By JULIUS BARIGABA
In Summary
From the killing fields of South Sudan to the humanitarian
relief and response crisis in Uganda, on to the Dadaab refugee
settlement in eastern Kenya, and thousands of immigrants drowning in the
Mediterranean sea, 2016 will go down as a year in which the refugee
crisis reached a tipping point for Africa and the West.
Yet these events also present a crisis of direction for the
continent, where all forms of violence occur — from armed conflict to
sexual and gender-based violence to political persecution and economic
deprivation. For example, in 2016, hundreds of thousands of Africans
fled the continent to seek better prospects in Europe, and nearly 5,000
died in the process.
In the same year, Kenya cited security threats from the Somali
terrorist group Al Shabaab, and announced it was closing Dadaab, the
world’s largest refugee settlement. The camp has a population of more
than 320,000 asylum seekers.
But throughout this time, Uganda kept its borders open. Refugees
with harrowing accounts of the scale of violence in South Sudan arrived
in their numbers to settle in the small village of Bidi Bidi in the
West Nile region.
Having the largest refugee influx in history has presented
Kampala with challenges that require humanitarian agencies to respond to
the crisis, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).
Only 36 per cent of the $251 million needed to cater for the
needs of the refugees in 2016 has been received because major donors of
the UNHCR from the developed north have a growing problem of immigrants
on their hands and must also deal with other conflict areas with equally
serious humanitarian situations. A lot more funding is required next
year as the numbers swell.
“This is creating significant gaps in the response which
threatens to compromise the abilities of humanitarian organisations to
provide life-saving assistance and basic services,” said Charles Yaxley
UNHCR spokesman in Kampala.
Conflicted nature of the crisis
Yet this shortage of resources for the swelling refugee numbers
presents the conflicted nature of this crisis — broken families and a
desire to flee the violence back home only to find malaria and a
shortage of basic necessities in the refugee camp.
For example, 37-year-old Rose Roba last saw her husband — a
soldier in South Sudan’s government army — three years ago. He was taken
to Malakal in 2013 when the war started, and she has not heard from him
since.
Ms Roba, a mother of five, was forced to flee her home in
Greater Equatoria region three days after her neighbours were dragged
from their home by men, in October.
“They kidnapped my next door neighbour’s husband and took him
away. They chopped him into pieces. Then they cut up his wife and threw
the body into a channel of water near our village. They also slit their
child’s throat and cut his head and placed his body next to his mother’s
in the water,” she told international relief agency Medecins Sans
Frontieres.
“This filled me with fear. I was worried I would be next and I knew I had to take off,” she said.
Settling in Uganda
However, dire as the situation is at Bidi Bidi, the refugees see
their future in Uganda, where they hope to settle and till the land
they are offered to supplement the food rations supplied by the
humanitarian agencies.
But experts say both sets of refugees in Dadaab and Bidi Bidi
are lucky to be alive to tell their ordeal as an even bigger crisis of
immigrants either fleeing violence, political repression and poverty in
Africa, was taking place throughout the year.
The UNHCR reported that up to 3,800 refugees had drowned in the
Mediterranean sea as they attempted to cross into Europe, by end of
October.
“We’re receiving more reports of deaths in the Mediterranean
sea. We can now confirm that at least 3,800 people have died, making
2016 the deadliest year ever,” the UNHCR spokesman William Spindler
tweeted on October 26.
This came a day after the refugee agency had discovered 25
bodies in an inflatable dinghy in the south of the Mediterranean Sea. In
2015, UNHCR recorded 3,771 deaths.
But data from the International Organisation for Migration shows
that in November 2016, the death toll reached over 4,600, with the top
eight African nationalities being Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan, Gambia, Cote
d'Ivoire, Guinea, Somalia and Mali.
While at least 1.02 million made the crossing in 2015, the
agency reported that in 2016 the number had declined significantly and
that some 343,589 had arrived by sea in Europe. As such, the developed
nations are facing a growing population of immigrants, a situation that
has put a strain on their capacity to respond to UNHCR funding requests
for refugee crises in Africa.
In Uganda, the agencies dealing with the crisis sent out an appeal on December 15 to end the suffering of South Sudanese.
The appeal crafted by the government of Uganda’s Office of the
Prime Minister, six UN agencies and 11 humanitarian organisations was
timed to coincide with the third anniversary of the outbreak of violence
in South Sudan. In the three years, refugees have fled the world’s
youngest nation, leaving behind them tales of horrific violence.
According to the appeal, the new arrivals report that unless the
conflict in South Sudan stops, “in the coming weeks and months ahead,
they expect thousands more to follow them to Uganda.”
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