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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1058-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
The Humanitarian Crisis in the Darfur Region of Sudan
Tuesday 14 September 2004 MS AMELIA BOOKSTEIN and MR GRAHAM MACKAY Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 43
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Tuesday 14 September 2004 Members present Tony Baldry, in the Chair John Barrett Mr John Battle Hugh Bayley Mr Quentin Davies Mr Andrew Robathan ________________ Memorandum submitted by CAFOD and Christian Aid
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Amelia Bookstein, Conflict Policy Analyst, CAFOD and Mr Graham MacKay, Humanitarian Coordinator, Oxfam, examined. Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Just for the record, we have Amelia Bookstein from CAFOD and Graham MacKay from Oxfam, and just so there is no confusion, at some stage there are some questions that we are going to ask today which, I think everyone has agreed, it might be helpful to be taken in a private session, so there will come a time when I will ask those who are not witnesses or immediately supporting witnesses if they will leave. Both CAFOD and Oxfam have been very much involved in the Sudan for some time and I think it would be of interest to the Committee to have some view of how you characterise the crisis in Darfur and what are its causes. Our US colleagues are now describing it as genocide, but genocide, to me, as a lawyer, usually implies one race seeking to kill another race - the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda are an example. Is that what is going on here or is it pasturalists versus other kinds of farmers - is this a land dispute, or totally unrelated to land or religion? I just think we would welcome your thoughts on that because different journalists, different newspaper reports and different media commentary seem to suggest different answers to that. Then I think it would be helpful if you could give an overview on what you see as the present humanitarian needs in Darfur and, also, Eastern Chad, which seems to be taking much of the burden of the refugee migration from Darfur. Amelia, would you like to go first? Ms Bookstein: Sure. We have divvied up some of the questions between the two of us witnesses as well, so we might do a bit of sharing. Q2 Chairman: Yes, of course, but I think on this question it would be interesting to hear from both you and Oxfam. Ms Bookstein: Our position is that this crisis, although it has hit the media in the last six months and people have been saying it has been occurring for the last 18 months, is not something that just arose 18 months ago; it has decades of roots in ethnic tensions in Darfur, an influx of arms from the north/south civil war and, also, from other wars across the regions. Also, the breakdown of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms using traditional leaders has led to conflicts between nomads and settled farmers escalating in a way we have never seen before in this part of Darfur. There are also ecological factors; there is desertification and so places with pastureland have been moving further south. In this context of the ecology and tensions growing there is on-going tension across Sudan, with both political marginalisation and economic marginalisation. In that context, 18 months ago, the Sudan Liberation Army, known as the SLA, and the Justice and Equality Movement, known as the JEM, took up arms against the Government and against government installations in Darfur. The fighting has escalated with the use of the Janjaweed militia and we have arrived where we are now, which is more than 1.2 million displaced, more than 2 million conflict-affected in Darfur, including host families and vulnerable communities, more than 200,000 refugees in Chad, as you said, and very dire public health statistics even coming out yesterday from the World Health Organisation on deaths rising due more to disease than to violence. So a really harsh humanitarian situation but with deep political roots, we would say. Mr MacKay: Our analysis is pretty similar to that. The Janjaweed movement we have heard about has actually been around for nearly a decade and people have migrated. These are nomadic bandits who include people who crossed the borders from Chad into Darfur in the 1970s and 1980s and they traditionally live by stealing cattle and attacking farmers. Among other things the scale of it has dramatically changed in the last couple of years. Q3 Chairman: Just going on to the second part of my question: what is your assessment now of the humanitarian needs in both the Sudan and Eastern Chad? You have mentioned some pretty big figures for Chad but how many people do you estimate are affected both in the Sudan and Chad? Mr MacKay: I will come to Chad first because I think the position in Chad is actually clearer. There are about 200,000 refugees located within Eastern Chad. Probably about 120,000 are now located in camps, with the rest remaining at the border. This is an area which normally only supports about 80,000 Chadians, and the defining factor for these communities is the amount of water they can pull out of the ground, so there is huge constraint on that basic resource. Space is not an issue but access to water is a huge issue there. Going back on to the Darfur side of the border, things are a lot less clear, but we have statistics on the WFP's food distribution, which is approximately 1.2 million people but they are expecting this to go up to 2 million people requiring food, mostly because they have missed the harvest. So there is a water element - lack of water - there is access to food because people have not been able to farm, and compounded on that is the access of humanitarian agencies - difficulties with logistics because the rainy season has come now, and, also, issues of security. There are an awful lot of communities that we just have not been able to get access to in Darfur for security and geographical reasons. Q4 Mr Robathan: Just to clarify, there are 200,000 refugees in Chad? Mr MacKay: Yes. Q5 Mr Robathan: Approximately 1.2 million people being fed by the WFP. Does that include the 200,000? Mr MacKay: No, they are separate from that. We have estimated - we have no hard figures on this - about 2 million people displaced within Darfur, of whom I think the WFP are trying to target 1.2 but actually they are only reaching roughly 80 % of that 1.2 million. To be precise they reached 920,000 beneficiaries in August. So there are 800,000 we do not know where they are - which, let us face it, they are in trouble and we do not have access to them - and about 200,000-300,000 within Darfur that the WFP, who do the most comprehensive blanket feeding, do not have access to at the moment. So the figures are roughly 900,000 people we have got access to and 300,000 we know are there but do not have access to, and 800,000, we are estimating, are in trouble ---- Q6 Mr Robathan: Plus another 200,000 in Chad? Mr MacKay: Yes. Ms Bookstein: Can I just add something, and sort of paint a picture? I was in Darfur about four weeks ago, and security was very bad at that time so I had been going up to one set of camps near Mershing. For people who have not been there the situation is such that we have access to many of the people some of the time. There are thousands of people in some of the big camps - in Kalma camp and Kass camp - consolidated into three camps, but there are also many, many different pockets of about 3,000 people, 2,000 people there, or communities that are half host families, that are in quite a vulnerable position, and half IDPs. So NGOs working for the UN are trying to reach all the vulnerable people and trying to assess where their most acute needs are, but it is not a straightforward case of the people are in one place and we can just do a blanket feeding. In some places in camps where there are 50,000 or 80,000 people there are mechanisms that are in place but in other places it is much more about getting out to reach these people. That is as much about logistical obstacles and the state of the roads in the rainy season as it is about insecurity and roads being open one day and closed the next due to insecurity. That is the overall picture. Q7 John Barrett: I wonder if you could go into more detail about how effective the humanitarian response has been. There are obviously a lot of problems between the security issue and the rainy season, but even on the basics - water and food supplies - how effective has the response which has already taken place been, and what is the outlook for the future? As you mentioned in your introduction, we often see this as an 18-month build-up to the current crisis but in fact it has been going on for decades. Just how are the agencies beginning to make an impact, if they are? Ms Bookstein: I think both of us will want to comment on this. I think all the agencies are racing against time right now and we are quick to admit that we are not everywhere that we want to be. There has been, over the last 18 months, a well-known history of bureaucratic and logistical obstacles. Darfur is also a very difficult place to work, so even before this hit the media there were not many organisations there and the ones there did not have many staff, so scaling up from that size and getting good information without access to journalists and other people is a big challenge at the beginning of an emergency like this. It should be said that a lot of the bureaucratic obstacles have been lifted in the last two or three months, but the logistical ones have got worse with the rainy season. It also should be said that right now the UN full, consolidated appeal is only 50 % funded, and while NGOs may be doing separate appeals and working with the UN, the UN provides the background for a lot of what we are able to do. The UN joint logistics provides the transportation of non-food items, for example; the World Food Programme provides transportation of most of the food, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) provides a lot of co-ordination that makes sure that we are not doubling up and we are trying to reach the whole population. So if the UN is under-funded then the entire humanitarian effort is weakened. Mr MacKay: If I can answer that by giving an illustration of how effective we are being, at the moment, I have already quoted the World Food Programme (WFP) meeting 80 % of their target beneficiaries, and that is with really low-level, basic foodstuffs; that will not be with a comprehensive basket. To illustrate the problems with water in Chad, we have a camp that was designed to sustain 20,000 refugees but now has 40,000 refugees there but the amount of water has not increased, and we drilled bore holes and there is no water. We have already mentioned access, and physically trucking food and water to camps is difficult and we are months behind schedule and the rations go down and down and down. So I have to say we have only been partially effective so far, just simply because the working conditions in Chad and Darfur are so difficult. We recognise that we are not doing everything that we would like to be doing. Funding, access and security are the reasons for that. Q8 Hugh Bayley: To what extent have restrictions on NGOs prevented you doing what you would choose to do? Mr MacKay: The restrictions can be classed in several ways. We have got the issue of security in that there are areas where displaced people will be where we simply cannot go because it is just too unsafe. Also, I think it has to be said that the bureaucratic restrictions have been lightened somewhat. Q9 Hugh Bayley: These are the registration procedures in Khartoum? Mr MacKay: Visas and internal movement has improved enormously, and we can get a visa within 48 hours, which is magnificent compared with the two months it was taking five months ago. Q10 Hugh Bayley: I suppose, really, we are looking at the obstacles that need to be removed to enable humanitarian work to meet the challenge. One of those obstacles is funding, as you have mentioned. If the UN target funding were met would there be sufficient financial resources? Mr MacKay: I think it is probably fair to say yes, but there is another issue of simply the number of bodies we can put on the ground in places like Chad and Darfur. At the moment our funding and our personnel is reasonably balanced for Oxfam, but I know that UNHCR have complained in Eastern Chad that there simply are not enough implementing partners - NGOs - to actually do the work. We feel we are at full stretch in both countries now, but there probably are not enough NGOs there at the moment doing work. That is one of the issues. It might be funding related if they cannot get funded, but it is a bit of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, I am afraid. Q11 Hugh Bayley: You cannot avoid the weather or avoid the rain but you can, maybe, get around in the rain. What else could be done to get more humanitarian assistance to places where it is needed? Ms Bookstein: The current WFP air drops - which they have been doing for the past four to six weeks, I believe - are a sign of WFP taking it quite seriously. That is a very expensive option but the one that the UN puts in place when there really are large numbers of people that are out of reach by trucking. If the rainy season continues longer than we are planning for we will need to continue looking at that heavy lifting capability, which takes a lot more money than trucking. Also, as Graham says, it does have to do with recruiting good staff, not just any staff but recruiting good staff, and working with local staff as well on the ground to make sure that there is good quality programming across Darfur, which is something that we are just racing to do but it also, unfortunately, takes a bit of time. Q12 Hugh Bayley: To what extent is the WFP being able to build-up or pre-position stocks of food? Can you tell me a bit about the pipeline itself? Where is food trucked from? Where is food flowing from and what are the difficulties in getting food to the sort of trucking points? Mr MacKay: I can say a bit about that. Unfortunately, if we could turn back time that would be one of the ways in which we could improve the NGO response, given that the rains are happening now. One of the criticisms - and I am sure we will discuss this later - that we have made is that the rain has appeared to come as a surprise to the UN bodies co-ordinating things in Eastern Chad. There are roads which trucks are not now allowed to go on during the rainy season because they destroy those roads, and that is just a hurdle we have got to get across, and consequently food and water trucking is behind schedule. Going back to the earlier part of your question, you said how could things be improved? One of the things, I have been reminded, is that we do not have access to the rebel-held areas in Darfur, where there must be an awful lot of displaced people. That is one of the big unknowns, and if we were to secure safe access to those areas that would mean we could help a lot more people. Ms Bookstein: Our work is partially in rebel-held areas and partially in government-held areas and (and I am sure it is the case for Oxfam and many agencies on the ground) we are pushing the effort, but we do need UN, OCHA and, also the rebels and the government guarantees of security to be able to work in those places. Q13 Hugh Bayley: Is it a co-ordination problem? Are the different agencies, UN agencies and NGOs like yourselves, failing adequately to co-ordinate what you are doing? Who should take the lead on co-ordination? How do you improve it? Mr MacKay: The second part of your question is much easier to answer. That is the UN. All NGOs recognise that we are co-ordinated by OCHA in Darfur and by UNHCR in Chad. The co-ordination has not been great. When there is a vacuum like that NGOs do tend to go off and do their own thing. The whole discussion over how well the international community has responded to the crisis - I think "could do better" would be an answer for that one. Ms Bookstein: I think, also, just to be clear, the UN lack of co-ordination did not cause this crisis, and the reasons that the UN and the NGOs are working in this difficult space is due to causes that were not of the UN's making. While it is important to look at what can be improved, I think it is important to keep that in mind. Q14 Hugh Bayley: Have either of you suggestions - I take that point - as to what should be done to improve ---- Ms Bookstein: We will get to this later in the conversation, I believe, but security is the number one problem in Darfur, so the political steps to bring an end to the insecurity will make many of the issues about humanitarian access evaporate. Q15 Mr Davies: I think we have identified two major problems in this discussion so far. One is logistics - not anticipating the rains and whether you can use trucks or whether you need to spend more money on the airlifts, and so forth - and, secondly, security. Before I come on to those two, let me ask you about your estimate of the scale of the crisis, the human losses. You have 200,000 refugees, you have got 2 million people in Darfur, many of whom you cannot even identify where they are or what has happened to them. Have you got any estimate at all of people who may be dying as a result of, simply, a lack of food? Ms Bookstein: The World Health Organisation statistics came out yesterday[1]. Q16 Mr Davies: I have not seen them. Ms Bookstein: All of us NGOs do work in certain areas as part of the co-ordination but the overview is the responsibility of the UN. The UN figures are quite dire, actually. The crude mortality is about three times what they expect it to be, which leads to an estimate of about 10,000 people a month dying or dead. Those are their figures, which are quite dire. Q17 Mr Davies: Very dire indeed. Let us go back to the logistics and the security. First of all, on logistics, do you think everything is being done now - obviously some stupid errors were perpetrated earlier and you have already mentioned one of them - to address the logistics issues? If not, what needs to be done? Mr MacKay: I suspect everything is now being done that can be done. The fact that we are exploring expensive options like food drops and trucking water from one place to another implies that we are pushing the boat out. Q18 Mr Davies: It is not your feeling there are any either bureaucratic hold-ups that are unnecessary or that there is a lack of money which is preventing people from doing what they need in order to try and get that tragic figure of 10,000 deaths a month down? Mr MacKay: I think a lot of great strides have been made in the last few months. The quality of the UN co-ordination in both Chad and Darfur has improved enormously, and that just means we can focus resources where they are most required, which is much more efficient. As for other things that could be done if we had more money, again I think it comes back to an earlier answer where you have to pay for the right staff so that you can reach more people. That becomes a challenge, and that becomes the real limiting factor in this. I think more money would be useful. Q19 Mr Davies: You have a wonderful opportunity today to put on the public record anything concrete, specific and practicable that could be done in the short term which is not currently being done. You do not want to add anything to what you have just said? Mr MacKay: UN funding is at 50 %, which is inadequate. What that implies is that we could be hitting a brick wall in a few months' time with regard to funding for all operations. So ensuring that the rest of that money comes in will help us plan and will help operations continue. That would be the most important thing that needs to come out. Ms Bookstein: On the public record, we will talk in more detail about the African Union (AU) but I cannot emphasise strongly enough that the lack of security is hampering humanitarian efforts on a daily basis. So funding for the African Union monitors, funding for communications and their mobility, so they can move fast, so they can report and investigate violations as they are occurring or even preventing them from occurring rather than just past occurrences, will change the landscape that humanitarians are working in. Q20 Mr Davies: Can we just, first of all, get a picture of the scale and nature of the problem? Perhaps you could just look at it from two points of view. One is the security challenges or threats facing potential recipients of aid - where they might be prevented from getting to places where they might get some relief - and secondly, what about security for aid workers? Have any been targeted? Have there been any casualties? What can be done about additional protection for them or security for them? Would you perhaps address the problem from those two angles? Ms Bookstein: Security is the number one problem. Every IDP we speak to puts it in their top three list of what they need, which is unusual. Q21 Mr Davies: Are we talking about Chad here or Darfur? Ms Bookstein: I am talking about Darfur. Q22 Mr Davies: Chad has no problem about security. Is that right? Mr MacKay: It has its own peculiarities. I think less so in Chad but it is still an issue. Q23 Mr Davies: In Darfur is it physical security, is it pilfering of supplies, is it threats to potential recipients, is it threats to aid workers. What is it? Ms Bookstein: There are many different layers in this onion, but, essentially, it is threats to civilians, and it is that people have been forced out of their homes because of attacks, because of fear of attacks, and they are in this vulnerable position now. In this vulnerable position in these IDP camps or in these spontaneous settlements they are faced with a very difficult decision as to how to still survive, either going out and foraging for food or going out and trying to earn some money to pay for food or foraging for firewood. The decisions these IDPs are being forced to make is assuming that the men, if they go out, will get killed. So the vast majority of the people moving out are the women, and we do know there are terrible statistics of women being attacked and raped during this crisis, because of this need still to try to pull together for the family to survive. And women are still being attacked on a daily basis. Q24 Mr Davies: Are there safe areas there where NGOs are working and where there is security, so that once IDPs get inside that particular perimeter they are reasonably safe? Ms Bookstein: Yes, and no. Many of the camps are safer than they used to be, but the peripheries in these areas are still a sort of no-man's land and quite unsafe. In some of these areas of camps cattle-raiding is still a problem and, also, a lack of trust in the security that they may have right now. There is a distinct lack of trust between IDPs and the authorities. So even the security that is there is quite difficult. Going back to your earlier question about attacks on humanitarian staff, it is a constant threat. We had a driver shot ten days ago and only due to his continuing courage it means that we did not have five people shot and it was just one person shot. There is a lot of pressure on national ---- Q25 Mr Davies: He was shot while he was driving along with a truckload of supplies? Ms Bookstein: Yes, coming back from Mershing. Q26 Mr Davies: Were they trying to steal his truck? What was the objective of the attack? Ms Bookstein: We do not know the objective of the attack, it was a lone gunman. We reported it to the authorities but we do not know the reason for the attack. Q27 Mr Davies: Do you get any help from the authorities? Ms Bookstein: Yes, we have had help from the authorities. Q28 Mr Davies: Do the authorities take more seriously attacks on aid workers than they do on their own citizens? Ms Bookstein: I cannot really comment on that. So, just to be clear, national staff take the brunt of this more than international staff. They are the ones that are being fired upon. Q29 Mr Davies: Have you, again, got any suggestions you would like to put on the public record - you can speak, perhaps, more frankly on some of these aspects in a moment - about what could be done in this area to improve matters? That is the real concern of this Committee. Mr MacKay: I do not have anything, except to echo what has just been said. It is security in much larger areas than just the IDP camps and towns, where people do say they feel relatively safe. If we can achieve that - and it is a big "if" - that will solve many of the problems we are facing. Ms Bookstein: Just one more thing: there is a danger of looking at pockets of safe areas or safe havens, and we have learnt from the Bosnian war and other places that we want to be clear across the board that civilians should be protected from attack, no matter where they are. There should not be small pockets where civilians are protected but outside it is anyone's game. We feel very strongly that this should be mandatory. Q30 Mr Robathan: Just to clarify, could I first ask: a million-odd displaced people that you know about in the World Food Programme in Darfur. Who is organising the settlements or the camps in which they are placed? Is it UNHCR? Mr MacKay: They come about in several different ways. UNHCR have the responsibility to coordinate the organisation of the camps in Chad. In Darfur the Government of Sudan has responsibility of the IDP camps with other agencies (such as NGOs) being responsible for services. OCHA has a responsibility to coordinate the activities of all the different humanitarian actors. There have been examples of camps which have been planned and constructed before IDPs or refugees come to them (and they are usually the better camps) but there are also camps that arise through the spontaneous arrival of refugees or IDPs on the periphery of towns and around water sources. Q31 Mr Robathan: So many of these camps are not in any way constructed or organised? Mr MacKay: No. Ms Bookstein: There is a system of camp management where OCHA designate certain NGOs each individual camp, and once they become organised an NGO takes a lead role - Mercy Corps, International Refugee Committee or anything. There are different systems in place. Q32 Mr Robathan: The subject I really want to pursue is the ceasefire monitors and human rights observers. It seems to me that Darfur is quite a test for the African Union. I personally have reservations about the African Union since its prevarication in Zimbabwe. I think I am right in saying that the agreement was in April that the AU would have observers and ceasefire monitors. Could you tell me, do you see these ceasefire monitors? Have you seen UN human rights observers? What is your impression of what they are doing? Are they achieving anything very much? This is a country the size of France, or something like that, without communications. What more could be done to patrol the ceasefire and to stop human rights abuses, which you have mentioned already? Could the UK do more to support the AU? I think the EU is playing a role ---- Ms Bookstein: I think both of us would have quite a lot to say on that. I myself have not met the ceasefire monitors - I was based in Nyala when they were still based in northern Darfur - but our teams now have, and Jack Straw has also met them. From many of the reports from our teams on the ground they have made a very promising start, and with limited resources they are on the ground with a determination that I think is new. As you say, this is the first of its kind, of the African Union pulling together a ceasefire-monitoring mission. I think the most important thing the international community can do is to support that and ensure that it succeeds. As I spoke to you before, the European Union has provided the core funding but much more could be done. The UK support of that has been to provide one expert, I believe, and £2 million, and working with the European Union on this. There needs to be a lot more logistical and technical support, and we also believe that an expanded mission - expanded numbers and an expanded mandate - is critical. So the African Union ceasefire monitors now have a protection force agreed of 300 people, and we - working with many other people, and Kofi Annan himself has called for this - are pushing for an expanded mandate as well as an expanded mission, so that they can protect civilians in current times rather than documenting atrocities in the past. Mr MacKay: You have mentioned logistical problems, and we are reminded that having vehicles without proper communication equipment is hampering them. Oxfam is firmly supporting the African Union in this. They are under-funded, it appears. A lot of the issues in the IDP camps are around gender and gender-based violence, in that the majority of IDPs will be women and they do seem to be the subject of many attacks. For the African Union it would be better if they had an appropriate gender balance, whereas they tend to be almost 100 % male. Q33 Chairman: There does seem to be particularly high reporting of gender-based attacks, rape, and other attacks. Most of the African Union armies are predominantly male armies. Do you have any thoughts as to where one could find suitable women soldiers to come in as monitors? Second, in other areas of the African world one has seen rape being used as a systematic weapon of terror, as a war crime. It is a little more difficult to understand here what is happening: whether this is a society completely out of control and predatory males are taking opportunity of vulnerable women. What is the background to all of this? Mr MacKay: I think that the first question is much easier than the second problem. I only found this out a few days ago. I believe that the Finns, the Swedes and the Australians could and are in a position to supply female - I think they are police officers - on secondment to these kinds of operations. Training for monitor forces in international human rights law would of course be useful for people to go in with, as a tool. That is a problem. It is almost like asking for an ideal to have female soldiers helping out. Exactly the same issues arise in the camps in Chad as well. Those are the only solutions we have: you just pay for them and find them. Ms Bookstein: I think that we could also look to African countries where female soldiers are not as unusual. There is a discussion now about a standing East African force. Eritrea, for example, has longstanding female soldiers. Obviously any soldiers seconded to a peacekeeping force must, as Graham said, be vetted and trained in humanitarian law, in human rights law; but there are countries with different traditions that do have more women incorporated into the armed forces. In terms of responding to gender-based violence, I can speak from the NGO perspective. All of our work is trying to address the needs: both the basic needs in place but also with the protection lens of providing aid in a way that makes people less vulnerable rather than more vulnerable. Working with a team of protection people on the ground - we work very closely with Oxfam, World Vision, and other people in South Darfur - but, looking at what we can do right now, it is distribution of stoves, distribution of fuel, distribution of firewood, so that these women do not have to go out to forage. It is also starting to look at income-generation schemes. So, as we have seen in many crises across the world, what is it that puts people in a vulnerable position so that they have to be in these compromised situations, especially coming toward the end of the harvest? People have been selling their labour, but their labour will not be worth much once the harvest is over. So we are looking at income-generation schemes in our humanitarian aid, such as food for work or cash for work, as well as advocating with people like this distinguished Committee about the greater security side of things. Q34 Mr Davies: What are the prospects for people returning to their villages? I suppose that this is the same question as asking what are the prospects for restoring some kind of security and stability. Do you have any sense of the timescale we might reasonably look to if the African Union's mission works out, and so forth? Mr MacKay: The only reason the IDPs are in and around these camps in Darfur and the refugees in camps in Chad is security. They do not want to be there. It is security, and guaranteed security is the thing that will make them go back to their homes, start using their own wells and start planting their own fields again. So on one level it is easy to answer, but how do you achieve the security in an area the size of France? That is the difficult one to answer. Q35 Mr Davies: If you do not achieve it, you have the prospect of these people being permanently dependent on food handouts from the World Food Programme, permanently dependent on security in safe zones, and permanently abandoning their villages; and either their land will be taken over by others, which I think is part of the problem in the first place, or it will simply go to rack and ruin. The question is, do you see any prospect of getting them back in the villages, let us say in time for next year's planting programme, or that of the year after? Has anybody got a sense of a scenario here? Ms Bookstein: All of the IDPs we speak to are determined to return to their land. They are quite worried about losing their land, because the way Sudanese land law works is that you do lose it if you do not work on the land. There is a determination to return to their own life and to restart their life. I do not think that anyone would predict this as being a permanent crisis, the way that it is now. I do not think that it could be a permanent crisis, with what we are facing. But the issues about return - as Graham says, security is the first question, and then also viability of the home areas. We would say that the end of this humanitarian crisis is, of course, people returning home with the right information as to what they are returning to and the right support, such as seeds and tools or other things, so that they can restart their lives. But we are not facing the end of this crisis yet. Unfortunately, we are right in the middle of this crisis. So, even as we are talking to people about under what conditions would they go home, we are very clear that, in this current security situation and with these villages razed to the ground, and with no information as to what they are going home to, it is not a viable option. Q36 Mr Davies: Typically, how far away are they from their homes? Are they less than 100 miles? Within prospective walking distance? Or are they further away than that? Ms Bookstein: Most, I would say, less than 100 miles. Most of them have moved to the place of greatest safety nearby, the nearest town or a grouping area. Q37 Mr Davies: They will lose their land, under Sudanese law, unless they work it in the next season. Is that right? Ms Bookstein: More or less. Q38 Mr Davies: This is a very serious issue. What prospect do you see of sufficient security being in place to enable them to get back and prevent them from becoming permanent economic dependants? Ms Bookstein: We are already seeing that some people, during the day, if the camps are close enough to their home areas, are trying to go back and trying to work on their areas and see what is out there. Q39 Mr Davies: Those are the very lucky ones. The chance of having a safe area within a mile or two, so you can go and do some planting in the day, or weeding or irrigation or something, and then come back at night to a safe place - they would be very lucky indeed. Ms Bookstein: People are quite resilient. People will walk dozens of miles a day to try to rebuild their life. Their lives are on the line here; their survival is on the line. It is not just about dipping out for a mile or so. It is a major concern, clearly - what these people are returning to and how dependent they will be on food aid - but it is not a permanent situation we are looking at. Q40 Mr Davies: Not permanent? You are not worried that it could become a permanent situation? Ms Bookstein: I do not think that it can become a permanent situation, the way it is now, because people are searching for solutions and, with the international engagement, we are very focused on what is happening right now. Our fear is more that the international focus might dissipate as the media disappear and other things disappear, and the long-term solution will not be established. Q41 Mr Battle: I agree with that last comment. In fact, we can see already that the newspaper appeals for Beslan are overshadowing the campaign to get resources for humanitarian aid to the Sudan. However, I want to focus on the return question, because I do not have a clear idea about - let me put it this way - the quality of the land where the people are now to support them in the future, and whether they will be able to settle there on a long‑term basis. I am following up Quentin's question, because my experience of another crisis in East Timor was that, when people went to the camps in West Timor, the most difficult thing of all was, for years afterwards, to convince people that it was safe to return. One of the reasons was that the longer people remained there, the more they dug in and became more reluctant to move. They made a life there, children started to grow up there, even in very difficult circumstances. The question then was, do we encourage them to grow things and to trade where they are or keep them on food aid, so that they are not allowed to develop a livelihood where they are and so they have got to return? That question was never properly resolved, and that is why there are still camps in West Timor to this day, even though East Timor is an independent country. I wonder what the approach of the international agencies to the camps is. Is it, "You are on food aid. You are on a temporary measure. You may collect some firewood, but don't go any further than that"? Mr MacKay: From what we see at the moment, the places where the refugees are settled are unsustainable for, traditionally, subsistence farmers. There is just not the land. They are gathered around urban centres. In Chad, we have 200,000 refugees on land that traditionally sustains 80,000 Chadians. That is just not sufficient. The arithmetic just does not work that way. As to what the solution is with that, we cannot stop providing aid to these people in order to encourage them to try to get some kind of sustainable livelihood when that is not a realistic prospect. The objective has to be to get them to go back to their own land. That has to be the only sustainable solution to this problem. I think that I would be slightly more pessimistic than Amelia on the prognosis here. Based on the experiences you have talked about in East Timor and other experiences around Sudan, when people move once, or twice, or three times, the connection with their home territory does get lost. I think it is more serious for the refugees in Chad. Once you cross a border, the inertia to cross back again is quite large. Q42 Mr Robathan: Are we being realistic? Does the Government of Sudan want these people to return to their homes? They invest a great deal of time and effort, helicopter gun‑ships, aircraft, and paying the Janjaweed to ethnically cleanse Darfur. I understand that you may prefer not to answer this in public, but in fact has not the Government of Sudan achieved its aim of driving these black African farmers out of Darfur, and do they show any sign of wishing to have them return? Ms Bookstein: Can we answer that in private session? Q43 John Barrett: Looking forward, how do you expect things to develop in Darfur over the next 18 months, in terms of security and humanitarian requirements? Mr MacKay: What traditionally happens is that attention deficit disorder kicks in and people start losing interest; funding will be more difficult next year. To say will they go back or stay where they are, I think what will happen is that dribs and drabs will go back, and more will go back as the rumours continue; but there are some people who will have probably lost their land and will stay in these urban centres or stay in Chad. So what will happen is that some return will take place, some people will stay, and some will be dependent on humanitarian aid for quite some time. On the other side of Sudan you have Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees who moved in 1984, and they are still there on the Sudanese side of the border. It happens. Chairman: At this stage we will move into private session. Would those not involved with either Oxfam or Save the Children, or in supporting Graham or Amelia, kindly vacate the room? [1] http://www.who.int/disasters/country.cfm?countryID=53&DocType=2 |