Sub-Saharan Africa is in the throes of a humanitarian crisis
that the international community is not ready to address. The number of
displaced persons has reached an all-time high of 60 million, but a quarter of
those are in sub-Saharan Africa. Of that total, 3.7 million are refugees and
11.4 million are internally displaced.
African refugees and internally displaced people face
numerous issues – from security in the places in which they seek refuge, to
death and mayhem trying to reach places of refuge, to conflict with surrounding
populations to warehousing that consigns generations to be born and live in
foreign countries.
Social chaos in sub-Saharan Africa has created a full-blown
humanitarian crisis. African host countries already cannot meet the needs of
refugees pouring across their borders, and the international community is also
stretched thin having to address the soaring number of refugees across the
world. This creates an urgent problem because displaced persons, many of whom
are women and children, are particularly vulnerable to economic shocks, at risk
of human rights violations, without access to basic services. Once they leave
home, they are dependent upon friends, family, governments, and international
organizations for basic needs. And their needs are myriad. Not only must they
receive water, food, and shelter to survive, but they also face long-term
problems like finding a livelihood in a new country. They also need
psychological assistance, many of them having experienced severe trauma along
their route or having fled violence and torture in their country of origin.
Boko Haram in Nigeria, along with the state’s military
response, has displaced upto 3.2 million Nigerians. Violent conflict in South
Sudan between the government and rebels – both entities have terrorized the
populace through mass killings, torture, and raps – has driven masses of people
into refugee camps but also into the “bush,” a wilderness area where they are
completely dependent on humanitarian aid to survive. The Central African
Republic was gripped by violence for two years after Muslim-supported rebels
ousted the regime in March 2013 and terrorized the populace. Largely Christian
militia groups formed to resist their reign of terror and have carried out
violent acts of revenge. Almost a million people have been displaced there and
almost a half million are living as refugees in neighboring countries. Countries
that have not seen extensive violence lately, such as Chad, have borne the
burden of taking in refugees from war-torn areas. But Chad is one of the
poorest countries in the world and does not have the infrastructure capable of
sustaining the myriads of refugees that are pouring in by the month. The World
Food Program cut its rations for Sudanese refugees in Chad by 50 percent in
2014. Mothers left their children for weeks on end to find work for food,
putting both themselves and their children at risk of exploitation.
Eritreans have suffered egregiously on their journey out of
what some call the “North Korea of Africa.” They flee one of the most
oppressive governments in the world. The U.N. Human Rights Council in June
reported “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” to have
been committed by the Eritrean government. There is “organized repression of
the freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly, association and religion,” the
report added. The government forces many men and women into “abusive,
essentially unpaid endless” military service, referred to by survivors as
“slave labor.” . Soldiers are tortured for slight infractions. However,
those fleeing Eritrea face a quagmire of hopelessness in refugee camps in Sudan
and Ethiopia, with no positive future outlook. Some ran into a horrific system
of torture where traffickers would capture them in Sudan and sell them to
Bedouins in Egypt, where they would be taken to torture camps in the Sinai
Peninsula. Victims were subject to gruesome suffering while a ransom was
demanded of their families. “The plight of Eritrean refugees is so dire, so
complex, so little known, and in some countries so misunderstood that it shocks
all normal sensibilities,” noted John Stauffer of the America Team for
Displaced Eritreans.
People must be able
to provide for themselves their children, and children must have access to
education. Capitalism cannot supply those needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment