11." Robins describes how the reporting built up what she calls a "quasi-Biblical tale of exile and long wandering fonowed by sup-

posedredemption"-redemptionthroughintegra-tionintomainstream US society. According to the reports, the Sudanese travelled "from Hell to Fargo," from "primitive" Africa to "the Promised I,and," after their "long' wandering in the desert." Abstracted from the complex detail of the conflict in Sudan, routinely described as boys despite being aduts, frequently shown as innocents perplexed by American technology and customs, they were like ``like visitors from another planet.»

So it is both surprising and predictable that some of the young Sudanese do very well in their new home. Joey MCLiney, a banker who befriended the newly arrived Joseph Taban, told a reporter fi.om 60 Mj#wfcs H that Joseph was "living the American dream. He's already got jobs, he's self-sufficient. You've taken someone literally in the sl:one age and dropped him into a modern civilization and said after four months you're on your own. And he is, and he's fine. It's the most remarkable thing I've ever seen."

Undoubtedly the central message of these reports - the boys'

youth and innocence, the promise of the United States -was part of a well-intentioned attempt by immigration officials (or the non-goverrment agencies involved in the project) to forestall opposition to the arrival in the United States of a significant number of young, black refugees. Journalistic imp eratives were at work too: .the "stone age to civilisation" angle was too good to

pass up. It's hard to think of better imagery to advertise the US government'§ resettlement program. "S cores of reports app eared in the world press," the US Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration reported in August 2001, "capturing the attention of 64

THE PROMISED LAND

the general public and increasing appreciation for US resettlement and humanitarian efforts."

Without those efforts - regardless of the motivation and shortcomings of the US program - the scale of resettlement over the past decade would be nowhere near as impressive. Between 1995 and 2004, over 900,000 people were resettled in western countries

- overwhelmingly in the United States, Canada and Australia either as refu\gees or through related humanitarian programs. Although the resettlement program is a basic element in the

UNHCR's repertoire, over two-thirds of those people were resettied largely or entirely without its involvement. Most of them were refugee or humanitarian cases processed by the major resettlement countries through their diplomatic posts in countries of first asylum or through programs for group, family reunion or sponsored arrivals.

Of Australia's annual quota of 13,000 humanitarian places each year, 6000 are for refugees, generally referrals from the

UNHCR, and the remaining 7000 are allocated to other humanitarian entrants who satisfy three criteria. They need to have "experienced substantial discrimination amounting to a gross violation of human rights." They need to meet the usual tests of health and character. And they need an Australian sponsor who will give them "substantial settlement assistance" while they establish themselves in their new community. Because there are so many applicants, those who are selected as humanitarian entrants are generally no less in need of resettlement than those who come as refugees. They can include people - displaced within their own country, for example - whose needs are great but who don't qualify ias refugees. In some cases, applicants whose case for protection is Strong but who have oily limited sponsor support are transferred into the refugee stleam. The Australan government covers the costs of travel for refugees; 65

THE LONGEST JOUENE¥

other humanitarian entrants, or their sponsors, ,must cover their our travel costs. Canada provides places for 7500 government-assisted refugees each year and up to 4000 priva.tely sponsored refugees. Although it traditionally gave priority to refugees who had the best chance of achieving economic serf-sufficiency within a year, since 2002 this goal has been relaxed (three to five years is the new time frame) and vulnerable groups have become a focus. Numerically, the US program is far and away the largest, even with the significant fluctuations in the number of people resettled there each year. In the decade prior to 2001, the United States' annual intake ranged between 132,531 (in 1992) and 70,488 (in 1997). In both 2002 and 2003, partly as a result of the

September 11 attacks, the number was below 29,000, although it rose to 52,900 in 2004. Part of the reason for the abrupt reduction in numbers was the US administration's decision, after the attacks, to subject all future refugee entrants, including those who had already been ap|>roved, to a new verifica.tion process

that created long delays in final approvals. Over the decade to 2004-05, Australia's humanitarian quota ranged fi-om below 10,000 in the late l990s to nearly 16,000, exceeding the quota, in 2004. Canada's armual offshore intake ranged between 9645 and 13,518 over the decade.

The US program has three streams. Priority I cases, referred by the UNHCR or by US embassies, are people who are individually recognised as having a claim to refugee status under the 1951 Convention. They made up 17 per cent of cases during 1994-2003. Priority 2 -the largest category - covers "groups of special humanitarian concern,» which aren't necessarily handled or referred by the UNHCR; in recent years these groups have included the lost boys and the Somali Bantu, refugee groups that the UNHGR had recognised as needing protection but not necessarily regarded as priority cases for resettlement. Intemally dis-

pla.ced people, who generally fall outside the UNHCR's 66

THE PROMISED LAND

responsibilfty, have also been included in this category Priority 2 makes up 62 per cent of the US resettlement program. Four ol:her visa categories make up the third stream, which is restricted to applicants with family links to the' United States and accounts for 17 per cent of arrivals. (The remaining 4 per cent are classified "unknown.") The Priority 2 stream still shows signs of the program's origins in the Cold War, when the flow of refugees - or escapees, as they were called - from communist countries to the west had enormous propaganda value. During the 1950s, the United States largely avoided working with the UNHCR, preferring to handle admissions through its own United States Escapees Program, which was less a humanitarian program than an instrument of foreign policy. Throughout the l980s and '90s, a high percentage of the refugees admitted to the United States continued to be Priority 2 "in-country refugees" from the former Soviet Union, Vietnam and Cuba. More recently, Priority 2 has included groups that, according to the US authorities, the UNHCR would refer for resettlement if it had sufficient resources to process the members individually; these include Bosnians in mixed marriages, Baku Armenians and Meskhetian Turks. The abrupt fall in the US intake in 2002 and 2003 reflected post+September 11 anxieties, but also signalled a seachange in the US resettlement program. In a detailed report commissioned by

the State Department, the refugee law specialist David A. Martin shows how a program designed to suit Cold War conditions was

beginningtounravelby2001.Uptothattime,ithaddependedon reliable and relatively large-scale movements of refugees out of communist countries, most recently Vietnam. In the Cold War context, the question of whether people fleeing eastern Europe or the communist countries of Southeast Asia were refugees was regarded as relatively straightforward. Superficially, the break-up of Yugoslavia seemed to generate more of these Cold War-style refugees. But it actually had more in common with the messy

67

THE LONGEST JO\URNEy

complexitythatcharacterisesrefugeeflow§inAfrica,CentralAsia and elsewhere. Martin shows how the`US program has had

trouble adapting to the new circumstances. He argues that the

program will need to learn how to work with a larger number of smaller and less straightforward grou|]s of refugees.

But this won't necessarily lead to a greater role for the UNHGR in determining which refugees are given the opportunity to resettle in the United States. Although the United States accepts UNHCR referrals, the relationship between the two has not traditionally been close, partly for historical reasons, partly because the United States has combative relations with many of the UN agencies, and partly because it jealously guards its right to determine the character of its immigration program, including the refugee component. In the case of the resettlement of the young Sudanese in the United States, the logistics were handled not by the UNHGR 1)ut by the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, a Geneva-based intergovernmental agency headed by Brunson MCKinley, a former US diplomat. Relations can be tense between the IOM and the UNHCR because -as a UNHCR staff member

put it to me - the I0M's mandate doesn't explicitly recognise the rights of refugees. While the UNHCR has a responsibility to involve itself in refugee situations as they arise, the IOM is more like a contractor-for-hire, brought in by governments to assist in managing elements of the refugee and migration infi.astructure. Relations between the two organisations weren't helped by the IOM's decision to accept the job of running the offshore camps the Australian government set up on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea as part of its Pacific Solution. At the time that the IOM was managing these controversial and troubled facilities, the High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, visited Australia and described the Pacific Solution as "a bit stupid." According to a UNHCR staff member I spoke to, the IOM had been portraying itself as "a government-friendly UNHCR" but had 68

THE PROMISED LAND

been "burnt" by its experience with Australia and was unlikely to take on a similar contract again.

In his book, I7ze lost Bays of S#d¢7z, Mark Bixler describes the

debate within the US administration and among US officials, UNHGR staff and aid agencies over the value of flying the young Sudanese to America. One agency argued it was likely that many of them had living relatives in Sudan, so the journey to the United States would preclude any opportunity for them to be reunited.Anotheragencycounl:eredwiththeviewthattheyoung men had alreadybeen removed from their culture, so the advantages of the move to the United States would outweigh the cultural disruption it would cause. Bixler's book, published in early 2005, is the most thorough account of the boys' journey to the United States. Two very fine documentaries - Be#j¢mj7t af7cZ jig.s Bro#}er, directed by Arthur Howes and released in 2002, and Josf Bays o/ St{c!flfty directed by

Megan Mylan and Ton Shenk (2003) -also provide glimpses of the

young men's lives at Kakuna and follow them through their first months in America. Both documentaries track a small group of refugees from the camp to the United States. The Sudanese discuss

their ambivalence about leaving the camp and their responses to life in their new homes. "I've been here in Kckuma for ten good years," says Benjamin, "although with some difficulties and some many bad things." Owing to an administrative error, Benjamin is

left behind at Kakuma when his brother William leaves for America. On the eve of his flight out of the camp, William is "longingfortomorrow,»butpromisesthathewon'tbechangedby America and that he will bring his education ``home." In Lost Bays o/ Swcza#, Santino tells his friends, "I'm not feeling ckay. When I think of being alone there in America, I don't even feel like eating.

Even if I eat good food, and I an alone, the lonely will reduce my size. I will not feel okay. And I will not grow fat."

69

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

The young. men's resolve to retain a` Dinka identity and to return to Africa with an education runs through both films. "When I go to America," says Santino, "I will stin think about our

Dinka culture. cnd when I come back, I will stin remember our Dinka ways." Peter says, "Maybe 1'11 be the one who brings elec-

tricity back to our home town." Resettled with a small group in a flatinHouston,Santinohastroublefindingaschoolthatwilltake on a student in his twenties, but finds work in a plastics factory a long way from where he lives. Peter gives up on Houston and moves to Kansas City in search of education. "I miss it - I miss that place," Peter says, as he, shows photos of Kakum to a young woman he meets at school. "Back in Kckuma we thought America was so great," says another member of the group. "But now it's clear. There's no heaven on earth.» William finds himself working in a low-paid supermarket job. One of the directors of Lost Bays oJ.S#dcl71, Megan Mylan, says

she was surprised by how little help the young men received in the communities where they settled. Unlike in Australia, where refugees and humanitarian entrants are immediately eligible for social security payments, refugees arriving in the United States are given four months to become self-sufficient. "It was just incredibly difficult for these guys," says the film's co-director, Ton Shenk.Althougheachoftheyoungmenreactedtotheircircumstances differendy, we see signs of the depression and anxiety identified in studies \carried out in the United States. A 2001 study of 500 young Sudanese who had lived in America for six months found that initial feelings of euphoria were giving way to renewedsymptomsoftrauma-including"survivorguilt."Many, the study reported, "are trying to send money to those left behind. Some are now claiming relatives who may or may not have been identified during processing." Settlement support services are longer-term and more generous in Australia, but refugees here inevitably suffer from significant psychological distress. A team of researchers at Flinders 70

THE PROMISED LAND

University has followed two groups of migrants, including refugees an\d other humanitarian entrants, since their arrival in Australia. Humanitarian entrants (including refugees) made up 16 per cent of the first group, which arrived between September 1993 and August 1995, and 9 per cent of the second group, which arrived between September 1999 and August 2000. Overall, the

researchers found a much higher incidence of "significant psychological distress" among humanitarian entrants than among

other migrants (who, in turn, had a higher incidence than the general population'). Distress in the second group was especially

high, affecting half the respondents, a.nd showed no sign of decreasing after eighteen months in Australia. But the evidence suggests that refugees from different nations adopt different strategies to cope with life in Australia and consequently fare

quite differendy from each other. Unaccompanied teenagers and youngadultsare,of course,likelytofaceadditionalstresswherover they resettle.

Unlike those two documen{aries, the mainstream media cover-

age of the lost boys transformed them into the one-dimensional supporting cast in a tale of 'redemption - a tale in which the United States was the main character. This urge to simplify and mythologise can have a damaging impact on resettlement policy; It can create the impression that some groups of refugees - in this case, those considered to be young and innocent - have a greater claim for assistance than others. In any place where refugees are concentrated there will be some who have a much more pressing need for help than others. These young Sudanese

men experienced extraordinary hardship, but the sinple fact that they were "lost boys" doesn't necessarily mean that their needs were greater than those of others - refugee women, for example, who live with the threat of violence in camps or cities or forms. 71

THE LONGEST JOURNEy

As the intense media coverage of the young men'§ arrival died

down,, journalists began to ask what seems like an obvious question: where are the lost girls? Fewer than 100 girls and young

womenwenttotheUnitedStatesaspartoftheprogramthatresettled the young men (and, purzlingly, they were largely ignored in the media coverage), yet reports from the mid to late 1980s suggest

a much larger number of girls were among the children who fled from Sudan in the 1980s. But even 'then, the bc>ys outnumbered the girls, and there are a number of possible reasons why this might be so. It seems likely that some boys were away from their homes herding cattle when the war reached their district, and found it inpossibletogetbacktotheirfamilies,whereas,forsocialandcultural reasons, girls might have been more likely to stay close to their parents or other relatives during the conflict. Girls right also have been captured by government forces or kidnapped and tal(en to the north as slave labour. And in the chaos after fighting in heavily contested parts of the south, the SPIA appears to have targeted boys as recruits to be trained at their bases in Ethiopia. As a result, fewer girls than boys made the journey to Ethiopia

and eventually to Kenya. Of the 10,500 arrivals at Kakuma, it is estimated that no more than 3000 were girls. Once there, most of

the girls were placed with foster families while most of the boys were housed separately and generally lived together through the 1990s. Some of the foster families were undoubtedly attracted by the contribution the girls could make to their households, and the prospect of a "bride price" (the payment made to the bride's family) when the girls were married. But whatever the motivation, the fostering meant that most of the girls disappeared into the mainstream camp population. The fact that it was mostly

yoimg men who were resettled in the United States "was not due to gender bias by attitude or design," according to a US resettlement official at Kakuna. "It was simply easier." "We will not just pull a girl out of a family while l'm here," a UNHCR resettlement officer told a researcher from Refugees 72

THE PROMISED LAND

International. "Where there is an established dependency, we do notwanttobreckuptherelationship."Theevidencesuggeststhat

young women in the camp have suffered as a result of this attitude. The number of girds enrolled in schools at the camp drops dramaticallyintheteenageysars,astheyaregivenagreatershare of housework or offered for marriage. "When the boys were leaving, I prayed that God would perform a miracle and I could leavewiththem,»aseventeen-year-oldgirltoldRefugeeslnternational; her uncle's family kept her home from school to do housework and look after her younger brothers. According' to the UNHCR's Rosseua Pagliuchi-Lor, the organisation has launched a special project to idendfy vulnerable Sudanese women and girls at Kakuma - not just those who might fall into the "lost girls'' category, but any who are suffering or threatened by violence or insecurity. With the peace talks progressing during 2004, the UNHCR had stopped processing any group-resettlement bids, but was still offering places to individuals,includingvulnerablewomenandgirls.

About 150 of the lost boys of Sudan came to Australia. But if you search for references to them in a database of Australian newspa-

persyou'llcomeupwithonlyahandfu]ofarticles-aremarkable contrast to the blanket coverage in the US press, and nowhere near explained by the difference in numbers. A senior inmigration department official I spoke to complained that the media has shown very little interest in I)ositive stories aboutAustralia's refugee program, the arrival of those 150 youngSudanesebeingaprimeexample.Theofficialwasannoyed that the media coverage of refugee poliey has focused almost entirely on the treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat. But it is likely, I suspect, that the govemment's immoderate attacks

on asylum seekers have tainted its entire humanitarian program intheeyesofmanyjournalistsandeditors.Thebigrefugeestory,

73

THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

overwhelming all else, was the harsh and disproportionate treatment of boat arrivals. In the United States, the lost boys experiment was judged a success, and so, in 2003, another large group, this time from Somalia, was resettled from the Kenyan camps. The Somali Bantu are a. highly disadvantaged group, descended from slaves brought

from Mozambique and Tanzania. "A visibly distinct grou|]," reports the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, "they have suffered discriniination and perseoution as the lowest rung on the Somali social scale.» When the civil war began in 1991, they were victims of "horrific violence, including massacres, rapes, looting and burning of homes." Many Bantu left Somalia in the wave of refugees who fled to neighbouring countries, including Kenya, during the early 1990s. But they had escaped the civil war only to be ostracised by other Somali groups for nearly ten years in the Dadaab camp. In 2002 almost 12,000 Bantu were transferred to Kakuma to be prepared for resettlement in the United States. The media reports of this exodus to the west were remarkably similar to the coverage of the lost boys. "Sometime this spring," opened a report in the AtJ¢7ifa Jo#mclJ-Cor3sf!.ft/f].o#, "in cities

around the United States, the first of nearly 12,000 African refugees will step off airplanes and into a modem world as alien and strange as the bottom of the ocean." "Bantu refugees are flying across centuries to be resettled in US," ran a headline in the J#ferr!flfr.o7zc]Z Hercizd Tr7.Z7#7ie. "Toilets 101: Bantus study Ameri-

can life as they prepare for resettlement," wrote ,Matthew Rosenberg of Associated Press.

David A. Martin uses the case of the Somali Bantu to illustrate

the complexity of the post-Cold War environment for refugee policy.Although.hefoousesontheimplicationsforUSpoliey,his observations about resettlement apply with similar force to Australia. In many respects the Somali Bantu seemed like a straightforward group, verified and finite, yet circumstances greatly complicated and delayed their departure. First, the American 74

THE PROMISED LAND

officials decided to shift the 11,800 eligible refugees from

Dadaab, where they were on the receiving end of ethnic hostility and where officials believed their own security was not 'assured, to Kckuma. Constructing new facilities there took months of work. The Somalis were bussed across Kenya to Kakuma in mid 2002, but violence (partly set off by the resettlement plan itself ) and doubts about the reliability of interpreters further delayed the final processing of the eligible refugees. Teams of interviewers from the United States were prepared then dispersed as the delays continued. In May 2003 Kakuma flooded, bringing all work to a halt. In the United States, meanwhile, the continual delays created unease in some of the communities listed to receive groups of Somali Bantu, opening up the opportunity -in the absence of the refugees themselves - for what Martin describes as "fearful worst case scenarios that were widely off the mark.„ Heading Martin's list of the factors that distinguish the post-Cold War period from the decades after the second world war are what he calls "pull factors, migration choices and host country considerations." These basically bofl down to the potential that exists for resettlemeut programs themselves to influence the decisions that refugees, or would-be refugees, make when they are considering leaving their home country or moving on from their country of first asylum., The decision to move is often a complex one: Although we often speak of refugees as having been driven from their homes, in fact the exit decision is rarely so stark. Short of truly desperate emergency evacuations, refugees exercise choice

over whether and when to leave and, to some extent, where to go. Moreover, the escalation of dangers is often gradual. Conditions

deteriorate in the home country, economically, pohitically, militar-

fly, or a combination. At some point the conditions -'threats, persecution visited on associates, ethnic conffict, the depredations and

75

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

dangers of a civil war - reach a point that an individual or a ,family or a dan or a village decides to pick up and leave. They may head

for another part of their own country, becoming internally displaced persons, or they may cross an international border, definitionally a key element in their being counted as refugees. But in

most such situations, even when the dangers are great or the persecution widespread, others choose to remain behind - based on courage, optimism, foolhardiness, misinformation,, patriotism,

inertia, or simple devotion to their own home or farm or village.

Host countries like Kenya are keenly aware that ia well-publicised

opportuliitytoresettleinthewestcancontributetoanindividual's decisioii to leave hctine. UiNl.ICR sLaff in Nail.obi belicvc thal the

office's reputation as a "gateway" to the west is one of the reasons that their work there is complex and the stakes are high enough for corruption to be an ever-present possibhity. The availabhity \of resettlement places can also influence the other "durable solutions" by taking the pressure off the source country and the host country to offer repatriation or local inte-

gration. Martin argues, that conflicting images and definitions of refugees -the popular image of people escaping danger, the definition in the 1951 Refugee Convention, the broader 1969 0rganisationofAfricanUnitydefinition-furthercomplicatethetaskof selecting candidates for resettlement.

Fraud and corruption pose another set of challenges for reset-

tlement countries. Improved communications mean that refugees are better informed about the criteria governrnents use in selecting candidates for resettlemeut, and it's scarcely surprising that they use this information to enhance, or even create, the case for themselves and their families and fi-iends. The growing reach and sophistication of criminal netwods are also making the task of authenticating identities more complex. Generalising about fi-aud and corruption is risky, not least because the refugee and migrant populations are so diverse, but it seems in(ely that' the group and 76

THE PROMISED LAND

family-based streams within the us resettlement program especially prone to fi.aud.

In many respects, these issues reflect a much broade]

problem. Most western countries, including Australia, maintair increasinglyselectiveimmigrationpoliciesthatexcludeunskilled and semi-skilled immigrants, whether permanent or temporary which means that posing as a refugee can be the only opti available to a desperate or ambitious would-be migrant.

When I interviewed Joseph Wadar at Kckurna he told me that was still recovering from a bout of hepatitis 8. Although he was cheerf.ul and enthusiastic about his work, jt was clear that illness

was sapping his enel.gy. Soon after I left he redoubled his efforts

to find a resettlement place in the Australian program. In late 2005 he was still at Kakuma.

77

GHAI'TER 4

Nairobi

metBerhanuAyalew,aschoolteacherfromBahirdar,oneof Ethiopia's larger 1:owns, one hot July afternoon at an aid agency in the outer suburbs of Nairobi. I arrived at our meeting in a battered taxi, trailing a cloud of red dust and exhaust fumes; Berhanu, I found out later, had spent a couple of hours in the hottest part of thei day walking across town to meet me.Areserved,dignifiedman,hishairandbeardclose-cropped, he was dressed in a casual shirt; neatly pressed trousers and a tweed j acket. We sat in the kitchen talking, and occasionally a member of the agency's staff wandered in to get a glass of water or make a cup of tea. The usual sounds of people at work - a fax riachine humming, phones ringing, a conversation in the corridor drifted into the room as Berhanu described the years of harassment and fear that eventually forced bin to leave Ethiopia for Kenya. Several times he stopped speaking, overcome by emotion. Frequentlyhepulledadocumentorphotographoutofabundle he had brought with him to illustrate a |]oint. Although Ethiopia was occupied by Italy during the second world war, it is one of only two African countries never to have been colonised, and its centuries-old feudal system largely survived into the early 1970s. But a combination of factors -

I

78

NAIROBI

including a famine disastrously mishandled by Emperor Haile Selassie's government, and mounting pressure for land reform, basic legal rights and democraey -eventually brought on a military takeover in 1974. The fall of the old regime unleashed separatist movements in Tigray and Eritrea, adding 1:o divisions within the provisional military government. Purges, assassinations and military offensives began almost immediately, and the promise of a new, freer era for Ethiopia was lost in violence and economic malaise. The conflict in the late 1970s and the l980s pitched the country's ethnic groups against each other and against the new

government, landlords against peasants, and the military against fledgling civilian political parties. Even more dangerously, it also developed into a Cold War conflict by proxy; Neighbouring Somalia had been backed by the Soviet Union since the eady 1960s, receiving funds and arms in return for hosting military bases. After the new Ethiopian government declared itself a Marxist regime, the Soviets switched sides. The United States, which had poured funds into Ethiopia since 1953, moved in the opposite direction, taldng over as Somala's patron. The conflict within and between these two overwhelmingly rural countries intensified, fuelled by a flood of sol)histicated weapons supplied by the superpowers. Both the short- and long-term impacts were enormous: "Years later," writes the political scientist Peter Schwal],"allthismilitaryhardwarewouldbeusedagainstdomestic opponents as Somalia entered a |>eriod of ferocious civil strife in 1991 that continues today, while from 1998 to 2000 Ethiopia and Eritrea engaged in one of Africa's bloodiest wars." In 1979, in his final year of high school, Berhanu joined the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, or EPRP, a Marxisminspired underground group. He was one of a large number of

party members the government arrested in 1980, and was detained for two years. After his release in September 1982 Berhanu left the party and began training to become a physical

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

education teacher. For the ne]ct eight years he taught high school

students in Bahirdar, on Lake Tana in the north-west of the country. In his spare time he coached volleyball, football and badminton, and played soccer for his province. The inter-ethnic conflict and the consolidation of single-party government continued, and another major famine killed hundreds of thousands of people in 1984-85.

In May 1991 the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of insurgents dominated by Tigrayan forces, entered the capital, Addis Ababa, and brought Mengistu's seventeen-year government to an end, forcing refugees like Sarah Mulual and Joseph Wadar back into southern Sudan. Although thenewgovernmentwasmuchlessbrutalandauthoritarianthan its predecessor and promised to enforce civil and political liberties, the thaw was limited. The press remained under tight control, parties were refused registration and trade unions and

human rights groups were harassed. Berhanu's old party, the EPRP, was banned. Suspected opponents and even former allies of the governing I)arty were rounded up and held without charge, many of them at secret locations or outside the formal prison system. "Therewereopenarrestsandsecretarrests,"saldBerhanu."1was

arrested openly. They took me from the school, in front of everyone. Those people who were arrested secretly - they- are not alive." By this point in his story Berhanu was becoming distressed. He obviously wanted to describe exactly what happened, but the recollection seemed intensely painful - made more §o, perhaps, because it had taken him so long to convince people at theUNHCRofthetruthofhisstoryandthestrengrhofhisclaim for help. "First, they took me to a dark room. They beat me, broke my

nose, my teeth." He showed me where a tooth was missing. "At the end I was unconscious. They laid me down in my room." As he Spoke, tears ran down his checks. "I was treated with an anaes80

NAIROBI

thetic by someone who wasn't a doctor. Now I can't hear in my left ear." His interrogators were convinced he was a link between the military and political wings of his old party. Later, Berhanu Was tortured again. This time his interrogators dripped molten plastic onto his cliest - he unbuttoned his shirt to show me the sca.rs - and left it untreated. They beat his knees, making it impossible for him to crouch to go to the toilet. In the meantime, his mother was visiting as many officials as she could to try 'to arrange his release. After six months, with no evidence that he'd done what they accused him of, they let him go. "Hundredsofinnocentpeo|)lewerekilled,"hesaid."I'mluckyto be here."

It's not clear how directly the new government was involved in this treatment of opponents and suspected opponents. Years of war had fi.agmented and run down the already inadequate infrastructure of policing and justice. Outside the main urban areas, according to Human Rights Watch, local officials, police and government-aligned activists often acted alone, beyond the control of the central authorities. After Berhanu had been back teaching for eight months the harassment resumed. He had married and he and his wife now had a small child; Berhanu worked at night to supplement their income. An anonymous anti-government article appeared in an opposition newspaper and he was called in and asked who had written it. His house was searched. He was questioned about the mass meetings that were taking place in the town. At one point, overcome by the pressure, he feigned mental illness and Spent time sheltering at a nearby monastery. In August 1999 Berhanu was playing billiards in town when histwobrothers-in-lawcameto'warnhimthatpeoplewereathis home threatening to arrest him. He fled to a town four hours away by car, then decided he needed to leave Ethiopia. "I wanted to go to Sudan, but it was cut off by the military, so I crossed over the border into Kenya. It was November the 24th, 1999."

81

THE LONGEST ]OUIINEY

Berhanu arrived in Nairobi at the lJeginning of 2000. But far

from being a safe haven, the Kenyan capital held a new set of dangers for him and for the thousands of other refugees drawn there. The police preyed on them, as they did on many Nairobi locals, demanding bribes, destroying personal documents and, in the case of foreigners, arbitrarily throwing them into jail. As an Ethiopian refugee told Human Rights Watch: There is terrible and unreported harassment for refugees there, especially from the police. They ask for so many shillings. One day

in March they caught me and they tied my hands together. They asked me to pay them Ksh5000 [around SA82] , but I really do not

have that kind of money. I was so afraid that if they brought me to court I might be deported to Ethiopia. I showed him my [UNHCR] appointment slip, but [the officei.] told me, "You can

put that in your pocket." I knew he only wanted money. I had no choice, they took me to Pangani Police Station and I had to pay Ksh2000 for my freedom.

Like many Ethiopian refugees, Berhanu was living in Eastleigh, a slum district where Nairobi's ethnic Somalis and Somali refugees are concentrated. Ethiopian security agents were active there, and Berhanu was threatened in encou-nters in June and

September 2000, and badly injured in January 2001. Human Rights Watch has documented many similar cases in which EthiopianagentshaveharassedandassaultedrefugeesinNairobi. As Berhanu recounted his story he repeatedly gave me exact dates for incidents that happened many years ago. This precision seemed puzzling. Could he possibly remember so accurately? Or might this be the way a torture victin tries to take control of

appallingexperiencesthatcameseeminglyoutofnowhere?I,ater, an aid worker who had been working on Berhanu's case told me that dates were critically important in interviews at the UNHCR, where inconsistencies could undermine a case for resettlement. 82

NAIROBI

But when Berhanu first came into contact with the UNHCR it was a lack of money rather than a lack of consistency that posed the biggest problem. The organisation's resettlement offic?rs controlled a very scarce and precious commodity, resettlement places

in the west, and the enormous gap between supply rand demand created the opportunity for corruption. In Kenya this problem was compounded by the fact that under the Moi government bribe-taking had become routine and pervasive across the economy. Transparency lntemational's 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Kenya equal sixth-worst performer in the world; a survey by 1:hat organisation found that the average Kenyan is forced to bribe the police - the most corrupt of the country's official arms - at least four times each month. When Berhanu tried to get help from the UNHCR, he became a victim of the corr.uption that had taken hold in the Nairobi branch.

Fifteen minutes by car from the centre of Nairobi, the UNHCR branch office is on a noisy arterial road in a busy part of town, op|josite the Westlands shopping mall. When I first visited, the carpark across the road was full of battered taxis standing by for customers; the drivers were smoking and chatting as if they'd settled in for a long wait. Like the central city, this part of Nairobi is crowded and rundown. A constant rumble of traffic filtered in through the louvred windows of the UNHCR complex. At the time, Sergio Calle-Norefia was head of the branch's protection division. He had arrived in November 2000, soon after a UNtaskforcebeganinvestigatingallegationsthatstaffintheoffice had been accepting bribes to expedite refugee applications. CalleNorefia's job was to clean up and rebuild the protection division. The taskforce reported in early 2002, revealing that refugees had been charged SUS25 to get through the front gate of the UNHCR compound and up to SUS200 for an initial interview, with some paying thousands of dollars by the end of the process.

83

THE LONGEST JOURNEy

Nine people, including three Kenyans, were charged with fraud. They had been running this criminal ring for several years - a

period in, which thousands of resettlement cases had been approved by the office - and had managed to silence other staff members with threats of violence. rn the hope of derailing the UN inquiry they had engaged an Arabic speaker to \compose threats, ostensibly from al-Qaeda, against senior UNHCR staff and US embassy officials.

Berhanu registered with the UNHCR in February 2000, when the corrupt officials were still active, and waited for an appointment to discuss his bid for resettlement. I^7hen he still hadn't had a response by mid year, he asked an acquaintance, who worked at the UNHCR as an interpreter, to intervene. The man agreed that he had a good case, and promised to talk to one of the lawyers. "After two weeks, he came to me and said, `If you have $3000 you can be resettled.' I didn't have three shillings!" Berhanu went to theUNHCRandwastold,"Wecan'thelpyouunlessyouhelpus." A letter fouowed, rejecting his request to begin the resettlement

process. By the time he secured another appointment, in early 2001, work had been suspended on all resettlement cases except those the UNHCR regarded as emergencies. Routine cases remained on hold for the rest of the year and throughout 2002

while the UNHCR estal)lished new procedures and reviewed tainted cases.

OneUNHCRstaffmembertoldmethattheKenyanofficehad "almost totally collapsed" in the aftermath of the scandal. After Calle-Norefia arrived neady all the protection division's staff were sacked or redeployed. Major changes were made to the case-management system to remove the opportunity for a single officer to make a decision on an individual application. The revelations also

provided the impetus for a significant reappraisal of the way the office operated. Sean Henderson, an Australian who had taken over running the resettlement unit, described to me how the branch had decentralised the process to the two camps and 84,

NAIROBI

created a system of case profiling which would, he argued, make identifying candidates for resettlement much quicker and fairer. More funds had been made available for security at the camps. Meanwhile, countries including the Urited States and Australia were asking for more refugees for resettlement from East Affica. After the dramatic drop in numbers in late 2001 and in 2002, the US program was picking up again, but changed circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq, and security concerns about resettling refugees from Muslim countries, were adding force to a shift away from the Middle East and South Asia. According to Mark Bixler, the change in geographic emphasis was largely a resut of com-

plaints from the Black Caucus - a group of African-American meiiibel`s of Co]]g!.csb -antl the C:liiito`i iidiirinistrortion of total funding, earmarked contrit)utions have grownsteadiyinrecentyears.Thesefactorshavecontributedto thefluctuationsintheorganisation'sbudget'overthepastdecade, and they also explain how the most highly publicised refugee emergencies attract the biggest share of funds. The funding constraints can have an enormous impact in the field. When supply shortages have forced the World Food Pro-

gramme to cut back the ration at camps like Kakuma, for exanple, the UNHCR has had little capacity to cover the gap. During better times, it has t)een unable to add to the variety of food provided to refugees. For the resettlement I)rogram, the funding prol)1ems mean that branch offices are generally under§taffed and unable to keep pace with new applications or requests from resettlemeut countries. Having visited UNHCR offices in East Africa and the Middle East, the authors of a major US-Europea,nrapoct,RespondingtotheAsylunandAccessChalleng?concluded, "There are too few officers with exclusive resettlement responsibilitiespostedin'complexsituationsfacingoverwhelming resettlement need." The consequence, the researchers argue, is ``a significantbacklogofunexaminedcasesandlongwaltingperiods 88

NAIROBI

for the results of interviews." In many cases, "asy:1uni seekers may wait up to nine months for the result of their status determination intel.view with tJNICR. Resettlement procedures may take even longer, and have left vulnerable refugees stranded in desperate conditions for months on end, often with little or no assistance from UNHCR." Inadequate staff numbers also increase, the risk that the most vulnerable refugees - who aren't necessarily the mostvocalorthebest-equippedtonegotiateUNHCRprocedures -won't be identified at all, in camps or in cities and towns.

Poor funding also contributes to the organisation's overreliance on local staff and interpreters, who won't always possess the skills needed to determine efficiently and fairly the status and needs of applicants for assistance. According to UNHCR policy, staff from a single country or region should not predominate in any office,/yet a recent UN review of the UNHCR's management and personnel practices found ``that for certain operations in Africa, nationals from African countries made up between 55 and 75 per cent of the professional staff. . . " The UN review also highlighted the fact that UNHCR branch offices and sub-offices are not always resourced according to the level of localneed, and recommended that the UNHCR prepare a human-resources management strategy to deal with this and other shortcomings in the way the organisation recruits, deploys and promotes staff. As in any other organisation of its size and complexity, the UNHCR also has problems that aren't directly caused by a lack of funding. The authors of Rapo7icz!.77g fo #!e AsyJ#77i ¢7Id Access

C7!azJe#ge ai.e particularly critical of the way the organisation - or atleastsomeofitsfieldoffices-hasdealtwith"irregularmovers."

This phrase is used by the UNHCR and donor governments to describe refugees who have not only fled from their own country but also left their country of fist asylum. They are unpopular with western governments l]ecause their refusal to stay put suggests they are "shopping around": not content simply to seek refuge, they want to choose where they seek it. According to the

89

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

report, some UNHCR offices adopt "an extremely restrictive interpretationof`irregularmovers"and"oftendenyresettlement opportunities to refugees who have moved irregularly from firstasyluncountriesthatdonot,infac¢offersecureprotection." Thereareoftengoodleasonsforrefugeestoleaveacountryof firstasylurn.EvaAyiera,alawyerwiththeRefugeeConsortiumof Kenya, described to me how, in East Africa, neighbouring corntries can be as dangerous for certain refugees as their home country.Duringthelong-runningwarintheDemocraticRepub1ic of the Congo, for example, refugees fled to Rwanda and Burundi, both of which were also invcllved in the conflict. With the war and combatants spilling across these borders, it wasn't surprising that some refugees decided to keep moving to a third country."Theycc>metoKenyabecauseKenyaistheonlycountry around them that's not involved in the war," Ayiera told me. "But foranumberofthemtheprincipleof`firstcountryofasylum'has beenusedtodisqualifythemfrombeingrecognisedasrefugees." In fact, the UNHCR's own guidelines are more generous than this. Recognising that conditions are difficult in many of the countries hosting large refugee populations, they allow for circumstances in which a refugee leaves the first country of asylum "due to the absence of educational and employment possibhities

andthenon-availabiftyoflong-termdurablesolutions..." The UNHCR's procedures for determining refugee status are alsoopentocriticismonthegroundsofequityandtransparency. According to two of its critics, Barbara Harrell-Bond and Mike Kagan,theseprocesses``1ackthemostbasicsafeguardsoffairness,

resulting in a high chance of mistakes in a field where there simply is no margin for error.» The authors of Respo#djng to ffee Asyhoou a#d Access ChaJJenge sunmarise the main criticisms made by aid agencies, governments and refugees, including: erratic decisiommaking; a lack of clarity about the burdens of

proof and thresholds applied by UNHCR; the lack of access by 90

.NAIROBI

refugees to their personal files held by UNHCR; the lack of legal counsel and 'basic information provided to refugees; the lack of

justification given by UNHCR pursuant to the rejection of an application for asylum or resettlement; and the lack of an effective appeals mechanism.

More broadly, writes the distinguished refugee policy specialist Gil Loescher in his history of the UNHCR: The organisational culture of the UNHCR also permits the office to be largely unaccountable to 'the refugee populations it is mandated to protect. . . Despite [its] failures of policy, there exists no mecha-

nism, internal or external, to monitor either the UNHGR's behaviour or the extent to which the agency's programmes and policies satisfy its clients, namely refugees and other forced migrants.

Theseareallcriticismsthatcouldequallybeappliedtosomeorall

of the resettlement countries. The enormous imbalance between the power of the UNHCR and the resettlement countries, on the one hand, and refugees on the other, means that accepted forms of accountability and consultation generally don't operate in the resettlement approval process. This is not to say that procedures aren't followed or that staff members don't behave with integrity; it's simply that the process offers strictly delineated entitlements. Add to that the fact that even the long-established refugee camps operate under emergency conditions, and it's no surprise that the rightsofthesedisplacedindividualsandfamiliesareparedbackto survival level.

De:e=Pt°t:[ddfnmgefatL£:S::;:;S].§:tr[£:icjfa:'betehnet£¥acc:;SunEt:: bility very seriously in recent years. As a result, she wrote: UNHGR has introduced a Code of Conduct for all its employees irrespective of their contractual status. The first principle calls on

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staff members to commit themselves to treat au refugees and other personsofconcemfairly,andwithrespectanddignity.Princip]e7 also calls on staff members to prevent, oppose and combat all exploitation and abuse of refugees and other persons of concern.

Inparallel,UNHCRmodifieditsstandardcontractualclauseswith its partners to generate their support in combating all forms of

exploitation. The introduction of the Code of Conduct was com plementedbymandatorytrainingandregularre-refre§hercourses for all staff members.

Over the past three years, according to Demant, the UNHCR ``has made concerted efforts to systematise and institutionalise

methodologies for engaging with refugee groups (and not only refugee community leaders) in the framework of 'participatory assessments on refugees' needs, resources and priorities." It has

established stronger complaints mechanisms, she said, and striven to inform refugees and asylum seekers more clearly about "their rights and obligations." It has also been involved in training more than 200 non+government agencies in investigation

techniques to combat exploitation of refugees.

The main resettlement countries fall into two groups. The first is

madeupofanunberofEuropeancountries-Denmark,Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway - which have traditionally accepted relatively small numbers of refugees for resettlement. In the second group are the "big three" - the United States, Canada

andAustralia-whichacceptrefugees,andimmigrantsingeneral, in sigliificandy larger numbers. According to Respo#cJjng fo f7ie As/Zwmc#dAccgssC7iflzze„ggtheEuropeanresettlementcountries

have been the most willing to accept highly vulnerable refugees, and especially those who face danger in their country of first asylum:victimsoftorture,womenatriskofviolence,andrefugees

with medical problems. But between them they offer fewer than 92

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5000 places each year, less than half the quota of the Australian Program. By contrast, the report notes, the big three rely on the 1951

Convention definition of a refugee, focusing on the I)ersecution from which the refugee has fled rather than on his or her circumstances in the country' of first asylum. These three countries are also, iaccording to the report, less happy to take refugees with medical problems and don't react quickly to emergency cases. And the quality of decisionmaking can be compromised by their "numbers-driven" approach. But they collectively accept vastly more people for resettlement each year than do the Euro|)Cans. In fact; on paper at I:ast, the two groups aren't as sharply defined as these observations suggest. Australia. and Canada each

accept urgent cases, generally on the basis of a threat of violence in the country of first asylum, and undertake to deal with these cases in days rather than months. Australia has s|]ecial provisions for victims of torture and women at risk, and has accelerated processing under its emergency rescue visa; in recent years the

program has also accepted a more diverse and more challenging caseload, including a higher number of survivors of torture and

refugees with health problems. Although the biggest component of the US program, the Priority 2 group category, is strongly numbers driven, the Priority 1 category offers places to, among others, "persons facing compelling security concerns in countries of first asylum. . ." For their part, the European countries tend to stre§scandidates'capacitytointegratequicklyintotheirnewhost country. Despite some efforts to accept "difficult" cases, a range of anecdotal evidence suggests that within their individual |>rograms the resettlement countries can be quite selective about

whom they accept, and the UNHGR refers to the problem obliquely in publications and speeches by senior figures. More explicit than usual was this passage in a paper I)ublished as part of the organisation's Global Consultations process, initiated by

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers to rethink the UNHCR's policies and practices: Governments are not always ready to adapt their quotas to rapidly changing needs, and often establish them in response to domestic interest gi.oups, targeting sp ecific nationalities. Resettlement coun-

tries may also turn down cases such as families with, pressing

medical problems, who may be more costly in terms of welfare payments, or who may have limited ability to integrate rapidly. In general, 'although some countries do accept difficult to place hardship cases, most resettlement countries prefer educated refugees

with strong family and cultural links, an intact family structure, and a high likelihood of rapid integration. Such families may not always correspond to the pressing protection cases which UNHCR attempts to resettle.

Eva Demant acknowledges that "there are refugees of specific

nationalities and ethnicities and with specific profiles who are difficult to resettle." Some resettlement countries focus on an

applicant's integration potential rather than their protection needs, which can "lead at times to high rejection rates or to UNHCR not submitting those cases in order to avoid rejections." In Nairobi there were signs of this process at work. When I interviewed a senior UNHCR staff member in 2003 he expressed indignation about the prejudice among resettlement countries against Somalis. Canada, Australia> New Zealand and the Nordic countries are reluctant to take them, he said, because they see Somalis as what they can "an integration challenge." (The Somali Bantu, who are regarded as being much more accommodating, are an exception.) It's hard to pinpoint where this attitude originated - it might relate entirely to the fact that they are generally Sunni Muslims - but I repeatedly came across people who clained that Somalis are uncooperative and inflexible. Typical is an observation by Jennifer Hyndman, an academic geographer 94

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who worked with the UNHCR in Kenya, who writes .that aid workers in the camps disliked Somalis because they were argumentativeandungrateful.It'shardtoknowexactlywhatthissays about Somalis; Hyndman herself seems unsure about whether the refusal to be grateful represents an admirable sturdiness of

characterorashortcoming.ButinKenya,theimportantthingis the contrast with Sudanese refugees, who aren't generally regarded in these negative terms (and, coming from southern Sudan, are rarely Muslim). So if a choice between a Sudanese and aSomalipresentsitselfthentheSudanese,itseemslikely,willget the place.

This wariness about Somals certainly seems to be reflected in Australia's intake figures. At the beginning of 2004 an estimated 402,000 Somalis and 606,000 Sudanese were living as refugees, mostly in countries close to their homelands. Australia took 114 Somali refugees during 2004, compared with 1076 Sudanese; for

all humanitarian categories, the figures were 149 Somalis and 5485 Sudanese. Over the eight years to mid 2005 the total number

of Somali humanitarian arrivals was less than one-seventh the number of Sudanese. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that Somali refugees are generally less needy than Sudanese. Healthanddisabilitycriteria,whichvarybetweentheresettlement countries, can also create barriers for vulnerable refugees. Most countries are wary of refugees who are HIV-positive, for I example, although UNHCR staff consider that Canada and the United States are more likely to accept such cases. ,In Australia's case,thekeypassageintheUNHCRRese#Zeme7z£Hc}#cJZ)ookreads:

``Applicants will not meet health criteria if they have a medical condition that is likely to result in a significant cost to health care and community services or prejudice Australians' access to health

care or community services." Yet it seems unarguable that countries like Australia are better equipped than the countries of first asylum to care for refugees with ongoing medical needs. Accord-

ing to the Refugee Council of Australia, this criterion has been

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

applied less strictly in recent years, which probably reflects an acknowledgement that African refugees are generally not as healthy'asthosefromsomeofthe'regionsthatpreviouslydomi-

nated the resettlement intake.

Part of the reason why the UNHCR plays such a significant role in any account of refugees in Kenya is that the Moi government handed over its responsibility for refugees to the UNHCR ,in 1993, following the mass arrival of refugees between late 1990 and late 1992. In that short period Kenya's refugee population

grew from fewer than 15,000 to over 400,000. Because the number of refugees had been relatively small, the government

had operated a low-key system of processing with no legislative

bacldng.Thissystemwasoverwhelmedbythescaleoftheinflur. The UNHCR and other international agencies filled the gap, and have done so ever since. When-despiteexpectations-theoppositionpartiesnotonly

won the December 2002 election but were allowed to take office, significantchangeseemedlikely.Thenewgovemment,acoalition of parties led by former goverrment ministers, promised to deal withthecorruptionandmismanagementoftheMoiyears.Among its earliest announcements was a plan to review refugee policy. Before leaving Melbourne for a second visit to Kenya in 2003

Iphonedtheministryforhomeaffairstotrytoarrangeaninterview with the new minister, Moody Awori, a popular, 1ong~ serving politician who was now responsible for refugee polity. Buttheofficial1spoketoinsistedthat1talktothedepartmental officersdirectlyinvolvedinrefugeeaffairsratherthantotheminister. ``What he knows, they 'told him!" he bellowed down a bad telephone line, fi-om Nairobi. "Has he even been to a refugee camp? I doubt it!" So I made an appointment to see Moses

Maina, a senior ministry official, and Robert Kikwau, the ministry's under-secretary for refugees. 96

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The ministry is based at Toogoo House, a brown, stuccoed government building in central Nairobi. The moming I visited was' warm and sunny, the tree-lined streets in this pal.t of the city teeming with people. A few floors up, a long corridor took me to the ante-room to Maina's office, where two women faced each other across their typewriters. Between their desks, sitting on an electric stove, was' an enormous saucepan of hot water. Maina, tall and gregarious, was sitting behind a large desk. On the wall above him was a portrait of the new president, Mwai Kibaki. We sipped milky tea as he described to me the arrival of refugees in their tens of thousands, from Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, in the early 1990s. In 1991, Maina was a district officer

based at Malindi, about 120 kilometres north of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. After the government of Somalia collapsed and different pins of the country fell to competing warlords, refugees

poured into Kenya, many of them by boat. The earliest international press coverage of the exodus described `a boatload of Somalis foundering a few hundred metres from shore at Malindi; nearly 130 drowned out of an estimated 700 on board. By March 1992, according to UNHCR estimates, 3000 Somali refugees were arriving in Kenya each. day. "We didn't have enough staff, knowledge or infrastructure for handling so many refugees," said Maina. "l^then anyone talks about human catastrophe - well, I had been taught the rules of public admhistration, but not how to deal with this. I hadut seen so many people suffering before.'' On top of that: "These were Muslims. I am Christian!"

Neither the government nor the UNHCR was prepared for the speed and scale of the movement of refugees. The UNIICR was already faced with a series of crises: a sudden increase in the number of Kurdish refugees fleeing from Saddam Hussein's repression after the first Guff war, intensified conflict and famine in Ethiopia (which would also have an inpact on Kenya), and a surge in the number of Albanians arriving in Italy by boat. Under thepresidencyofDanielarapMoi,Kenyahadbeendidingfurther 97

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

into corruption and economic malaise. Roads, telecommunications,schoolsandtheinfrastructureofpublicorderwererunning down and international lenders and donors were beginning to

withholdsupport.Underits"structuraladjustmentprogram"the InternationalMonetaryFundwasdemandingreducedwasteand corruption,buttheprogramalsoimposedliberalisationanduserpayspolicieswhichhelpedworsenconditionsformanyKenyans. Into this volatile situation, already stretched by refugees from

Sudan and Ethiopia, came the waves of Somalis. "They came at night, by boat," Maina recalled. "Small children, old men, young men, women - all hungry, tired, seasick. You know what sort of condition these people would be in, after days at sea, exposed to the wind, with nothing to eat." Complicating the picture were guns, criminals and militia members among the refugees. Because it seemed likely that tens of thousands more would

flee, the UNHCR mounted a large cross-border hulnanitarian operation - the fist in its history - to slow the movement of people."TheUNHGRreasonedthatmostofthe285,000Somalis who fled to Kenya did so not only to escape from violence but also because the armed conflict had destroyed their livdihoods and their traditional survival strategies," writes Gil I.oescher in

his history of the UNHCR: In addition, a large proportion of displaced Somalis came from a

nomadic background where movement was the way of life and where international boundaries had little or no meaning. In such situations, it was not possible to determine whether a person was a refugee, an IDP [internany displaced person], a returnee, or a

member of the local population. Thus, the UNHCR abandoned the traditional distinctions between these grou|)s and decided to

supportallthoseinneedinsouthernSomaliaandnorthernKenya.

As Loescher describes it, the international response to the crisis in Somalia was a high-water mark of coordinated interna98

NAIROBI

tional humanitarian action backed by military force. The USbacked UN attempt to halt the violence in Somalia came to an abrupt end after dead US soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in late 1993, inidating a period of intense debate about the shortcomings of humanitarianism, the risks of armed intervention and, especially, the dangers of combining the two. Could humanitarian aid inadvertently be prolonging conflicts?Werefoodandmedicinefromthewestlettingcorruptgovemments off the hook? Later, after the exodus of refugees and combatants from Rwanda in 1994 and the prolonged conflict, watched over by the United Nations, in the former Yugoslavia through the l990s, these concerns would intensify. Throughout this period the Kenyan government repeatedly promised to enact legislation to regularise the status of refugees and the role of government agencies in handling them. But the UNHCR's presence and a gradual fall in refugee numbers took the pressui.e off the government. It was only after the change of

government in late 2002 that new legislation seemed likely. Despite repatriations and resettlement, refugee numbers were still well over 200,000 and their presence remained controversial. According to refugee policy analyst Jeff Crisp, Kenyan governments have a long history, stretching back to before independence from Britain in 1963, of fearing refugees. Arable land is relatively scarce, so the influx adds to tensions over rural resources. Border disputes, especially in the north, have been intense and disruptive, creating a sense of insecurity in remote areas. More recently, refugee flows have provided cover for small arms and criminals to enter Kenya.

Moses Maina and I were starting on our second cup of tea by the time Robert RIkwau, the under-secretary for refugees, joined us. In contrast with the ebullient Maina, he was soffty spoken and cautious. Kikwau was the public servant most closely involved in creating a new refugee affairs department and finalising the draft legislation - a process which, he said, would take some time. He

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appearedanxious,tomoderatetheexpectationsthatMoodyAwori hadcrea.tedsoonaftertheelection.Buoyed,nodoubt,bytheenormous optimism generated by the change of government, Awori

had,announcedthattherefugeesatKakunaandDadaabwouldbe moved to less arid areas. "The big |]roblem is how we help them look after themselves," the minister told the Reuters news agency. "Currendy the location of the camps is very inhospitable. We're trying to see if there's a place that has water." Refugees would be

allowedto"tillthesoil"andevenconduct"pertytrade"outsidethe camps. New legislation, he promised, would guarantee refugees' basicrighis.AccordingtoareportintheDflt.J/Nafz.o#,"Themini§ter said Kenya would strive to do its 'best to ensure that the visitors were comfortable, adding that in the early 1970s, when, the country was in dire need of teachers and other professionals, it benefited inmensely from the inflow of refugees rurming away fromUgandaduringthereignofdictatorldiAmin." AccordingtoKikwau,therealitywasthatrefugeeswouldonly be'permittedtoworkwhentheeconomyretumedtothegrowth levels of the 1970s and early '80s - which could be some tine away. Unemployment is still very high in Kenya, and the competition for land and resources is `intense, despite the influx of Kenyans into major cities. But Kenya also wanted to take on the responsibilityforrefugeesbecause,accordingtoKikwan,"itisthe

goverrment'sresponsibility.Thepresentsituationisananomaly, and we want to remove that anomaly." Donor countries had alreadypromisedtohelp,andtalkswereunderwaybetweenthe

government and the UNHGR. Maina and Kikwau stressed that Kenya was treating the peace processesinSudanandSomaliaaskeyelementsofitsresponseto the continuing presence of refugees, and the government had

madeaheavyinvestmentofdiplomatictimeandenergyinboth sets of talks.

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As 2004 progressed, the prospects for I)eace in southern Sudan improved. In a report published in early 2002, the International

Crisis Group had argued that "A number of internal and external factors are converging to create a moment that is ripe for resolvingtheconflictinSudan."BecausetheSudanesegovernmenthad hosted Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, the US invasion of Afghanistan created an intense feeling of vulnerability in Khartoum and strengthened the hand of moderates. The government hoped to accelerate the development of an oil industry in central Sudan, but international isolation and renewed SPLA attacks on the oilfields, which lay in contested areas around the north-south border, were holding back further development. The US congi.ess, meanwhile, was threatening legislation that would ban companies involved in Sudan's off industry from access to US capital markets. Economic ambitions, financial problems and internal divisions added to the pressure on the government. For its part, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement was open to renewed talks and regional countries - not least Kenya - were

pushing for a 'resolution, with backing from the Bush administration and other western governments. Nevertheless, the peace process was slow and uncertain. An agreement seemed close in mid 2004, but in October the International Crisis Group reported that the talks seemed to have lost momentum, p artly because international attention had shifted to the conflict in Darfur. Finally, on 31 December, the government and the Sudan People's I,iberation Movement signed a peace accord at Naivasha,100 kilometres north-west of Nairobi. Developments in Somalia were less encouraging. Although the civil war had ended in 2002, the country was still divided among contending authorities and f]ghting continued in a numberofregions.Themoststablepartsofthecountrywerethe two self-proclained regions -Somaliland in the north-west and Puntland in the north-east. The peace process, hosted by Kenya, had created a transitional federal government, but a year later, in

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THE I.ONGEST JOUIINE¥

mid2005,itwasstillhavingenormousdifficultycontrollingvio1ence and crime. An estimated 3.8 million Somalis were still internauydisplaced.AccordingtotJN:HCRGJoZ7azAppeaJ2005: Against this backdrop, UNHCR continued to assist the voluntary repatriationofrefugeesin2004:nearly10,000duringthefirsthalf

oftheyear,bringingtosome476,000thetotalnumberofreturnees assisted by the Office. The refugees are returning to one of the

poorest countries in the world, where civil strife and years of neglectrenderreintegrationanextremelydauntingprospect...

Because of the dangers, the UNHCR had set up a new program under which community elders, accompanied by UNHGR and aid agency representatives, could travel to their home region to check on the viability of repatriation. When I talked to Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor in early 2004, the Nairobiofficewasalsobeginningtoplanfor|jostwarrepatriation to southern Sudan, but the process was likely to be slow. "The refugeesarereauyprettycautious.Theywantassurance§thatthe |ieacewillhold,andtheywanttobesuretherewiube§choolsand water supplies and other sel.vices when they return.» With internally displaced Sudanese also returning home, the initial movementofpeo|ile"willbebiblical,"shesald."Butwedon'texpectto facilitate returns during the first six months after an agreement, althoughtherecouldbespontaneousreturns.Itcouldbefouror five years before most have returned." Many won't return to the village§ortownstheyoriginallycame from.Theirliveshavebeen irreversibly changed by their experiences in the camps, where they've had access to education and, for a significant minority, the experience of working as teachers or counsellors or in other aid agency jobs. I.iving alongside them will be an estimated 150 ,000 demol]ilised coinbatants.

An estimated 3.5 million internally displaced southern Sudanese and over half a million refugees will have been weigh102

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ing their options since the peace agreement was signed. At least

loo,000 of those who fled to the north had returned to the south during 2004. But by the second half of 2005 few refugees had returned from neighbouring countries. When the new High Commissioner, Ant6nio Guterres, visited Kakuma. at the end of August 2005 he expressed the hope that returns from the camp would begin in October. Working with the UNHCR on planning for repatriation to Sudan is the Nairobi-based UN Human Settlements Programme, known as UN-Habitat. According to Daniel Lewis, an engineer who has worked for the organisation in Somalia, Kosovo and Nairobi and now heads its disaster, post-conflict and safety section, the hope that all of the Sudanese refugees will return to their homes is neither realistic nor desirable. Lewis says that UN agencies face a dilemma in deciding how best to use their resources to repatriate and rebuild. "There's a humanitarian impulse to return refugees to their place of origin," he told me in his office in Nairobi. "But there are practical reasons to talte them to areas that are likely to be economically productive." Efforts to restore the prewar status quo "can actually set back the recovery process," he said. So UN-Habitat is exploring ways of encourag-

ing economic development in southern Sudan, where the economy has been profoundly disrupted by the war. Parts of the south have traditionally b een areas where agricultural yields have been high - especially from a regional specialty, gum arabic, which is widely used by western softdrink manufacturers - so there are economic assets that can be revived and developed. Lewis pointed out that wherever people have been displaced thereisrarelyavacuumforlong.``Inotherwords,whenpeopleare displaced, someone else moves in and asserts a certain amount of control over the property that's been, in their minds, abandoned. The more prolonged the displacement, the deeper entrenched are the new occupants and the more difficult and potendally volatile theprocessofreacquisitionorreoccupationoflandandproperty.»

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THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

Within a couple of months of the peace agreement in Sudan thecommitmentofdonornationstotherepatriationprocesswas alreadylookingshaley.AtameetinginRumbekinFebruary2005, the UN emergeney relief coordinator, Jam Egeland, said he wa.s "shocked to find that the south has only received, in hand, five

percentofwhatitneedstoimplementtheworkPlanforSudan," ardief,recoveryanddevelopmentactionplanfor2005."Thereis a disturbing discrepancy between what the world promised it would do once a peace agreement was signed and what it has delivered,"hesaid.AccordingtoDawnElizabethBlalo,ck,arepresentative of the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, "Of the $500 million that has been requested for recovery and development assistance in the south in 2005, only $25 million has been received and a further $25 million has been promised.'' These shortfalls echo earlier appeals for funds for repatriation and reconstruction;thenewAfghanadministi:ation,forexample,had receivedjust20percentoftheaidpromisedbytheintemational community after the United States drov\e the Taliban from government. Despite the progress in the south, Sudan has continued to

create I-efugees. In late 2002, fighting broke out in the vast western region of Darfur, displacing an estimated one million people, 200,000 of 'whom fled across the border into Chad. Like

many areas in the south, Darfur i§ a long way from Khartoum and has been neglected by the Sudanese govemmeut; like northwesternKenya,siteoftheKckumacamp,itisaridland,inhabited by people who have adapted their way of life and their economy to scarcity and frequent drought. In Darfur, a§ in many parts of the south, the government used |>roxies - the "tribal mhitias" in the south, the ]anjaweed in Darfur - to cany out many of the worstcrimesagain§tcivilians.Asinthesouth,govemmentforces attacked civilians from the air.

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As a result of his long and frustrating efforts to get the, UNHCR to respond to his case, Berhanu's relations with the organisation deteriorated. Even after the corrupt staff were replaced and resettlement recommenced, the private aid agenc)r handling his case felt it

was simplest to bypass the UNHCR and make a direct approach to one of the ,resettlement countries, Canada. Not long after I met him, after four years in Kenya and well over a decade of persecution at the hands of the authorities in Ethiopia, he left for Canada. Soon after he arrived he received news from Ethiopia. that his wife had died, leaving his two children in the care of their grandmother.

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Geneva

large and unregulated refugee movements, either as the

Most Afi.ican countrycountries fi.om which haverefugees had direct have experience fled or as the of country of refuge -or both. Because the people have often been fleeing from civil war or famine rather than from persecution on the grounds of "race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion," their status under the 1951 Refugee Convention can be uncertain. As we saw in Chapter 2, the Organisation of African Unity, or OAU, agreed to its own refugee convention in 1969, framed to reflect conditions in Afi.ica more closely than the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol. The OAU no longer exists - the African Union took over its role in 2002 -but its 1969 Convention represents a milestone in the development of refugee polity and practice, extending the rights of refugees in several inportant ways. Most importantly, it expands the definition of a refugee to include people fleeing various forms of conflict, not

just persecution. No previous intemational agreement had guaranteed a right of asylum (rather than simply the right to sect asylum); the OAU Convention comes dose, affirming that governments should use their "best endeavours" to "receive refugees and to secure [their] settlement." The Convention contains an 106

GENEVA

absolute prohibition on `tmeasures such as rejection at the frontier, return or expulsion" that would force a refugee to return to or remain in "a territory where his life, physical integrity or liberty would be threatened." It also contains the first unqualified

principle of voluntary repatriation, and defines the duties of both the country of origin and the host country. And it encourages signatory governments to share the burden of large-scale refugee flows.

"Although it was inspired by events in Africa," write the authors of a UNHCR report, 17ze Sfafe a/ *7ie WorJcZ's Re;fi{gees

2000, "the norms and principles contained in the OAU Refugee Convention have set important standards for the protection of refugees in general." The Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, developed by' a group of Latin American governments in 1984, includes a very similar set of rights and responsibilities, and also defines refugees broadly, to indude "persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalised violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.» When the OAU Convention was adopted in 1969, African governments hosted at least 900,000 refugees. As the continent's refugee population has grown -peaking at 5.5 million in 1990

and still around 3.6 million at the turn of the century -and the economic, social and cultural problems of many host countries have deepened, the principles of the Convention have come under increasing strain. "People don't always have the luxury of being ldnd to neigh-

bours if they're in desperate difficulties themselves," David Lambo, hea.d of the UNHCR's African Bureau, told me when we met at the organisation's head office in Geneva. In the 1970s and '80s, he said, local communities were less hostile to newcomers. "In those days we could get almost as much land as we needed for

refugees to farm. Now, with population growth and increasing

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pressure on land, it's much more difficult. Some countries still allow refugees to farm, to function in the community around camps, but increasingly that's not the case." Much of the problem comes fi-om the scale and duration of the major conflicts in Africa. As Jeff Crisp puts it, many of these wars

have been characterised by "intense ethnic and communal antagonisms, high levels of violence and destruction, as well as the deliberate targeting and displacement of civilian I) opulations." As a result, according to tJNHCR estimates, of the 38 "protracted refugee situations" worldwide at the end of 2003, 22 were in Africa. Some 2.3 million refugees were affected. (The largest number of long-term refugees, however, was in the UNHCR region covering Central Asia, Southwest Asia, North Afi.ica and the Middle East, where just eight situations account:ed for 2.7 million refugees.) The growing number 'of semi-permanent refugee camps also contributed to weal.iness and cynicism among donor countri'es. As Lambo put it, "There's a sense, basically, of `God, these people! Why should we continue to bail them out?" Jeff Crisp also observes that earlier attempts at local settle-

ment and self-reliance in rural refugee camps met with only modest success. Host countries in Afi.ica felt that the west was not taking its share of the burden; they also increasingly saw refugees as a security threat, especially after the exodus of a mixed group of refugees and combatants from Rwanda in 1994. And these concerns and fears were played on by unscrupulous political figures.

The fate of Liberian refugees in C6te d'Ivoire, which David A. Martin describes in his report on resettlement, illustrates how a welcome can turn to hostility: Untilrecendy,thelvoriangovernmentandpctpulacehadgenerally accepted I,iberians displaced 'by I,ib eria`'s long-running and brutal

civil war. A great manywere able to find a. fairly stable existence in

the western part of the host nation or in the capital, Abidjan. But

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when civil war erupted in C0te d'Ivoire itself in September 2002,

the populace blamed much of the problem on foreigners. Tolerance changed to vituperation. I,iberians sometimes became

thetargetsforcommunityviolence,andmanywereforcedtorelocate to a handful of camps where their protection and subsistence

remained tenuous.,

In this case, with the war in Liberia seemingly intractable, resettlement appeared to be the only option. Responding to a UNHCR group referral in early,2003, the United Sta.tes initiated a resettlement program for approximately 8000 Liberians. Later, inJanuary2005,thefirstofagroupof1000refugeesfrom,Liberia and C6te d'Ivoire arrived in Australia. Some host countries are happy for refugees to gain a measure of serf-reliance in the camps - through small-scale farming or trading, for example - but' they see this as part of a longer-term strategy for returning refugees to their home countl.y. But the UNHCR, said Lambo, wants local integration to remain one of the |] ermanent solutions available in Africa. I spoke to David Lambo during my first visit to the UNHCR's headquarters, on the day the US-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. It was a clear, sunny day in Geneva, and a group of cheerful secondary school students was chanting anti-war slogans on a march near the organisation's office. But the mood inside the building was more subdued. Although the Iraq war ultimately didn't produce the stream of refugees that many peo|)le feared it would, at this early stage of the conflict, with the UNHCR and host governments already chronically overtaxed by millions of refugees around the world, it seemed extraordinary that the United States, Britain, Austraha and their allies were willing to risk creating another displaced group. According to Lanbo, dono]- countries had been holding back on contributing to other projects in anticipation of a call for humanitarian funds for Iraq once the war got underway.

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Thiswasn'tanewproblem.SadakoOgatadevotesmostofher memoir of her period as High Commissioner, 1990-2000, to the four major crises that the organisation dealt with during that decade: in Kurdish northern Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda and

Afghanistan.Ogata'sentirememoirmakesjustafewpassingreferences to Sudan and Somalia, which between them accounted for hundreds of thousands of refugees throughout the '90s. At

the end of the decade, writes Gil Loescher in his history of the tINHCR: I)onor governments conthued to give vastly disproportionate amounts of aid to a few well-known crises and trivial amounts of aid to dozens of other hidden humanitarian emergencies. ,In 1999,

international humanitarian organisations criticised governments for neglecting refugee problems in Africa while pumping billions of dollars into the refugee crisis in Kosovo. Faced with a severe

cutback in funds for humanitarian relief during 1999 and 2000, the

UN cut food aid and other essentials to rillions of refugees.

Commentingonthatperiod,JuliaTat,theUSassistantsecretaryofstateinchargeoftheBureauofPopulation,Refugeesand Migration from 1997 to 2001, said, "The dichotomy of how refugees were treated in say, Guinea, versus how those from Kosovo were ti.eated, was totally unacceptable for all of us; unacceptable to spend less than SUS20 million on 500,000 refugees from Sierra Leone and then ask for SUS240 million for an equivalent number of refugees in Kosovo. It is not fair and it is not right." She went on: "UNHGR ought to ten us what is really needed and force the donors to say, `We can't afford that' rather than settling on the standard to what you think donors will be willing to give." AcareerUNHCRofficialwhojoinedtheorganisationin1972, the Nigerian-born Lambo is courteous and articulate. He emumerated the problems facing the organisation in Africa briskly 110

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and systematically. Like I.ubbers and Taft, he believes that the

UNHCR needs to remind the world constantly about the protracted refugee situations that are easily forgotten amid the emergencies facing the organisation and its UN parthers. "There was a tine, when I first started out in the organisa.tion, when refugees had a right to schooling," he said. "Now, it's 'as low as 25 per cent

of children going to school in camps. In some camps there's a ratio of one teacher to 140 pupils -that's not teaching at all." The UNHCR must tal{e part of the blame, he said. "We have to say: these are the needs, you must give us the funds. I wouldn't say

we've been complicit, but we should have been much more upfront. We're starting to do this." "Whatis been the reaction from donors?" I asked. "Various degrees of silence."

A year later, in early 2004, Lambo was more optimistic, although the level of donor support was still disappointing. Announcing a ministerial conference on repatriation and reinte-

gration in Africa, he said that the peace talks in various parts of continent offered the possibility that more than two million refugees would have the opportunity to return home over the next three to five years. Reintegration had become one of a new

set of watchwords at the UNHCR - it was not enough simply to repatriate, the organisation also needed to reintegrate the retumees, and rehabilitate or reconstruct their communities. The shift in focus was driven by Lubbers's strongly expressed belief

that without adequate planning and funds for infrastructure, repatriation often led to poverty and despair among returnees. Returning home was often extraordinarily difficult, with bridges destroyed, roads poor or impassable and the removal of landmines a protracted and expensive process. During 2003, while the peace processes in Sudan and Somalia were progressing, agreements had been struck in Liberia, C6te

d'Ivoire and Burundi, a power-sharing government had been created in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the post-

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conflict situation in Angola was improving. "We're trying to spread the message that donors must help the peace processes nowunderwayonthecontinenttobesustainabl'e,"saidLamboat a media briefing in February 2004. The UNHCR was "cautiously optimistic" about conditions in Angola, Burundi,, the DemocraticRepublicoftheCongo,Eritrea,Liberia,Rwanda,SierraLeone, Somalia and Sudan. According' to its most recent estimates, Africa's largest ,refugee populations were from Sudan (730,600), Burundi (485,800), Somalia (389,300), Angola (228,800), the

Democratic Republic of the Congo (462,200) and Eritrea (131,100).

At the end of 2004, in its review of the year'§ developments, theuNHCR'squarterlymagazine,Rertygees,reportedmixednews from Africa: While expressing optinism that humanitarian agencies were "winning" the battle in Africa, UNHCR's David Lambo nevertheless said that across the continent there were still 4.3 million

uprooted peoples of direct concern to the refugee agency and millionsmoredesperatelyneedingassistance,butoutsideitsmandate.

And, Lambo said, he had noticed another disturbing development - a glctbal reluctance to fund emergencies and repatriations. "The world talks so much and pays so little," Lambo said. "During the

Rwanda crisis, donors talked and paid up. Today, there is talk and no action. I have never seen such a level of cynicism."

Geneva's relationship with refugees dates back centuries before the UNHCR set up its headquarters there. During Calvin's time,

in the mid sixteenth century, thousands of religious refugees some fleeing persecution, others seeking freedom of religious observance - came to the city, mainly from France, but also from England and Italy. For various reasons, most of them didh't stay 112

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for long, and some were expelled because they'd engaged in "bigamy,dissoluteliving,vagrancy,orAnabaptism,"accordingto

one historian. In the mid nineteenth century, Switzerland - and especially Gene,va, close to the French border -became a haven for political dissidents following the counter-revolutions of 1848.

Mainly from Germany and Italy, they included the young Friedrich Engels, fresh from fighting with revolutionary forces at Baden. As Michael Marrus shows in Tfee U7iwci7zfecJ, his history of

refugeesinEurope,thecountriestowhichthatgenerationofselfpro claimed revolutionaries fled were Surprisingly accommo dating. Despite the foreign-relations tension that their presence created, neither Britain nor Switzerland expelled a single one of them. A decade later, after an Italian revolutionary tried to assassinate Emperor Napoleon Ill and the 'empres§, the Swiss government agreed half-heartedly to expel a group of Italian exiles from

Geneva. The principal hardship, Marrus writes, "was that refugees had to keep away from their favourite cafe on the Pont des Bergues."

Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander 11 in 1881, a wave of leftists, anarchists, students and desperadoes flooded

across Europe. After the u|)heavals in 1905-06, Geneva became

"the capital of the Russian revolutionary movement," according to communist activist Angelica Balabanov. Alongside this movement was a vast exodus of Jews from eastern Europe - about 2.5 million between the early 1880s and the outbreak of the first

world war - spreading through western Europe and, in many cases, ending their journey in the United States. Private charities tock responsibhity for assisting these refugees.

During the chaos in Europe immediately after the first world war,refug€eswerehelpedeitherbyindividualgovemmentsorby private humanitarian organisations. In 1921, though, faced with the problem of assisting the estimated, 800,000 Russian refugees displaced by the civil war and famine, the recently established

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League of Nations, based in `Geneva, appointed Fridtjof Nansen as its first High Commissioner for Refugees. Well known as a scientistandexplorer,Nansenhadgained].enownforhisworkwith displaced Europeans after the first world war. The 60-year-old

took to his new job with rdish, harnessing and coordinating the resources of private charities to assist the Russian refugees.

Although Nansen's work generated controversy - opponents of the new office accused him of being pro-Bolshevik -his services were eventually extended to other nationalities. Later, the League appointed James MCDonald, a US academic and journalist, as "High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany." In the two years from 1933 he helped to find resettlement places for about 80,000 refugees. But

in 1935 the Nazi government's policies against Jews became more

extreme and the exodus from Germany accelerated. Because the League continued to regard the treatment of Jews in Germany as an internal matter for the German government, MCDonald resigned in late 1935.

After Germany left the League in 1938, the two High Commissioner positions were merged and a new High Commissioner for Refugees, Sir Herbert Emerson, appointed. According to Gil Loescher, "his powers were even more rigidly limited than had been the case in the past": He was denied the power to enter into any legal commitment whatsoever on t)ehalf of the League of Nations, and the League assumed no responsibilrty, legal or financial, for his activities. He

had no power to engage in material assistance and was assisted only by a skeleton staff.

The second world war left over seven minion people displaced inwestem-controlledEuropeandanunknownnumberinSovietcontrolled areas. "Among these," writes Marrus, "was every possible kind of individual - Nazi collaborators and resistance

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sympathisers, hardened criminals and teenage innocents, entire family groups, clusters of political dissidents, shell-shocked wandefers, ex-Storm Troopers on the run, Communists, concentra.tioncampguards,farmlabourers,citizensofdestroyedcountries, and gangs of marauders." Planning for dealing with this massive displacement had begun during the war, as had early efforts to

helprefugeeswhohadfledfromcontestedareas.TheBritishgovernment set up the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration, based in Cairo, to care for tens of thousands of Balkan refugees. The US government established an Office of Foreign

Relief and Rehabilitation Operations. But the likely size of the

problem led to a proposal for an international body, and in late 1943 the allies established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, or UNREA, with 44 member nations. Despite the tension between the Soviet Uulon and the major westemmembers,theUNRRAworl(edquicldytoassi§tmillionsof refugees to return home. But one of its own officials, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, provoked a shake-up of the organisationwhenhedescribeditasan"adventitiousassemblyofsilvertongued ineffectuals, professional do-gooders, crooks and crackpots."AfteraformermayorofNewYork,FioreuoLaGuardia, took charge, the organisatipn adopted a more activist approach, offering inducements to would-be retumees, supporting the Zionist call for Jewish refugees to, be resettled in Palestine and

appealing directly to UNRRA members to accept refugees for resettlement.

But when the UNRRA's mandate expired in mid 1947 more thanammiondisplacedpeoplewerestillwaitingforalong-term solutiontotheirpredicament.AnewUN-mandatedorganisation, the International Refugee Organisation, or IRO, was given three years to finish the job started by the UNRRA. The UN General Assembly resolution that created the ageney stipulated that this last group of refugees could not be compelled to retun to their prewar homes, and unlike its I)redecessors the IRO was given the

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full range of options to deal with the needs of the displaced population. Repatriation, according to Loescher, had been "entirely discredited in western eyes, tainted by the forcible refurns [to Soviet-controlled regions] of the inmediate postwar period." Most of the refugees assisted by the IRO (and the 60 voluntary organisations with which it worked) were resettled in the United States, Australia, Israel, Canada and Latin America. "In the achievement of its task,» writes Marrus, "the IRO spent some 450 million dollars, an extremely large sum for the time, and did so while maintaining a high reputation for efficiency and integrity." As the IRO's deadline approached and 400,000 displaced people were still awaiting new homes, international conditions were changing. The United States, which had borne a disproportionate share of the cost of the postwar refugee programs, was increasingly taking the view that the remaining refugees were Europe'sresponsibility.Withthecoldwarsettlingin,Washington begantodistanceitselffrommultlateralagenciesandconcentrate on defence pacts and the stand-off with the Soviet Union. As discussions began on a successor to the IRO, the Soviet Union and mostofitsallieswithdrewcompletelyfi.omthedebate(oneSoviet official described refugees as "traitors who are refusing to return

home to serve their country...") while the United States argued for another short-term agencywith limited scope and powers. In December 1949 the General Assembly came up with a

compromise. .The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees - the UNHGR - would be established for a periodofthreeyears'from1January1951,asa"subsidiaryorgan" of the assembly. Neither the Soviet Union nor the United States

was a member of the new body. Instead, the United States provided most of the funds for two other refugee agencies, the UN Relief and Works Ageney for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East and the UN Korean Reconstruction Agency. Like the UNHCR itself, the 1951 Refugee Convention was the resultofacompromise.Itrecognisedasrefugeespeoplewhohad 116

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a"well-foundedfearofbeingpersecuted"intheirhomecountry, but confined itself to those displaced a§ a result of events before 1 January 1951. Signatory countries. could elect to confine the scope of the Convention to refugees displaced by "events occurringinEurope."Australiawasamongthecountriesthatrestricted

the operation of the Convention in this way.

When the first High Commissioner, Gerrit Jari van Heuven Goedhart, arrived at the Offices of the UNHGR in Geneva -not too far from the cafe where the political exiles used to gather in the late 1850s - he found, as he later repor'ted, ``three empty rooms and a secretary"; twelve months later, at Christmas 1951, the secretariat was stiu small and poorly funded. As Gil Loescher

points out, van Heuven Goedhart was "the only High Commissionerevertohavebeenarefugeehimself."AleaderoftheDutch resistancemovementduringthesecondworldwar,heescapedto England and became minister of justice in the Netherlands government-in-exile.Hisbrotherandmanyofhisfriendswerekilled by the occupying forces. Fairlyquicldy,theUNHCRbeganrespondingtocrisesoutside Europe. Despite strong opposition from Britain, van Heuven Goedhart tried to help the estimated 700,000 Chinese refugees whohadfledtoHongKong(and,insmallernunbel.s,toMacau) after the communist takeover in 1949. With the added complication of the "two Chinas" - one based in Beijing and the other, whichheldtheChineseseatattheUnitedNations,inTaipei-the debate over who should assist the refugees dragged on for years. Britain, anxious to improve its relations with communist China, went so far as to claim that the 700,000 were not refugees at all, at least according to international law. Even after the UN General Assembly gave van Heuven Goedhart's successor, Auguste Lindt, the go-ahead to use his "good offices" to raise funds to assist the refugeesinHongKong,theBritishgovemmentrefusedforseveral

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years to let him visit the colony. But the assembly's decision on HongKonghadsetanimportantprecedent,andtheUNHCRwas now an organisation with an international scope. While that debate was going on, the UNHCR was embarking on its first emergeney assistance program in Africa. War had brokenoutinAIgeriain1954betweentheFrenchforcesandlocal independencegroups.Withoveramillionofitscitizenssettledin

the colony and a deeply felt belief that AIgeria was part of "metropolitan France," the French government refused to negotiate. The nationalist movement launched a guerrina campalgn and the French administra.tion responded with massively disproportionate force, both sides targeting civilians and destroying vil1ages. An estimated 300,000 Algerians were killed and tens of

thousands herded into barbed-wire encampments to cut off guerrillas from their supporters in the wider population. As French policy. hardened, the flow of refugees to neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco increased; by December 1959, according to

the UNHCR, there were over 110,000 Algerian refugees in Morocco and nearly 152,000 in Tunisia.

As the influx gathered pace, Tunisia appealed to the UNHCR for material assistance, heightening the debate over the French

government's behaviour. France didn't consider the Algerians to be legitimate refugees, so if the UNHC}R acted it would be going

against the wishes of one of its member nations and inplying that the member was persecuting its own citizens, the Algerians. The British feared offending Paris, according to Gil Loescher. The

inericans were critical of France, and felt that if the UNHCR assisted the refugees the region was a little less likely to fall under

communist influence. Despite opposition among his senior staff, Lindt was determined to assist Tunisia, and saw the opportunity to extend the UNHCR's geographical reach once and for all. Faced with clear evidence of French army atrocities, France's foreign minister, Christian Pineau, told Lindt, "Okay, but don't make too much of a fuss!" 118

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The relief operation was funded by the Swiss govelrment withmaterialassistancefromtheUnitedStatesandmoneyfrom a UNHCR global appeal; the Office of the High Commissioner coordinated the operation and the League of Red Cross Societies carried it out. As would be the case in many future relief operations (most notoriously, after the Rwandan genocide), Hfe in the

camps was made more difficult by the presence of combatants, taking a l)reak from the conflict or recruiting for future o|>erations. "The mobilisation is openly in progress and appears to have been going on for some weeks,» the UNHGR representative inMoroccowroteinearly1961."The|>ress-gangmethodisused

for reluctant persons... rn some cases of reluctance extreme measures have been used and I have been informed Of three

persons found with their throats' cut... I am convinced that the new recruits must run into thousands."

Within months, the French government was negotiating 1:he termsofaceasefirewiththeAlgeriannationalists.Ayearlater,the March 1962 peace agreement crea.ted a tripartite commission, including the UNHCR, to re|)atriate Algerian refugees from Morocco and Tunisia. The organisation not only assisted around 181,000 refugees to return but also participated in programs to helpthemrebuildtheirlivesin|>ostwarAlgeria.There,thesituation was complicated by another exodus - this time of over a

millionEuro|]eans,mainlyFrench,backtoEurope,fearinglifein independentAIgeria.

TheAIgerianwarwasatumingpointfortheUNHCR.It forced theorganisationtoexplorenewwaysofdealingwithrefugeeflows andpost-conflictconditions.Italsoforeshadowedthelargemove-

mentsofpeople-of[enfromonethirdworldcountrytoanother -thatwouldmakeupthevastbulkoftherefugeecrisestheorganisation would deal with over the next four decades.

ThethirdUNHighCommissionerforRefugees,FdixSchnyder, broughttothepositionastronginterestinAfricaandtheemergingdxpamicsofdecolohisation.Hemadeitclearthattheorgani-

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sationwouldnotbepreoccupiedwithEurope,promising``ashift in emphasis to groups in other continents." In late 1961 the UN General Assembly gave the High Commissioner greater discretion to respond to crises by including among his responsibilities

those nonlconvention refugees ``for whom he extends his good offices.'' These were the refugees who were not assessed case by case but were members of a large-scale exodus as a. result of conflictorthethreatofviolence.Inthiscomplexperiodofdecolonisation, with UNHCR member governments as likely to be the causes a§ the victims of refugee crises, the "good offices" approach auowed the organisation to sidestep intractable politi~ cal arguments.

Schnyder'splanswerewelcomedbymanynewlyinde|]endent countries and by a small group of western members and many non-government organisations. But they caused consternation elsewhere-andnotonlyamongthecolonialpowers.TheUnited States viewed the evolving organisation with ambivalence, and State Department documents from the period show significant differencesofopinionwithinthenewKennedyadministration.At one point these concerns crystallised around the news that the HighCommissionerhaddecidedtoappoiutan"Afro-Asian"candidatetothepositionofDeputyHighCommissioner.Whenthis plan was raised at a meeting of French and American officials, ClaudeI,obel,acounsellorfromtheFrenchembassy,saidthat"he thoughtthiswouldbeaverypooridea,"accordingtoaUSofficial who was present. Not only should the UNHCR be concentrating on ``pre-195l refugees," LolJel believed, but its leadership should

reflect the fact that "Europe and the United States were responsible for some three-fourths of the Commission's expenditures." Atthispoint,thelonger-termsurvivaloftheUNHCRwasnot

guaranteed.Itscurrentfivelyeartermwasduetoexpireattheend of 1963, and some cridcs argued that, having almost finished its originaltaskofassistingpre-1951'refugeesinEurope,theorgani-

sation'slifewasnearlyover.AItheUnitedNationsEconomicand 120

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Social Committee, the Soviet and Bulgarian delegations were reported to have "indicated that the need for the Office \of the UNHCR was drawing to an end and that measures should be taken to liquidate the Office and most of its functions over the next eighteen months." They argued that "the functions of legal assistance and good offices could be carried on by other branches of the United Nations Secretariat.» "This is exactly what quite a number of us around the department feel," wrote John Harter, an official in the US State Department. Eventually, though, it became clear that the opponents of the UNHCR were losing the argument, and the United States decided to accept that, in the words ofoneofficial,thepushtokeeptheUNHCRwas"imminentifnot alreadyinmotion.» The UNHCR was given a further five years of life. Schnyder expanded the executive committee, bringing in five new African nations: AIgeria, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania and Tunisia. The High Commissioner also got the deputy he wanted, Sadruddin Aga. Khan, who went on to play a central role in the development of the, organisation and its growing presence in Africa over the next decade and a half. By 1969, the UNHCR was spending around two-thirds of its budget in Africa.

Throughout the first two decades of the UNHCR's life, the memory. of the forced returns to the Soviet Union and eastern Europe at the end of the second world war continued to influence attitudes towards repatriation. Changed circumstances also favoured alternative solutions. The United States and its allies generally welcomed refugees from, communist countries - for their propaganda value, as much as anything. In Africa, where borders were porous and goverrments sympathetic to refugees displaced in the process of decolonisation, local integration and spontaneous returns were much more common than large-scale repatriation programs.

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The Cold War and the protracted process of decolonisation continued to influence the attitudes of governments during the 1970s and '80s, and those attitudes helped to determine the UNHCR's approach. But when the number of refugees began to growsignificantlyduringthe1980sandearly'90s,bothinfront1ine countries and in Europe, attitudes and policies began to change. Western countries became increasingly attracted to the idea of temporary refuge, with refugees offered a fixed period in their country of asylum to await the resolution of conflicts at

home. Australia's decision to offer short-term "safe haven" to refugees from the crises in Kosovo and East Timor, some of whom were eventuauy forcibly repatriated, is a notable example of this new thinking in action. Repatriationwascomingbackintofavour,andfromthemid

1980smanywesterncountrieswereencouragingtheUNHGRto findwaysofkeepingrefugeesasclosetohomeaspossible,either

in their own country or nearby, awaiting the opportunity to return. The cross-border relief op eration in north-eastern Kenya in 1992-93 was one early example of an attempt to staunch the flow of refugees into a neighbouring country. Under Sadalro Ogata, who had been appointed High Commissioner at the end of 1990, the UNHCR put a positive spin on the shift in emphasis,describingitasatransformation"fromarefugeeorganisation toamorebroadlybasedhumanitarianagency."Theorganisation

appearedtoembracetheopportunitytoworkinsidecountriesin crisis to prevent refugee exoduses and encourage refugees to return home as soon as possible. The UNHCR's Sfofe of ffee Worzcz's Rertygees J995 report puts the shift in policy in the most

positive terms: Whei.eas the older paradigm can be described as reactive, exile,

oriented and refugee-specific, the one which has started to emerge

overthepastfewyearscanbecharacterisedasproactive,homelandoriented and hohistic. . .

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[I]n contrast to the traditional paradigm, which `placed

primary emphasis on the right to leave one's own country and to seek asylum elsewhere, the newer perspective focuses equal atten-

tion on the right to return to one's homeland and on a notion which has become known as the "right to remain" or the "right not to be displaced."

The tuning point, according to Jennifer Hyndman, was Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq after the first Gulf war. Ordinarily the Kurds, who hadn't crossed any national borders,wouldnothavebeentheUNHGR'sresponsibility.Butin this case, she writes, "the organisation was called upon because of its `response ability'." As a senior official told her, "UNHCR could do the job so we were given the go-ahead." Funds tended to follow the UNHCR's willingness to perform

such a role in northern, Iraq, north-eastern Kenya and elsewhere: its annual budget, mainly funded by donor governments, grew ffom SUS544 million in 1990 to SUsl.3 bimon in 1996 and its staff numbers more than doubled. With a larger media relations department and inproved "emergeney readiness," the organisation gained a higher profile among the main humanitarian

players and regained much of the credibility it had lost during a period of financial turmoil and minor head-office scandal in the late 1980s. Gil Loescher writes:

As the UNHCR to ok on greater operational resp onsibilities and its vehicles were seen delivering assistance on the front lines of con-

flicts around the world, its prestige and reputation soared.

Suddenly the UNHGR was on the world political map. It grew from being an obscure humanitarian agency with no emergency relief profile, to become a well-known humanitarian a§si§tance

agency. . . The UNHCR became the world's good guys and could do no wrong.

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Meanwhile, other developments - the resolution of a number of long-running conflicts in Africa and Asia - had created the opportunity for large-scale repatriations to countries including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Namibia and Cambodia. Worldwide, nine million refugees were repatriated between 1991 and 1995, many more than the 1.2 million who had returned to their home countries during the previous five years. These returns seemed to lend support to western countries' new preference for refugees to be kept close to home, But the change in the UNHGR's approach was attracting criticism. Jennifer Hyndman argues that the new doctrine of "preventive protection" helped to legitimate the |>olitical strategies of the major donor governments - the United States, the European Union,Japanandothers-"whichfavourcertainmodesofmanaging displacement at arm's length." Gil I.oescher believes that emergeney assistance was given precedence over the UNHCR's traditional protection role (including resettlement) during the l990s, which meant that refugees had to wait for long periods, sometimes in serious danger, for a permanent solution. Evidence to sup|]ort Loescher'§ analysis came in Sadako Ogata's memoir, in

which resettlement rated only a few passing references. Ogata

made it clear that the main thrust of the UNHCR's work during that period was humanitarian relief land repatriation - reflecting the circumstances in the l990s, in which crisis after crisis con-

fronted her office. But by providing humanitarian rdief as close as

possible to the home countries of refugees - even within their borders - the UNHGR and the international community effectively curtafled the right to seek refuge. "In recent years," Loescher

wrote in 2000, "in order to demonstrate its `relevance' to states, the UNHCR has regularly cooperated in the containment of the inter-

nally displaced within countries of origin and in the enforcement of repatriation progranmes that are often less than voluntary." The UNHCR's decision to cross into countries 'from which refugees were fleeing, or likely to flee, also opened up the vexed 124

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question of how great the differences are - in circumstances, needs and status -I between refugees and infernally displaced people. In many respects it seems like an artificial distinction, especially in Africa, where the borders are often arbitrary and

porous. Why should someone who has fled 200 kilometres from home, yet is still within her home country, be treated differently from someone who has fled 50 kilometres and crossed a border along the way? ThedecisiontorestricttheUNHCR'smandatetopeoplewho have left their home country is based on a simple principle: that theresponsibilityforcitizensdisp]acedwithintheirowncountry must rest with the national authorities. In fact, national governments are obliged to protect their own citizens under intemational law; to have the United 'Nations' refugee agency working with internally displaced people would be to let governments off the hook. Of course, in practice some governments have for various reasons been unable or unwmng to help their displaced

population - or have been the cause of the displacement. In a number of cases the UNHCR has been asked to extend assistance to intemally displaced people, and during the 1990s it appeared increasinglywillingtodoso.ButinGenevatheweightofopinion seems to have shifted from the late l990s onwards, and when the invasion of Iraq began in 2003 it was the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs rather than the UNHCR that was charged with coordinating assistance to intemally displaced Iraqis.

Under Ogata's successor, Ruud Lubbers, the UNHCR pulled back from marketing itself as an all-purpose humanitarian organisation. When I interviewed 'Gil Loescher in I.ondon in the week the US-led coalition entered Iraq, he told me that the UNHCR's recent roles' in Afghanistan and West Afi-ica demonstrated that Lubbers was not reacting to crises in the same way as his predecessor. "In neither case did I,ut)bei.s tal{e the role Qga.ta

would have taken," 'he said. Yet he believed that a preoccupation

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THE LONGEST TOURNEy

with emergencies was still distorting the organisation's operations.

Despite the changes under Lubbers, repatriation has remained the pre-eminent osition of Australia's annual humanitarian intake.

The United States, Australia and, generally, Canada require all refugees to undergo a face-to-face interview with an immigration or consular official. Because governments are understandably reluctant to send officials into danger, visits to some regions to conduct interviews can be suspended for months or years at a

time. During 2004, for example, the Australian immigration department reported that Gambella (the region of western Ethiopia to which southern Sudanese fled in the l980s) was not safe enough for interviews and it was not expecting to send officials there in the foreseeable future. Finally, there's a broader problem for which the UNHGR and the resettlement countries need to be continually seeking solutions. As the Refugee Council argues, it's often the most vulnerar ble-"thosewhoare,heavilytraumatised,frightenedofauthority, victimisedbytheirpeers,afraidtoidentifythemselves"-whoare least able to pursue the process th]-ough to its conclusion.

The UNHCR's resettlement program, and the programs of individual resettlement countries, are vital but flawed elements of the

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

international refugee protection system. The countries that numerically dominate - the United States, Australia and Canada - are also countries with large-scale, long-term immigration programs driven by non-humanitarian inperatives. Selection criteria that make sense in the general immigration program have spilled over into the administration of humanitarian programs, disadvantaging some of the most vulnerable refugees. In some cases, entire groups have found it almost impossible to get access to resettlement places. Margaret Piper believes that Australia's program has improved in important ways over the past half decade. She describes this as a "very exciting" period, with key officials within the immigration department using imagination and flexibility to deal with long-running' problems in the resettlement program. Whereas she believes that the program had stagnated during the l990s, over the past few years the department has devoted resources to targeting backlogs and making the application and approvals process operate more fairly.

Atthebroadestlevel,thegeographicreachoftheprogramhas shifteddramatically.By2003-04,three-quartersofhumanitarian visas went to Africans, a pretty clear indication that the bias against Africa has been reversed. Partly this figure reflects the

growing number of Sudanese who are coming to Australia as sponsored entrants under the special humanitarian program sponsored, that is, by other Sudanese who came here quite recently as refugees. In recognition of the growing proportion of sponsors who are recent arrivals, the federal government has created a fund to supplement the level of support a sponsor can offer. Across the special humanitarian program (excluding refugees, for whom the government already provides this support), an average of 50 per cent of the required support is now available from the department. In addition, the government will cover the costs of pre-embarkation medical tests. The African intake has also become more diverse, with Ethiopian 136

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refugees from the UNHCR's Abu Rakham camp in southern Sudan, Burundians from Tanzania, and Liberians and Sierra Leoneans from the UNHCR's Laine camp in Guinea figuring among recent arrivals. Australia's capacity to respond to emergeney cases has also improved, and processing times across the board have been reduced. To expedite processing, the immigration department has begun sending mobile teams to areas outside the reach of

consular staff, and more of the paperwork is being handled in Australia rather than at overburdened diplomatic posts. Greater flexibility means that unused numbers carry over or, where necessary, |jart of a quota can be used in advance. Refugees from campshavelongbeenunder-representedintheprogramsofAustralia and other resettlement countries (which is a large part of the reason why Sarah Mutual eventually left Kakuma for Nairobi), but the proportion of refugees coming to Australia from the camps grew from 15.4 per cent in 2002-03 to 21 per cent in 2003-04. Margaret Piper says that the argument that the government is too selective when it assesses resettlement,applicants now has less force: "At the moment a very high proportion are difficult cases torture victims, people who have been in camps for a long time orwhowillneedextrasupporttosettleinwhentheyarrivehere." Families headed by women - who traditionally have had more difficulty than most in getting access to resettlement places in Australia or ielsewhere - made up a large proportion of the Liberians and Sierra Leoneans who arrived from Guinea in early 2005. The Ethiopians from Sudan and the Burundians fi.om Tanzania have lived in camps for well over a decade. The commitment that 10.5 per cent of refugee places will go to women at risk is generally being met or exceeded; in 2004-05 the proportion reached 15 per cent.

Piper also points to the large increase in funding for the Inte-

grated Humanitarian S ettlement Strategy, the Australian govern137

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

ment 'program that funds settlement services for refugees and humanitarian entrants and now helps with travel costs for sponsored arrivals. In May 2004 the government announced an extra

$267 million over four years to pay for pre-departure medical assessments and help humanitarian sponsors to pay for airfares and cover initial accommodation costs.

Beyond the administration of its resettlement program, Aus-I tralia has a broader role to play in helping to deal with the root causes of refugee flows and in, supporting international efforts to offer refugees long-term options. The government says that it is performing well in both respects, but the evidence is not strong. Just before he left immigration to become attorney-general in late 2003, Philip Ruddock contributed an introductory note to a fleweditionofthebookletRertygeearidHt/mci#i.£#r!.cl7iJss"es..Atfs-

froJ!.ci'sRespor!se.DespitethefactthathehadrepeatedlyusedAus-

tralia's resettlement program as evidence that the government was entitled to take a tough stand against unauthorised arrivals, he played down its importance in favour of repa.triation and local integration: To improve prospects' of repatriation it is ci.ucial that we assist war

ravaged source countries to rebuild their nations. Similarly, to improve prospects of local integration we need to assist countries of first asylum to increase their capacity to host refugees. In this

context Australia makes a significant contribution by way of aid and diplomatic efforts.

Contrary to these comments, Australia's level of development aid has stalled at around 0.26 per cent of gross national income, or GNI, in recent years, down from 0.34 per cent in the early 1990s and levels above 0.40 per cent in the 1970s and eady '80s.

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Australa's aid is now substantially below the average of 0.42 per centofGNIamongthe22,membersoftheOECD'sDevelopment Assistance Committee (which is made up of most of the western developed economies), and well short of the UN target of 0.70 per cent. Moreover, in 2003-04 (the latest period for which the OECD has released figures) only 32 per cent of Australian aid went to the 50 countries classified by the United Nations as "least developed," and only 4.8 per cent was allocated to Africa, reflect+ ing a signfficant and long-term fall over the previous decade. In

September 2005 Prime Minister Howard announced that Australian aid would be doubled, to around $4 billion per year, by 2010 - a significant increase, but still not enough to bring Australia up to the average among members of the Development Assistance Committee. Australia's foreign aid record since the mid l990s is partly a reflection of a belief in some western countries that aid is ineffective at lifting the least developed countries out of poverty that it stops these countries from facing up to their own failings. But over the past three years a series of reports has demonstrated how the least developed nations, especially those in Africa, have laboured under an enormous burden of war, disease land bad advice from the lnternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The argument that Africa's problems derive from its colonial past - artificial borders, exploitation of natural resources, forced labour, violent independence struggles -became a clich6 in the years after independence, and has been used by corrupt, incompetent goverrments as an excuse for falling living standards. But the fact remains that colonial rule created enormous problems.InSudan,forexample,theBritishpolieyofdeveloping the north and south separately (to keep open the option of

joiningthesouthwithBritishUgandaandKenya)helpedtoreinforce the differences between the two parts of that vast country. By independence, the relative economic and political power of the north meant that the population in the south was largely

139

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

excluded from government and marginalised in the process of building a nation. The origins of the north-south split go back centuries, of course, but British rule cemented a division that would have disastrous consequences.

Superpower rivalry also exacerbated the continent's problems. In East Afi.ica, Sudan escaped the worst of the Cold War

jockeying, but the home countries of the other large groups of refugees at Kakuma - Ethiopia and Somalia - were flooded with weaponry, their corrupt governments sustained by the Soviet Uhion and the, United States. Meanwhile, the International Mometary Fund and the World Bank were forcing African governments to deregulate their economies, open up their financial sectors and introduce user-pays policies. The damage this has caused, described in detail by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, in his book GZoZ7aJ7.z¢rio7t a#d Jfs D!.s-

co#fer!fs, has been enormous. The economist Jeffrey Sachs summarises the case: Western governments enforced draconian budget policies in Africa

during the 1980s and 1990s. The IMF and the World Bank virtually ran the economic policies of the debt-ridden continent, rec+

ommending regimens of budgetary belt tightening known technicauy as structural adjustment programs... By the start of the twenty-first century Africa was poorer than during the late 1960s,

when the IMF and the World Bank had first arrived. . .

Another part of the problem in Africa is environmental. In a persuasive report for the World Health Organization, a commission led by Sachs' showed how tropical regions face many more health challenges than those with more temperate climates. Malaria, for example, is largely confined to tropical areas, with sub-Saharan Africa further burdened by the most pernicious of the mosquito vectors. Parasitic diseases like onchocerciasis and schistosomiasis make life especially difficult in some tropical

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CANBERRA

areas. The relatively large number of workers who move across borders within Africa. in search of work contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS. According to Sacks and his colleagues, more than half the shortfall in Africa's growth compared to East Asia's can be explained by disease, demography and geography. The group's report, Investing in Heath fior Economic Development, shows how aid funds could be spent to help break the cycle of disease and poor economic performance. Sacks is now the special adviser to the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, on the implementation of

the Millennium Development Goals, the targets agreed to by all 191 UN member states in 2002. His involvement in this process, along with advocacy over the past four years by Britain's chancellor, Gordon Brown, and prime minister, Tory Blair, have helped

move the debate about overseas aid back into the political mainstream.

Just as Australia could do more through its overseas aid

program, it could also make a more significant contribution to the UNHCR to provide it with certainty and flexibility. Over the past five years Australia's total contribution to the UNHCR's budget has fallen, fi.om $23.9 million to $ 18.3 million, and its core

finding - which is not tied to specific pro].ects - has roughly halved, from $14.3 million to $7.3 million. The abrupt reduction in core funds came in the 2002-03 federal budget, undoubtedly as a result of the friction between the UNHCR and the government over the Pacific Solution. Consequently, Australia dropped from eighth to thirteenth place among donors ranked according to the proportion of gross domestic product donated, and 'from tenth to thirteenth ranked on a per capita basis. Australia's modest overseas aid budget and its reduction in funding to the UNHCR are deliberate political decisions that can be reversed if the government is serious about dealing with refugee crises at their sources. Less easy to deal with is a problem

that seems almost inevitable in refugee and humanitarian resettlement. Although "cherry picking" of refugees a|)pears to be less

141

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

common,itislikelythatcertainsortsofrefugees-thosewhoare articulate and have good English -will find it easier to negotiate theprocessofobtainingaresettlementplace.Theyarealsolikely to be the ones with marketable 'skills, and their departure for the west will add to the exodus that is leaching African countries of skilled labour. Western countries are increasingly recruiting from the third world to fill skilled labour shortages, and there is a danger that, informally, the resettlement program will function in the same way. In return, of course, families in developing countries receive remittances from their relatives working abroad. But the export of labour contributes to a idecline in the human capital of the home economy and fuels further emigration.

To operate in a genuinely humanitarian way, Australia's program should make it as easy as possible for refugees to return home to assess the prospects for repatriation without incurring any penalty. This would increase the chances of talented refugees returning to their home countries to help in the rebuilding after conflicts have been resolved or authoritarian

governments have fallen. Refugees resettled in Denmark, for example, can undertake a trial repatriation at any time, with travel costs and "a reasonable amount for re-establishment"

provided by the Danish government. "If the repatriate regrets his/her return to the home country within the first six months, re-entry in Denmark will be granted," according to the UNHCR's Resettlemenl: Handbook. The Refugee Council would like to see a further increase in humanitarian quotas, arguing that Australia has the cap acity and the community-based infrasti.ucture to absorb higher numbers. In mid 2004 the government increased the overall program by 1000 places, to 13,000 per year, and lifted the number of refugee places within the progl.am from 4000 to 6000 per year. Applications continue to run at between 60,000 and 90,000 people per

year, however, according to the immigration department. Aus142,

CANBERIIA

tralia demonstrated the capacity to accept greater numbers of refugees in the early 1980s, when overall humanitarian numbers were about 22,000, so there's no reason why a wealthier Australia, twenty years later, shouldn't be able to offer around double the existing number of places. It is important, however, that `any increase in resettlement numbers is not used by the federal government as a justification for harsh treatment of asylum seekers arriving by sea or air in the future. Changed conditions jn Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to the dramatic fall in onshore applications, but circumstances in those countries, or elsewhere, could change. The

government has sought to link asylum and resettlement by arguing that onshore arrivals take places and funds away from offshore applicants, but the two groups make up distinct and independent categories. As the Refugee Council puts it, they are "distinct in inception and motivation." The onshore program, which deals with asylum seekers, is an obhigation for Australia arising from the fact that it is a signatory to the 1951 Convendon Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. When it

fails to give protection to asylum seekers with valid claims it breaches that obligation. The offshore program - resettlement -

arises from a longstanding commitment by successive governments to assist the UNHCR to find long term solutions for refugees, which dovetails with the aims of broader immigration

polity Australia is under no legal obligation to offer resettlemeut, but the program has brought enormous benefits to tens of thousands of refugees and to the Australian community. After the boat arrivals increased in late 1999, the Australian

government so'ught to blur the distinction between 'these two categories. It created an artificial distinction between deserving (offshore) and undeserving (onshore) applicants for 'refugee status, and played on simplistic inages of what differentiates genuine refugees from illegal immigrants. The federal opposition failed to offer an alternative perspective.

143

THE LONGEST )OUIINEY

Fortunately, the humanitarian program has evolved separately from the government's confused and confusing rhetoric about refugees. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Australia has the capacity to accept more refugees - people like Sarali Mutual, Joseph Wadar and Berhanu Ayalew who would bring skills, experience and insights to this country - and to match improvements in the resettlement program with a more just and humane response to unauthorised arrivals.

144

References Introduction The account of the attack on the Rwandan woman and her children, which makes up most of this chapter, draws on: Kerry Taylor, "Tragedy Ends Wait for At-Risk Rwandan Family," Age, 25 April 2002; Dfli7/ Nafi.o#, 19 April 2002; Karen Polglaze, "Grieving Mother to be Rushed to Australia After Sons Slain," Australian Associated Press, 26 April 2002; "Boys Slain in UN Refuge," MX, 24 April 2002; Human RIghts 'Watch, "Kenya: 'Refugee Children Murdered at `Secure Residence' in Nairobi," 23 April 2002; author's interviews with Anthony Morland, Agence France Presse, Nairobi, 24 July 2002, and,Sergio Calle-Norefia, UNHCR, Nairobi, 25 July 2002; Philip Ruddock, Minister for Immigration, written response to author's questions, 13 September 2002.

Page 7. Growth in ltenya's refugee population: UNHCR, T7ie Sfflfe a/tj!e World's Ref ugees 2000: Fif ey Years of Humanitarian Action, Oxford University Press, 2000, p 311-13.

Page 8. Australian government response to attack: "Tragedy Ends Wait for At-Risk Rwandan Family," op cit; Phihip Ruddock, op cit. Page 11. Obstades faced by refugee groups: see more detailed discussion in chapter 4. Obstacles faced by refugee women I(ese#JemcHf Hc]Hdbook, UNHGR, July 2002 edition, p IV/14.

Page 12; Resettlement progranis "as a kind of adjunct to skilled migration schemes'': Matthew I. Gibney and Randall Hansen, "Asylum Poliey in the West: Past Trends, Future Possibilities," Discussion Paper 2003/68, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2003, p 12. Shift in focus of the Australian resettlement program: "Australia's Humanitarian Program," Parliamentary Library Research Note, SeptemlJer 2005, p 2. Celebration of Sudan peace agreement in Nairobi: Rory Carroll, "Sudanese Rebels Sign Peace Deal," Gwardj.¢#, 10 January 2005.

Celebrations in Melbourne: "Sudanese Government Signs Peace Deal with Rebels," PM, ABC Radio, 10 January 2005.

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THE I.ONGEST JOURNEY

Chapter 1: Melbourne Sarah Mulual's story, which runs through this chapter, is based on interviews with the author in March 2004 and February 2005. At her request, I haven't used Sarah's real surname. The historical information on Footscray is drawn from John Lack, A H!.sfory a/-Footscray, Hargreen Publishing, 1991. The description of Sudan and conflict within Sudan since 1956 in this chapter is drawn from: P. M. Holt and M. W. Daly, A H!.sfony a/ the Sudan: From the Coming Of Islam to the Present Day, Lon&man, 2000,

pp 2-3., Lodsew. Hohoonn, Refugees, a I.roblem Of Our Time.. The Work Of the United Nations High Commissioner fior Ref ugees,1951-1972, Scarecrow Press, 1975, p 994; Heather Sharkey, Lit/i7ig w!.fie CoZo#r.¢Z£.s/7!.. Nc}tr.o#aJ!.5m

and Culture in the Anglo-Egy|)tian Sudan, Un]Iversky oE Cahiornjia, Press, 2003, p 6.

Page 14. Possibly the first multilingual municipal library in Australia: John Lack, op cit, p 382.

Page 17. Trickle of Sudanese refugees slowly turning to a flood: Reuters News Agency, "Sudanese Refugees Made 30-Day March to Safety in Ethiopia,» GJozie flric! Mfl].J, 7 May 1984, p 11. Growth in numbers at Itang:

ibid and Reuters News Agency, "Sudanese Flee Harsh Treatment," GJobe and Mail, 20 Fchruany L9 85. SPLA at ltanB.. Civilian, Devastation.. Abuses by A7Zpttrties I.ri fJ]c Wcir i.# Sowfj!em StJc!4#, Human Rights Watch, 1994,

pp 260-61; M. V van Baarsen, "The Netherlands and Sudan: Dutch Policies and lnterventions with Respect to the Sudanese Civil War," Conflict Research Unit, 2000, p 46.

Page 18. Sudane§e arrivals in Australia: Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) Settlement Database, data exti:acted on 20 September 2005. Main nationalities of humanitarian ewhan:ts 3n 2003J)4.. Ref ugee and Humanitarian Issues: Australia's Response, DIMIA, June 2005 edition, p 36. Pages 18-19: Attitude of OAU: John R. Rogge, Too Many, Too fo#g.. Sticiflri'5 Ti4Je#ty-year Refiigee D!7cmmfl, Rowan and Allanheld,1985, p 169.

Page 19. Australia's policies after second world war: RIaus Neumann, Ref age Australia: Aiistralia's Humanitarian Record, \INSW Press, 2004, pp 37-38. Pages 19-20. US refugee'program from 1980: David A. Martin, T#e U#!.fed States Ref ugee Admissions Program: Ref arms fior a New Era Of Ref ugee Rese#Jeme#f, US Department of State, 2004, pp 31-34; quote from p 31.

Page 20. Quotas for Africans from 1981: John R. Rogge, Too Ma#y, Too Lor!g, op cit, p 169. Australian humanitarian arrivals 1982J}7: James

146

REFERENCES

lapp, B)dle or Ref age? The Settlement Of Humarlitarian and Displaced Jmm!.grflr]fs, Australian Government Publishing Service,1994, pp 94-97.

Geographic brealrdown of Australia's humanitarian places,1998-99 to 2003-04: "Australia's Humanitarian Program," Parliamentary Library Research Note, September 2005, p 2. Pages 21-22. Location of Sudanese refugees at end of 2004: 2004 GJobaz Ref ugee Trends: Overview of Ref ugee Populations, New AIrivals> Durable Solutions> Asylum-Seekers, Stateless and Other Persons Of Concern to the

UNIJCR, Tables 3 and 4, UNHCR, Geneva, June 2005 .

Page 22. Chain effect in Melbourne: Margaret Coffey, "From Sudan," E"cow#fer, ABC Radio National, 21 November 2004 ; see also Margaret Coffey, "Life in Transit,» EtJrcka Strce£, September 2004. Pages 22-23. Sudanese refugees flee back into Sudan: John Young, "Along Ethiopia's Western Frontier: Gambel]a and Benishangul in Transition," /otimaz a/Modcm Aft.carl Strd!.e5, 37, 2 ( 1999), p 331; Martin Adler and Peter Strandberg, "Ethiopiari Refugees Flee to Nasir," ObsertJer, London, 23 June 1991; Robert Powell, "U.N. Launches Apt)eal for Sudan Refugees

Evicted from Ethiopia," Reuters News, 4 June 1991.

Page 23. Tensions which ultimately split the SPI,A: John Young, op cit, p 33l.

Pages 24-25. "At the Turkana Cafe. . .'': Karin Davies, "As War in Sudan Rous On, Refugee Camp Acquires Air of Permanence," The Associated Press, 22 June 1996.

Page 25. Britain's resettlement quota: ReseffJeme" i Harldbook, UNHCR,

June 2004 edition, p GBR/I. Named the Gateway Protection Programme, the British scheme commenced operation in April 2004. According to the resettlement handbook, "It aimed to process approxinately loo cases (individuals land families) during the first year, increasing capacity to fulfil the 500 placements gradually over ensuing years." Applications `for asylum in Britain:. Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2004,

UNHCR, 2005, p 8. "Resettlement under UNHCR auspices. . .": ResettJemc#f Ha#dhook, UNHCR, November 2004 edition, p 1/3. Page 26. Protected entry procedures: Gregor Noll and Jessica Fagerlund, Safe A:wenues to Asylum? The Actual and Potendal Role Of EU Di|]lomatic

Representations in Processing Asrium Requests, Danish Centre for H:urmn Rights/UNHCR, April 2002, pp 1-2,10-12,111-17. Proposal for a uniform, Europe-wide approach: Gregor Noll, Jessica Fagerlund and

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THE LONGEST JOURNEY

FaNIice hiebant, Study on the Feasibility Of Processing Asylum Claims Outside

the BU Against the Background Of the Common European Asylum System and the Goal Of a Common Asylum Procedure, Da:risk Gen+Ie for H"mz[n RIghts/European Commission, 2002, pp 5rf . Response of EU Members: Gregor Noll, email to author, 2 December 2004.

Page 27. Returns dun.m8 2004.. 2004 Global Refugee ltends, op ctt, p 4.

Thelongerrefugeesstayawayfromhomethelesslikelytheyareto repatriate: iauthor's interview with UN-Habitat staff member, Nairobi, March 2003. Not all returns are voluntary: "UNHCR Protests Forced Return of Refugees from Rwanda," UNHCR Press Release, 5 September 2002; Sarah Petrin, "Refugee Return and State Reconstruction: A Compe[ative Analysis,» New Issues in Rrf ugee Research 66, I.INIICR, August 2002, p 16.

Page 28. A refugee-exporting country can also be a' refuge: 2004 G/obaz Re;fi¢gee Ire"cis, op cit, table 4. Sergio Calle-Norefia on prospects for repatriation: intervi'ew with the author, UNHCR, Nairobi, 25 July 2002. Refugees cautious despite progress in Sudan: author's interview with Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, UNHCR, Nairobi, 15 March 2004.

Page 29. Kenyan govermnent hands over refugee processing: Arla7/s!.s a/ Refiigee Pro fecti.o# Capacl.ty.. Kc#ya, UNHCR, April 2005, p 4. New Kenyan government I)romises reform of refugee policy: t`Kenya Bill to Help Refugees towards Self-Sufficiency," Reuters News, 17 February 2003.

Refugee numbers in Nairobi: UNHGR from author's interview with Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, UNHCR, Nairobi, 15 March 2004; Human Rights Watch estimate from Anson Pa:cker, Hidden in Plain View.. Ref ugees Living Withoutprotection,inNairobiandKampala,FlumanRigivtswatch,2002,p 17. Refugee figures at end of 2004: 2004 GJobfl! jze/#gee Tre#c!s, op cit, p 3.

Page 30. New applications during 2004: As/Jt!m levczs flrld Trc#ds I.# Jrlc!wsfr7.flJi.sod Cow#£ri.es, 2004, UNHCR, 2005, table 1.

Page 31. Sudanese government's links with al-Qaeda: Jane Corbin, "e Base: Al-Qaeda and the Changin`g Face Of Global Tierror, Pocket Books,

pp 54-62. Pa.8e 32. Press"es on sudarLese government.. God, Oil and Country.. ChangingtheLogicofwarinsudan,lnternationchcrisisGroup,2002,

pp 24-29.

Chapter 2': Kalcuna Much of this chapter i§ based on interviews carried out by the author at Kakuma in March 2003 for an article, "Surviving Africa," published in ithe

148

REFERI3NGES

April 2003 edition of Ewreka Streef, follow-up correspondence with UNHCR staff during 2004 and 2005, and a follow-up interview and email correspondence with Sr Christina MCGlym.

Page 32. Tlirkana described byl,ittle and I.eslie; Michael A. Little and Paul W. I.eslie (eds), "rha#a Hcrders o/£#c Dry Sava##a.. Ecology a#d Biol]ehwioral Response Of Nomads to an Uncertain Environment, Oxford, University Press, 1999, p 4.

Page 33. Arrival of Ttirkana: John I.amphear, Tfle Sca#erj.#g TI.mc.. Twrha#fl Respo"ses to CoJo#iaJ R#7c, Oxford University Press,1992, pp 5rf, 10-'12;

Tohn Lamphear, The Traditional History Of the Jie Of Uganda, Chaendon Press, 1976, p 93; John I.amphear, email to author, 6 November 2003.

ArrivaloftradersandEuropeansinTurkana:JohnLamphear, T7!e Scaffer!.#g T!."e, op cit, |]p 52nd6. Turkana deaths: ibid, p 3.

Turkana in twentieth century: Rada Dyson-Hudson and Dominique Meekers, ``Migration Across Ecosystem Boundaries," in Michael A. Little and Paul W. Leslie (eds), Twrka#a Herders o/fJle Dry Sava#Hfl, op cit, p 305;

Paul W. Leslie, Michael A. Little, Rada Dyson-Hudson and Neville DysonHudson, "Synthesis and I,essons," in ibid, pp 358, 366-67.

Pages 33-34. Turkana region and human evolution: John Reader, Afl.ca; Biographyofacontinent,Vhaage,\997,pp75-77. Page 34. Population of Kaltuma in 1991 and 2003: author's interview with REalid Shah, Programme Officer, UNHCR, Kakuma, 13 March ,2003. Pages 35-36. Convention definition of a refugee: Co#ve„fi.ori j{eJ¢tirig fo £7Ie Sffltw5 o/Rerfugge5, UN General Assembly, 195| , p 16, text available at

. I'age 36. Organi§ation of African Unity Refugee Convention: Gil Loescher, TheUNHCRandvvioridPolitics:APerilousPath.OxfordUniversrtyPress, 2001, p 126.

Pages3940.SecurityinTurkanaregion:AlisonParker,H!.cJderH.#PJ¢!.# View. ap ctt, pp L28-29S Playing with Fire: Weai]ons Prolif erahon, Political VI.oJe#ce,,arlc!Hwmarij(!.gJltst."jG?#y%HumanRightsWatch,2002,p66; Elliot Fratkin, Ar}.aflJ Pflsforflz}.sis a/Kcfiyfl, AIlyn and Bacon,1998, p 33.

ConflictbetweenTurkanaandSudanese:Jeff Crisp,"AStateoflnsecurity: ThePoliticalEcononyofvlolenceinKenya'sRefugeeCamps,"Aft.caHA#H!.r$ 99,2000,pp610-11;"MarginalisedTbrkanaVi'ewithRefugees,"IRINNews Service, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affiirs, 22 July 2003; Arafat Jamal, "Minimum Standards and Essential Needs in a Protracted Refugee Situation: A Review of the UNHCR Programme in Kakuma, Kenya," UNHCR Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, 2000, p 28.

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Page 40. Rising violence at Kakuma: Jeff Crisp, "A State of Insecurity," op cit, p 601. Population of 'Kckiima: Jennifer Hyndman, Ma#agr.rig Displacement: Ref ugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism, Universtry o£ Minnesota ,Press, 2000, p 133; author's interview with RTalid Shah, op cit.

UNHCR's preferred maximum camp population: Ha#cJbook/or Emerge"ci.es, UNHCR, second edition, 2000, p 137. Refugees traumatised,

aggressive or highly stressed: Jeff Crisp, "A State of Insecurity," op cit, p 624.

Page 40. Conflict exploited by local politicians: Pky!.#g W!.th Fj.re, op cit, p 67. Kakuma a hotbed of intrigue: Jeff Crisp, ``A State of Insecurfty," op cit, p 619,

Pages 4041. UNHCR programs for Turkana: author's interview with Khalid Shah, op cit; Arafat ]amal, "Minimum Standards and Essential Needs in a ProtractedRefugee Situation,» op cit, pp 27-28.

Page 41. Makeup of Kakuma population: author's interview with REalid Shah, op cit. Weapons flow across borders: Pky!.rig Wf7! Fire, op cit,

pp 8-10. Flow of people to and from southern Sudan: Jeff Crisp, "A State of Insecurity," op cit, p 623.

Page 4142. SPLA recruitment at Kckurna: ibid, p 623; Rossella Pag!iuchiLor, email to author, 23 May 2003.

Page 42. Food,ration ih December 2004 and June 2005: "Cash or Food Needed Urgently for Refugees -WFP,» IRIN News Service, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 17 December 2004; "UNHCR and WFP Appeal to Donors to End Ration Cuts for Africa's Refugees,» UNHCR Press Release, 14 September 2005.

Pages 4243. Jason Phillips testimony: US Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring and the I)istrict of Columbia hearing, "Half a Loaf? The Impact of Excluding Suxplus Commodities from America's Response to Global Hunger," 4 June 2002,

pp 1-3. Incentive payments: author's interview with Christim MCGlynn, UNHCR, Kckuma, 12 March 2003. Page 44. Mark_ Bixler's observation: Bixler, 17!e fasf Boys of swdaH.. Ari American story of the Ref ugee B]cperi?nee, Un.rversity of Geor8±a. Press, 2005,

pp 113-14. Study of 500 young Sudanese: Julianne Duncan, "Sudanese `Lost Boys' in the United States: Adjustment After Six Months,» United

States Catholic Conference, May 2001, p 9. A fully fledgcd municipality; Jason Phillips, "Letter from the Field: Kakuma Camp - `Hell' Never Looked So Good,'' Humanitarian Affiirs Review, Winter 2002, p 2.

Pages 4445. Ayalew Kassa and Mulugela Dade Kusa: Encarnacion Pyle,

150

REFERENCES

"Living ,in the Camp: Sustained by Hope," Cozwmz7ias D!.spafch,,17 October 2004.

Pages 4647. Dangers for women: Susan Forbes Martin, Rertygge Wome#, I,exington Books, 2004, pp 2, 15.

I'age 47. Survey by the International Rescue Committee: "Kakuma Refugee Camp: Reproductive Health Survey Results," IRG, 1999, cited in

Therese MCGinn, ``Reproductive Health ,of war-Affected Populations: What Do We Know?" International Family Planning Perspectives, vof 26, no 9, December 2000, pp 178-79. Female circumcision: Arla7ysis a/Re;fi/gee Proteedo# Capflcl.ty.. KZ2#yfty UNHCR, 2005, p 24. Polygamy: `Assessment of

HIV/AIDS Behaviour Change Communication Strategies Employed by NGOs in Refugee Camps, Kenya," UNHCR, 2002, p 18.

Pages 4748. Pittaway and Bartolomei: Eileen Pittaway and Linda Bartolomei, "Women at Risk Project:I Preliminary Draft Report," Centre for Refugee Research, University of New South Wales, 2003. Page 48. Kalcuma as a case study: Arafat Jamal, M!.#f.mwm SfH#dflrc!s ¢r!c!

Essential Needs f or Ref ugees in a Protracted Ref ugee Situation, op cia.

"A forlorn agglomeration.. .'': ibid, p 4.

Page 49. Education spending in the camp: ibid, p 22. Giving priority to emergencies: Ha#c!book /or Emerge#c7.cs, second edition, UNHCR, August 1999, quoted,in ibid, p 5, fu 2. ``Scenes of mass movement...'': ibid, p 5.

Sadako Ogata at the UN Security Council: ibid, p 16, fri 18. Ruud I.ubbers on funds for African refugees: ``Kckuma's Refugees Deserve Food as Much as People in Iraq, Says Lubbers," UNHCR News, 15 April 2003; "Africa at a Crossroads,» Re¢gees 131, June 2003, p 16.

Page 50. Refugee community involvement: author's interview with Thalid Shah, ap cit., Arafat Taimal, Minimum Standards and Essential Needs for Refugees in a Protracted Refugee Situation, op cit, p 24.

Pages 51-52. Community councils and human rights: Monica Kathim Juma and Peter Mwangi Kagwanja,"Securing Refuge from Terror: Refugee Protection in East Africa After September 11,» in Niklaus Steiner, Mark Glbney and Gfi LoescheF (eds), Problems Of protection: The UNHGR, Ref ugees, and Human Rights, Routledge, ZOOS, p 23L. Page 51. Avirtual time warp: Susan Forbes Martin, Re;fi/gee Womerz, op cit,

p 2o. Support for Forbes Martin's argument: CJNHCR PoZ!.ey o# Jzefrgee Women and Guidelines on Their Protection: An Assessment Of Hen Years of

Jmpzeme#fatr.ori, Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, May 2002, pp 3, 5. Forbes Martin credits UNHCR: Susan Forbes Martin, Re/wgee Wome", op cit, pp ix, 157.

151

THE LONGEST JOUIINEY

Page 52. Resettlement applications processed at camp: author's interview with Shant Demegerditchian, resettlement officer, Kckuma, 14 March 2003.

Page 53. September 2005 Sudanese population at Kalcuma: "High Commissioner visits Kalcuma refugee camp in Kenya," UNHCR Briefing Note, 30 August 2005; "UNHCR and WFP appeal to donors to end ration cuts for Africa's refugees," UNHCR/WFP Media Release, 14 Scptcmber 2005.

Page 54. Ruddock and Vanstone: see, for example, Amanda Vanstone, `'The Myc)pia of Refugee Advocates," Age, 31 July 2004. Fewer than one in five.. Submission Of the Refugee Council Of Australia to the 2004-2005 Rrfugee

and Humanitarian Program Size and Composition Review,Refugee Counch of Australa, 2004, p 59.

Chapter 3: The promised land Joseph, Wadar's story, which runs through this chapter, is based on an interview with the author in March 2003. This is not his real name. Page 56. Events following A|Iril 1985 uprising in Sudan: God, Oi.! arid Cow#rty, op cit, pp 14-15. Skeleton staff at Itang: Statement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at the Second Regular Session of ECOSOC, Geneva, 7 July 1988. Page 57. SPIA recruitment of underage soldiers: Ci.vl.J!.a" Devasraf!.or!.. A1)uses by'AII Parties in the War in Southern Sudan, op ctt, pp 260,Z73. Pages 57-58. Po chala: Scott Peterson, Me AgajrisfMy J3rofj7er.. Af War I.# SomaJ!.c], Swde#, arld A+VAHCJa, Routledge, 2000, p 240.

Pages 58-59. Journey to border and census: a.v;/i.¢# Devasfafrorty op cit, p 279.

Page 59. Estimated 300,000 refugees had entered Kenya: "Refugees F1`ood Kenya," Eco#o#]I'sf, 6 June 1992, p 46. At least '1500 boys left or disappeared: C].vl.J7.arl Devasfaf!.o#, op cit, p 280; "3,000 Sudanese Refugees

Due for Transfer `Disappear'," Agence France Presse, 14 August 1992.

Kalcuma's population grew to nearly 20,000: Wilhiam C. Mann, "Sudanese Boys' Army Seeks I,ost Childhood After Years in the Bush," Associated Press, 18 September 1992. Bymid 1993. . .: Pauline Jelinck, ``After Years of Wandering, Sudanese Orphans Have a. Chance," The Associated Press, 25 April 1993.

Page 60. Residual caseload of Sudanese "lostboys": Gil 1,oescher et al, Responding to the Asylum and Access Challenge, TJS Committee Eon T\efugees and European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2003, p 27.

152

REFERENCES

Page 61. US officials go to Kalcuma in,1999: Mark J3ixler, T7]e lasf Bays oJ swde#, Op cit, p 89.

Page 62. "They are lmowli as the lost boys. . .",: Michael Paulson, "In US, a Chance for Refuge After Years of war, Sudanese to Gain Haven," Bosfo# G/ode, 8 July 2000. The children had walked ``across Africa'': Tara MCKelvey,