VOLUME 4 • NUMBER 137 • 2004BURUNDI URUNDDI CAMP MAS S A CRE ctionDARFURRFUR A Death in the desert LEONE, ANGOLA Going Home Refuugees are people, not c ETURNEE GENEVAGE AFGHANISTAN DA20042004 CS OPPEAN YEAR IN SA REVIEW THE EDITOR’S DESK Good news and bad news here was good news for refugees in the The European Union welcomed 10 new member most unlikely places in 2004. Exiles were states, but the Mediterranean region proved a deadly Tallowed to vote in Afghanistan’s first ever burial ground for hundreds of people trying to reach presidential elections and a refugee woman cast the the continent. Situations in places like Iraq and first symbolic ballot at a camp in neighboring Pak- Chechnya showed few signs of solution. istan. A world away, a former refugee was one of two Even the basic principle of offering the world’s women to represent Afghanistan for the first time most vulnerable people a modest degree of protec- ever at the Athens Olympics. tion was under threat in many countries preoccu- In the ruins of the Liberian capital of Monrovia, pied more with security issues than humanitarian refugees came back to find their homes destroyed, concerns. but neighbors willing Altogether, it was a “reasonably good year in a to share whatever lit- troublesome world,” according to High tle they had with old Commissioner Ruud Lubbers. DP/IRN•2004 friends once again re- united. There were For some frustrated aid officials, South and similar scenes across Central America is a “forgotten continent” and its most UNHCR/Z.SOLEIMANI/ the continent, in Sier- vulnerable victims “invisible refugees”—ignored and ra Leone, Angola and overshadowed by more obvious crisis areas such as on the Horn of Africa. Africa and Afghanistan. The last stragglers But Latin American governments recently commem- who fled Rwanda’s orated a major milestone in refugee protection work— genocide stumbled the signing 20 years earlier of the Cartagena Going home from Iran. home, some to the as- Declaration—which helped to resolve a series of wars tounding news that in Central America in the 1980s and helped many their families had of the two million civilians who had been forced to flee survived a bloodletting in which an estimated their homes. 800,000 people were butchered. Building on that Declaration, a meeting in Global statistics showed that in the last three years Mexico City took the opportunity to launch a new plan the number of vulnerable people ‘of concern’ to UN- of action to tackle the region’s current problems, partic- HCR dropped by more than three million and the ularly the longtime crisis in Colombia where a further number of persons seeking asylum in industrialized two million plus people have been uprooted during countries fell to the lowest levels in 17 years. These decades of civil war. trends were expected to continue through 2005. Lubbers praised the initiative by noting that “In a There were also, of course, extremely troubling worldwide context of restrictive asylum policies and developments. Darfur became the world’s latest erosion of protection principles, it is encouraging to see mega-crisis with around two million people fleeing that countries in Latin America are committed to their villages and untold numbers slaughtered. uphold high protection standards.” 2 REFUGEES N°137 - 2004 Editor: Ray Wilkinson French editor: Mounira Skandrani 2 EDITORIAL Contributors: Good news was found in unusual places José Riera and UNHCR offices GETTY IMAGES worldwide in the last year. Editorial assistant: Virginia Zekrya COVER STORY F.NAEEM/AFP/ 4 Photo department: Suzy Hopper, Anne Kellner The crisis in Darfur overshadowed other, Design: often positive developments during 2004 Vincent Winter Associés including presidential elections in Production: Afghanistan, major repatriations in several Françoise Jaccoud African countries and the expansion of the Romain Leonarduzzi European Union to 25 member states. Photo engraving: Afghanistan held its Aloha Scan - Geneva first ever presidential Highlights Distribution: 4 elections in 2004 and 10 A quick glance at major developments John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot new countries joined the European Union. However, throughout the world. Maps: another major catastrophe UNHCR - Mapping Unit exploded in Darfur, Sudan. Historical documents 16 INTERVIEW UNHCR archives High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers views 2004 as a reasonably positive year in a troubled REFUGEES is published by the Media Relations and Public Information DP/TCD•2004 world. He says that as a humanitarian Service of the United Nations High organization UNHCR should do better. Commissioner for Refugees. The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of UNHCR. UNHCR/H.CAUX/ CARTAGENA The designations and maps used do 22 not imply the expression of any The Cartagena Declaration, the major opinion or recognition on the part of cornerstone of refugee protection in Latin UNHCR concerning the legal status High Commissioner of a territory or of its authorities. Ruud Lubbers said America, marks its 20th anniversary. A new “there is a less friendly plan of action is announced to enhance and REFUGEES reserves the right to edit all 16 climate towards refugees in reinvigorate the Declaration. articles before publication. Articles many parts and photos not covered by copyright © of the world.” may be reprinted without prior Landmarks permission. Please credit UNHCR Some of the highlights of the Cartagena and the photographer. Glossy prints Declaration. and slide duplicates of photographs not covered by copyright © may be made History available for professional use only. DP/COL•2004 Refugee protection in Latin America English and French editions printed down the ages. in Italy by AMILCARE PIZZI S.p.A., Milan. Circulation: 283,700 in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, UNHCR/B.HEGER/ Arabic, Russian and Chinese. ISSN 0252-791 X Cover: The Cartagena 2004: the world’s headlines. Declaration, 22 cornerstone of UNHCR Latin American refugee P.O. Box 2500 protection efforts, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland commemorated its 20th www.unhcr.org anniversary in November. REFUGEES 3 2004: YEAR PROTECTION GOING HOME RESETTLEMENT ETHNIC CLEANSING DP/SDN•2004 S.NELSON/GETTY IMAGES/ IN REVIEW Darfur burns. A Sudanese rebel at a destroyed village. 2004: YEAR IN REVIEW A reasonably good year he bullet hole lodged deeply in Emmanuel Murangira’s long slop- DP/RWA•2004 ing forehead bears eloquent testi- mony to genocide. Gangs of militias had rampaged through his home- town for several days slashing and UNHCR/B. HEGER/ shooting their ethnic and political opponents. An astonishing 25,000 civilians—men, Twomen, young children, anyone they could catch— were murdered in just this one place in a matter of hours. The victims included Murangira’s wife, five children and more than 40 other members of his family. He was one of only four survivors, escaping the killers by feigning death at the bottom of a pile of Emmanuel corpses, blood flowing freely from his head wound. Murangira In all, an estimated 800,000 persons were killed 6 REFUGEES in a troublesome world DP/AFG•2004 ZALMAI/ © across the country in a 100-day orgy of blood. The positions, terrified screams still seemingly etched in- Back to school world stood by, horrified but largely mute as the to their ghostly skulls. in Afghanistan. tragedy ran its course, refusing to directly intervene, In just one short decade since those terrible events, embrace or even acknowledge the dreaded ‘G’ word. a fragile peace between the country’s major tribes, the Rwanda commemorated the 10th anniversary of Hutus and Tutsis, has been re-established. Kigali, the what was belatedly recognized as genocide on April 6, capital, bustles once more with commercial traffic 2004. Murangira played his own small but poignant and new buildings. Rwanda’s hills are alive with the role by guiding the occasional visitor through a sound of farming families busily growing and har- somber memorial to the slaughter in his hometown of vesting tea, coffee and other crops. Gikongoro in southern Rwanda, only yards from More than 2.5 million people fled in 1994, congre- where his own family was massacred. gating in massive camps in neighboring Zaire and The complex had once been a school. But in each Tanzania. In trying to help them and, inadvertently, room, desks had been replaced by low wicker shelves the many murderers (the Interahamwe) who had fled on which were stacked the skeletons of some of the the scene of their crime and infiltrated the camps, victims. Particularly heart-rending were the contort- UNHCR and other agencies became involved in the ed shapes of tiny children, coiled into protective foetal messiest and most complex humanitarian operation REFUGEES 7 2004: YEAR IN REVIEW LAST YEAR, EVEN AS RWANDA MARKED ITS OWN APPARENT DELIVERANCE, 1,500 KILOMETERS TO THE NORTH ANOTHER CATASTROPHE WAS BREWING. since World War II (REFUGEES magazine N° 135). a rich melting pot of tribes and ancient caravan routes But by early 2004, the camps had disappeared, the crisscrossing Africa, are remote from today’s major bulk of those refugees and even many exiles from ear- communications networks, difficult to reach and cov- lier Rwandan crises—a total of 3.2 million people— ering one of the world’s most hostile environments of moved back to their shattered homeland, by air, on desert, scrub, mountains and searing heat. The fleets of trucks and buses and for some, many weeks of refugees brought with them lurid tales of massacre walking through rain forests, mountains and high sa- and mayhem, but it was difficult to independently vannah grasslands. confirm what was happening inside Darfur itself. National reconciliation remained fragile and in- UNHCR’s mandate is to work with refugees out- complete, but given the enormity of the task, could nevertheless be considered a modest miracle. “We must learn to live together again in peace,” Murangira told a visitor simply, reflecting an edgy un- certainty about the future.