Internal refugees deserve same rights as the fleeing people from across the border

The May xenophobic violence in South Africa, which left over 30,000 people displaced, posed a new challenge for the Africa Union (AU) in its quest to tackle the problem of refugees and Internally Displaced People in the continent.

The carnage took place when the AU was revising the Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (1969) and drafting an Internally Displaced Persons Convention.

The revised AU refugees’ convention is intended to assist the continental body to grapple with the huge numbers of displaced people who, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, remain “arguably the most significant humanitarian challenge that we face.”

To improve refugee security, the continental body needs to revive the spirit and letter of the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention by utilising the existing legal and institutional regional framework to act on human rights crises as they unfold.

Noting the huge numbers of internal refugees in the continent, in 2006 the AU embarked on drafting a Convention on the Prevention of Internal Displacement and the Protection of and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons in Africa.

Unlike refugees, who fall under the protection of international instruments such as the AU and UN refugee conventions together with the specialist agency UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR) to assist them, there are no comparable standards or mechanisms to safeguard the rights of internal refugees.

Their own state is often unable or unwilling to assist and protect them. Likewise, the international community is often powerless or unwilling to intervene. To date a draft text has been discussed among a group of experts drawn from AU member states and representatives of various UN agencies.

The adoption of a legally-binding Convention on internal refugees will send an important signal to the rest of the world about the seriousness with which Africa considers the issue. In 2007, the UNHCR recorded 11.4 million refugees under its care, up from 9.9 million the previous year. This was the second consecutive year that the number of refugees had steadily increased. Sudan with 523,000 refugees and Somalia (457,000) recorded the highest figures in the continent.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian Refugee Council, the estimated number of internal refugees passed the 26 million mark in 2007 — the highest figure since the early 1990s.

As in previous years, Africa was particularly hard hit. The continent hosted almost half of the global internal refugees population (12.7 million people) spread across 20 African countries. Sudan had the highest number of internal refugees (5.8 million) and generated nearly one in every two of the new displacements (1.6 million).

Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were the worst affected by new internal displacements in 2007. In Somalia the violence that engulfed the capital Mogadishu and other parts of the country after the Ethiopian invasion in December 2006 displaced some 600,000 people.

In the DRC, fighting between ethnic Tutsi rebels and the government army has uprooted an estimated 500,000 people in the east of the country.

Against this background, there is urgency to review the IDP and refugee resettlement procedures in the continent.

Drafted in the aftermath of anti-colonial struggles, the OAU Refugee Convention has been globally acknowledged as a land-mark contribution to the international refugee protection regimes through its broadening of the refugee definition in response to Africa’s needs. It was a radical affirmation and expansion of the refugee definition contained in the 1959 UN refugee convention and its 1967 Protocol.

The OAU Refugee Convention allows for the group-based determination of refugee status. In addition, it expands the definition of “refugee” by stating that external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole country of origin or nationality of a person are a basis for claiming refugee status. This means that large groups of refugees fleeing mass human rights violations or generalised violence can be given protection on the strength of their nationality or their membership of a particular ethnic group.

Stress eroding hospitality

Historically, the response of most African countries and communities towards the displaced has been generous, reflecting long-standing ethnic, political and cultural links between refugees and host populations. However, in recent years, the tremendous stress on the institution of refugee protection in Africa has eroded this hospitality. The large number of refugees in countries already experiencing remarkable social and economic hardships has brought into question the very capacity of African nations to cope with refugees.

In addition, due to global recession and the increased number of persons seeking asylum and humanitarian assistance world-wide, the international community’s capacity to shoulder the African refugee crisis has diminished.

In many cases, the refugees have been arrested and detained without charge. Others have been repatriated against their will or restricted to refugee camps or to remote, inaccessible locations where they are sometimes exposed to banditry, rape and other forms of criminality. Generally, many have not been able to enjoy social, economic and civil rights.

In a post-September 11 (2001) world, refugees have been caught in the intricate web of the Western-led war on terror. Now, they are pawns in a geopolitical game in which they are seen as agents of insecurity and terrorism.

During the battle for the heart and soul of Mogadishu in 2006/7, around 600,000 Somalis were forced to flee as the Transitional Federal Government, its Ethiopian allies and the insurgents of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) fought for power. Following sustained bombardment and street battles, the number displaced from the city and other areas of Somalia rose to one million people.

Wary of the security repercussions of Islamic militants and their supporters flocking into its soil, Kenya barred over 7,000 deserving Somali refugees from crossing over, precipitating a humanitarian crisis and international outcry.

During the 1998-2003 civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 4 million people were killed and an estimated 1.1 million Congolese displaced, including 400,000 refugees. The war created new security dynamics involving Rwandese refugees and Congolese citizens of Rwandese stock (the Bunyamlenge).

Rwandese refugees (the Interahamwe Hutu militias who fled to the DRC) accused of perpetrating the 1994 genocide, re-grouped in the refugee camps and started recruiting fighters.

The Kinshasa onslaught by then Congolese rebel leader Laurent Kabila, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni was allegedly to counter the Hutu militias in the refugee camp.

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in raising the awareness of internal displacement and refugees’ protection. However, information gaps have remained on the size, composition and needs of displaced populations.

In many countries, where such gaps have existed, the host governments are neither willing to assist nor protect the internal refugees themselves. Such governments are also reluctant to let international humanitarian agencies get on with the job.

The five-year conflict in Darfur, Sudan, has forced over two million people to seek refuge in camps within Darfur, while a further quarter of a million has fled to Chad.

The huge internal refugee camps in Darfur are increasingly overcrowded and insecure, and humanitarian access remains severely limited. In other cases, internal refugees and refugees were forced to flee the camps and on several occasions forcibly relocated by government forces.

Darfur camps crowded

In Chad, the number of internal refugees increased from 100,000 at the end of 2006 to nearly 180,000 a year later.

Continued fighting between the army, rebel groups and cross-border raids by Sudanese militias have all contributed to the increasing insecurity and forced more civilians to abandon their camps. Even in areas recovering from conflict, such as northern Uganda and Ivory Coast, durable solutions to internal displacement are still embryonic.

The 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document titled Responsibility to Protect, recognised the responsibility of the international community to intervene in cases where governments manifestly failed to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Although the concrete application of this responsibility to protect is still controversial, some progress has been made in strengthening the international protection regime for internal refugees and other conflict-affected civilians.

The UN Security Council set out a framework for action in Resolution 1674 (2006), and increasingly mandated peacekeeping operations to undertake activities in support of the protection of civilians. This is included in the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur and the UN missions in the Central African Republic and Chad.

The AU has viable instruments of addressing the refugee crisis, particularly its 1969 Refugee Convention which is under review and should take into account the new developments in South Africa.

AU member states should also hasten the conclusion of the draft Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa.

The coming to force, in 2008, of the Great Lakes Pact of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (IC/GLR) will go a long way in protecting internal refugees and refugees.

Patrick Mutahi works with Eastern and Horn of Africa Programme, Africa Policy Institute (Nairobi)

Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project.