Millions of Civilians Have Been Killed in the Flames of War... But
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VOLUME 2 • NUMBER 131 • 2003 “Millions of civilians have been killed in the flames of war... But there is hope too… in places like Sierra Leone, Angola and in the Horn of Africa.” —High Commissioner RUUD LUBBERS at a CrossroadsAfrica N°131 - 2003 Editor: Ray Wilkinson French editor: Mounira Skandrani Contributors: Millicent Mutuli, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, Delphine Marie, Peter Kessler, Panos Moumtzis Editorial assistant: UNHCR/M. CAVINATO/DP/BDI•2003 2 EDITORIAL Virginia Zekrya Africa is at another Africa slips deeper into misery as the world Photo department: crossroads. There is Suzy Hopper, plenty of good news as focuses on Iraq. Anne Kellner 12 hundreds of thousands of Design: persons returned to Sierra Vincent Winter Associés Leone, Angola, Burundi 4 AFRICAN IMAGES Production: (pictured) and the Horn of Françoise Jaccoud Africa. But wars continued in A pictorial on the African continent. Photo engraving: Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Aloha Scan - Geneva other areas, making it a very Distribution: mixed picture for the 12 COVER STORY John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot continent. In an era of short wars and limited casualties, Maps: events in Africa are almost incomprehensible. UNHCR Mapping Unit By Ray Wilkinson Historical documents UNHCR archives Africa at a glance A brief look at the continent. Refugees is published by the Media Relations and Public Information Service of the United Nations High Map Commissioner for Refugees. The 17 opinions expressed by contributors Refugee and internally displaced are not necessarily those of UNHCR. The designations and maps used do UNHCR/P. KESSLER/DP/IRQ•2003 populations. not imply the expression of any With the war in Iraq Military opinion or recognition on the part of officially over, UNHCR concerning the legal status UNHCR has turned its Refugee camps are centers for of a territory or of its authorities. 28 attention to helping to return military recruitment. some of the estimated Refugees reserves the right to edit all 500,000 longtime Iraqi Burundi articles before publication. Articles refugees living across the and photos not covered by copyright © globe who may now go back A change of power in a troubled land. may be reprinted without prior to that country. permission. Please credit UNHCR Congo and the photographer. Glossy prints The legacy of Africa’s worst ever and slide duplicates of photographs not covered by copyright © may be made documented war. available for professional use only. Border A typical hard day at an African frontier English and French editions printed post. in Italy by AMILCARE PIZZI Angola S.p.A., Milan. Circulation: 224,000 in English, A new start. French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese. 28 IRAQ ISSN 0252-791 X After the war, what now for Iraq? Cover: UNHCR/E. PARSONS/DP/SOM•2003 Africa: an uncertain future. UNHCR/R.WILKINSON/CS/CIV•2003 Some people call her PEOPLE a new Mother Teresa. 30 UNHCR Italian doctor P.O. Box 2500 30 Africa’s very own Mother Teresa. Annalena Tonelli has won the 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Nansen Refugee Award for www.unhcr.org decades of work among Somali civilians. REFUGEES 3 THE EDITOR’S DESK The Iraq effect… hile the world was mesmerized by the would force a halt in food deliveries to refugee camps war in Iraq, Africa’s refugees have in Africa. slipped a little bit deeper into misery and But within a week of issuing an appeal for $1.3 bil- Wdespair. lion to feed Iraq’s hungry people (who had two When coalition forces moved into Iraq, aid work- months supply on hand), the World Food Program re- ers and journalists stood by in Jordan, Iran, Syria and ceived pledges of $315 million—nearly three times the Turkey, ready to receive hordes of Iraqi refugees who amount called for in the African appeal. never came. In recent testimony before the U.S. Congress, even Meanwhile, nearly 100,000 civilians escaped from before news filtered out of another appalling mas- the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire into sacre of nearly 300 civilians in northeastern Demo- eastern Liberia, itself wracked by cratic Republic of Congo, the advocacy group another conflict. On the outskirts Refugees International pointed out that more people of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, had died in the Congo in one week due to violence, there were no embedded journal- malnutrition and disease than died in the war in Iraq ists to cover a rebel attack on a dis- to that date. UNHCR/S.MANN/CS/UGA•2002 placed persons camp in which Editorial pages and talk shows have been abuzz hundreds of civilians were report- with scenarios for the rehabilitation of Iraq. The first edly abducted or slaughtered. anniversary of the end of Angola’s 27-year civil war Remember Guinea, the West passed virtually unnoticed, as did calls for the World African country that was in the Bank to extend the scope of its reintegration assistance news when it was being courted to cover not just the former UNITA rebel soldiers, but for its vote on a Security Council also thousands of Angolan women abducted and resolution? More than 7,000 forced to become ‘wives’ of rebel troops. Liberian refugees, many with Opening a Model U.N. in Ottawa, Stephen Lewis, Sudanese women flee rebel attack.. gunshot wounds, arrived there re- the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for cently. Aid workers struggled to HIV/AIDS in Africa, mused about what could happen transport them to a safer area away if the Global Fund set up to fight AIDS, malaria and from the border. tuberculosis were fully funded, before telling 800 In southern Chad, more than 30,000 refugees from university students that the fund was nearly the Central African Republic sleep under trees, wait- bankrupt. ing to see what will happen at home following the So while Iraq dominates the world spotlight, spare overthrow of the Patassé government recently (not a thought for Africa’s silent emergencies and the hope much was heard of the regime change there). of one African refugee: “If only a coalition would Of course, it was hard to mobilize interest in come to rescue us.” Africa’s refugees even before the fighting started in Iraq. On Valentine’s Day the U.N. Refugee Agency JUDITH KUMIN, UNHCR’s Representative in Canada, and the World Food Program warned lack of funding first wrote this opinion piece for the Montreal Gazette. 2 REFUGEES Africanimages HOPE: ©S. SALGADO•AGO After a decades-long war, Angola looks forward to a brighter future. Africanimages © S. SALGADO•ZRE WAR: The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been described as the worst in Africa’s recorded history. An estimated three million people perished. Africanimages UNHCR/J. AUSTIN/CS/SLE•2000 GOING HOME: Some 240,000 Sierra Leoneans have returned home to try to patch the country together again, following a ten year-long war. AfricanON THEimages MEND UNHCR/S. BONESS/CS/ERI•2001 THE FUTURE: Even when refugees return home, the future may still be very tough, as in Eritrea. UNHCR/M.KAMBER/DP/CIV•2003 AFRICA on the The human toll has been appalling, but is the light at the end of by Ray Wilkinson n an era of short wars, ‘controlled’ numbers of ca- eras, hundreds of people were being slaughtered al- sualties and sanitized images such as those emerg- most unnoticed in the latest atrocity in one remote ing from Iraq, events in Africa seem almost in- corner of the Congo region. comprehensible. During the course of the conflict which began in IDeep in the heart of the Congo basin, some three 1998 and which at times involved six armies from sur- Liberian refugees flee back to their million people, perhaps many more, perished during rounding countries, countless militias and home- own country after an ongoing war described as the deadliest document- grown gangs of thugs, 2.5 million people were ripped conflict erupted ed conflict in Africa’s history. And even as American from their homes and forced to seek shelter in steam- in neighboring Côte marines mopped up last pockets of resistance in Bagh- ing rain forests and neighboring states. d’Ivoire. dad in the full glare of thousands of television cam- Angola suffered a similar fate. In a civil war lasting 12 REFUGEES Far to the north, Sudan has been destabilized by civil conflict virtually from independence in 1956, and once more the human toll was one of biblical propor- tions rather than the quick and limited conflicts the public in industrialized countries now expect. Two million people died, four million roam the northern desert wastes and southern savannah grasslands of the continent’s largest country, and a half million refugees were forced to flee even further afield. Those, of course, were only the largest and longest of a series of upheavals which wracked and then wrecked large swathes of Africa: Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Western Sahara, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville and most recently Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. Then there was Rwanda: as many as one million people were slaughtered in the mid-1990s in the world’s latest genocide. And again, images of endless flood tides of refugees shuffling along in billowing clouds of dust, buffeted mercilessly by the latest chaos. A SCAR These images are familiar to a global audience. So much so that British Prime Minister Tony Blair in- sisted in one keynote address that the anarchy could not continue and “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world, but if the world focused on it, IN 1995, we could heal it.” So, two years after that clarion call, how is Africa UNHCR doing? ASSISTED Donor countries, aid agencies, national govern- ments do provide large amounts of assistance to the SEVEN MILLION continent.