VOLUME 2 • NUMBER 139 • 2005 HOW SECURE DO YOU FEEL? THE EDITOR’S DESK TIPTOEING TO A SAFER FUTURE? ince the beginning of the new There has been a growing awareness that light millennium, millions of uprooted people weapons—an estimated 640 million pistols, rifles, Saround the world and the aid officials who machine guns, etc., are in circulation—have been help them have faced continuing perils. directly or indirectly responsible for much of the chaos. In Africa’s Congo basin, nearly four million people A U.N. Firearms Protocol recently entered into have died in a war which has been misunderstood and force and an international conference on the issue will largely ignored by the international community. be held in New York in July. Anywhere between 100,000 and 400,000 persons The United Nations has established a new have perished in the Department of Safety and Security to help protect ongoing conflict in 400,000 staff and dependents worldwide. Sudan’s Darfur region, The U.N. refugee agency has also revamped its own despite anguished security system, improving training and programs to calls to halt the better protect both its own staff and the more than 17 carnage. million civilians that it cares for. P. LOWE/PANOS PICTURES/RUS•1994 The 9/11 terrorist Far more needs to be done. UNHCR is currently attacks against the implementing 80 new security recommendations for United States led to its operations. Life in many refugee camps remains conflicts in Afghani- perilous with rape and murder everyday hazards. stan and Iraq and the Firearms experts say that despite some modest Chechnya: The bloody footprints of the innocent in the snow. global war on terror. progress it could take years before major breakthroughs The fallout from these are made on addressing the humanitarian rather than events made it increasingly difficult for genuine purely security aspects of that problem. refugees to gain asylum and curtailed the so-called The fragility of the refugee experience is ‘humanitarian space’ in which organizations such as underlined by the situation in southern Sudan. UNHCR used to function. Following a January peace accord to halt decades of The worst atrocity in the history of the United war, hundreds of thousands of civilians have already Nations occurred in 2003 when a truck bomb returned to their homes in the region. Another destroyed its headquarters in the Iraqi capital of 550,000 refugees and four million internally displaced Baghdad, killing 22 people and wounding 150 others. persons are waiting to go back. Last year, more than 150 defenseless refugees were If that is the good news, the bad news is that the area slaughtered in a camp in the central African state of Burun- is so strewn with unmapped land mines, unexploded di in one of the worst single atrocities in recent years. ordnance and small calibre weapons that many people What can be done to at least alleviate such carnage? are still unsure about where their future lies. 2 REFUGEES N°139 - 2005 Editor: Ray Wilkinson French editor: Mounira Skandrani 2 EDITORIAL Contributors: Lise Mackie, Valery Yankey, Kerry UNICEF/R. LEMOYNE/FRY In a new millennium, millions of people are Maze, Alun Howard, Robert facing continuing dangers. Muggah and worldwide bureaux Editorial assistant: COVER STORY Virginia Zekrya For millions of refugees 4 around the world, Photo department: 4 including women and It is becoming increasingly clear that small Suzy Hopper, Anne Kellner children, and aid officials, arms—pistols, rifles, shotguns—are playing a Design: life is often dangerous and Vincent Winter Associés sometimes deadly. major role in the fate of millions of vulnerable Production: refugees around the world, and the aid officials Françoise Jaccoud trying to help them. Distribution: John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot Pistols and guns Photo engraving: The cumulative destructiveness of untold Aloha Scan - Geneva numbers of light weapons is only now being Maps: acknowledged. UNHCR - Mapping Unit E. PARSONS/AP/SDN•2004 At a glance Historical documents: A brief look at refugee security. UNHCR archives Caught in the middle REFUGEES is published by the Media Relations and Public Information Aid workers are increasingly caught in the Service of the United Nations High middle and have become deliberate targets for Commissioner for Refugees. The opinions expressed by contributors are warring factions. not necessarily those of UNHCR. The Crossing the Rubicon designations and maps used do not Hundreds of imply the expression of any opinion or thousands of The Great Lakes crisis was a watershed in recognition on the part of UNHCR civilians have already refugee security and protection. concerning the legal status of a 22 returned to southern Sudan territory or of its authorities. and many more are en route. But they face a difficult REFUGEES reserves the right to edit all future. 22 GOING HOME articles before publication. Articles and photos not covered by copyright © There is peace in southern Sudan, but may be reprinted without prior returnees face many uncertainties and danger. permission. Please credit UNHCR and By Kitty McKinsey the photographer. Glossy prints and slide duplicates of photographs not covered by copyright © may be made available for professional use only. 26 PHOTO ESSAY UNHCR/H.CAUX/SDN•2004 English and French editions printed Sudan’s Darfur region has been described as in Italy by AMILCARE PIZZI “hell on earth” and a “region of fear.” The crisis S.p.A., Milan. Collecting badly in pictures. Circulation: 233,000 in English, needed food French, German, Italian, Spanish, 26 airdropped to Arabic, Russian and Chinese. remote villages in West Darfur. ISSN 0252-791 X Cover: Even the innocents of the world are threatened. A. NJUGUNA/REUTERS/DRC•2003 Back cover: UNICEF/S. MANN/SDN UNHCR P.O. Box 2500 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland www.unhcr.org REFUGEES 3 Gatumba: The aftermath of a massacre. LIFE IS PRE UNPREDICTABLE A DEADLY 4 REFUGEES F. O’REILLY/REUTERS/BDI•2004 CARIOUS, ND SOMETIMES FOR MILLIONS OF REFUGEES AND AID WORKERS IN VOLATILE SITUATIONS AROUND THE WORLD, SECURITY REMAINS ELUSIVE REFUGEES 5 LIFE IS PRE CARIOUS, UNPREDICTABLE A ND SOMETIMES DEADLY “We cannot anymore play with security. Everyone of us must become SECURITY CONSCIOUS.” lone shot in the middle of children. Friends said he had the night signaled the start of the had a premonition of the massacre. Drums, whistles and killings and prepared himself demented chanting followed as for death with public prayer. a line of men, women and even Mlakate Masusu was luck- children dragging rifles taller ier. Her body had been ripped than themselves, swept through apart by a grenade during the Athe refugee camp. chaos but she was found, They fired broadsides of small arms into flimsy unconscious but still alive tents and then ripped open the canvas and unleashed under a tree, together with a fresh fusillades into the darkness before finishing off young baby crying beside her. the slaughter with grenades and machetes. Her three-year-old son was At daybreak, burnt and charred bodies, destroyed found later; he had been shot shelters, clothes, pots and pans and children’s toys dis- in the back. “It’s only God who can help us,” she said quietly in hospital afterwards. More than 150 refugees were slaughtered on 13 August 2004 at the Gatumba camp, located in the heart- REUTERS/CORBIS/COL•1999 land of Africa’s bloodstained Great Lakes region, a few miles from the Burundi capital of Bujumbura and the border with the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. The refugees had fled from the chaos in that state to apparent safety in Burundi, but in the volatile and ever-changing political and military climate of the area, Burundis from a group calling itself the National Liberation Forces and affiliated militias turned on the hapless civilians. The attack was one of the worst single atrocities in recent years. It underscored the precarious, unpre- dictable and sometimes deadly nature of daily life for S. DALTON/AP/COL•2001 many of the world’s uprooted populations and the humanitarian agencies which try to help them, and it figured the site. Pastor Jacques Rutekereza, of the Pen- turned the spotlight on the insidious and catastrophic tecostal church of Minevam, a human rights activist spread of light weapons such as rifles and pistols which and, in a particularly tragic twist, a man who was run- has done so much to fuel the ongoing misery. ning a reconciliation and peace project at the time, was “Our work is made almost impossible when (such) a prominent victim, cut down along with six of his ten weapons are so freely available,” Arnauld Akodjenou, 6 REFUGEES the director of UNHCR’s Emergency and Security murdered in the Congo. Displaced civilians Service said later as he also highlighted the capricious- Still, in what today seems like an almost innocent in Colombia mourn massacred relatives; ness of life on the edge: “The victims of this massacre era, there appeared to be some rules which were fol- others stage a thought they were in danger from war if they stayed in lowed for most of the time. symbolic crucifixion their own country, and that they would at least be safe The safety of aid workers relied principally on an in front of the in Burundi. The international community failed these often tacit agreement between all groups involved in a UNHCR office in men, women and children.” conflict that their neutrality would be respected. This Bogotá to protest allowed them to work effectively within their own the internal turmoil. A WHO’S WHO ‘humanitarian space.’ When regular armies fought, Life has always been hazardousand some- fleeing civilians were not automatically targeted for times deadly for both refugees and aid workers.