This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 27 January 2012, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

In an effort to maintain operations despite prevailing insecurity and reduced humanitarian access at Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camps, UNHCR has been exploring ways to ensure uninterrupted assistance and services in the world’s largest refugee settlement.

The new measures include stronger and deeper involvement of the refugee communities in the day-to-day running of the camps, by reaching out to different groups within the refugee population, such as elders, the business community, and youth. Complementing this, UNHCR is organizing additional training, mentoring and capacity building for refugee workers and volunteers.

Refugees have always had a role in making camps work. However at Dadaab that role is being expanded. Hospitals, for example, have remained open throughout this difficult period, staffed by refugees, nationals, and a limited number of international staff. Furthermore, in situations when international or national staff cannot get to camps the health posts are managed by refugee staff who have been trained over the years to provide basic medical services and refer more serious cases to the camp hospitals. Refugee staff are also getting refresher courses on management of sensitive cases of sexual or gender based violence.

Together with our partners we are working to control outbreaks of measles and cholera. Monitoring is conducted on a weekly basis and the number of reported cases is now on the decline in all camps – from some 150 suspected cases at the end of 2011 to about 50 suspected cases in the first weeks of this year.

In addition, refugee leaders and refugees working for partner agencies are being trained to identify individuals and families who require immediate protection or life-saving assistance. This is especially important for people with severe disabilities, who cannot access help and services on their own, as well as for unaccompanied children and victims of rape or other types of violence. Since the beginning of this year UNHCR, partner agencies, and refugees have worked together to identify over 150 vulnerable people and families who have be have been brought to UNHCR offices in Dadaab for protection interviews and psycho-social, medical or legal follow-up.

In the area of water and sanitation, refugees are building new latrines on sandy and rocky ground and are collecting and transporting solid waste by donkey carts to allocated waste disposal sites. The water and sanitation committees, a network of volunteers that control the water delivery and sanitation services on household level, have also received additional resources and responsibilities for overall coordination and monitoring of these activities, running like a help desk in the camps.

In parallel, we are also engaging refugee youth in livelihood possibilities to develop and enhance their skills and work experience. Some have already volunteered to help collect garbage and oversee activities at water points.

More than 30 camp schools remain open and are run by refugee teachers. Despite insecurity, the Kenyan National Exams took place in the camps at the end of last year and the results were an improvement in the average score in comparison to last year. The exams were made possible because the community patrolled the schools and guarded the gates.

We are identifying other specific groups in the community for further outreach, such as the business community and the religious leaders and strengthening awareness and communications through radio. Together with the NGO Film Aid International we are about to launch a newly established SMS system that allows refugees to receive mobile text messages and respond for free.

Dadaab refugee complex presently shelters more than 460,000 refugees. A third of this refugee population arrived in 2011 alone, fleeing the conflict, drought, famine and human rights abuses in Somalia. The camps in Dadaab opened two decades ago and were originally designed to host some 90,000 refugees.

A child miner in Lagos, Nigeria (Photo: ILO)

Forced child labour remains rampant in Central Africa, where poverty fuels the trafficking of children from poorer countries to oil-rich states such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo, according to experts.

“Trafficking in children is real,” said Gabon’s social affairs director-general, Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga. “Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children.”

Matsanga was speaking at a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire. The meeting was attended by delegates from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women, who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking; boys are forced to work as street hawkers or mechanics, states the US State Department’s human trafficking report for 2011.

Child trafficking is defined by the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation.  This definition is especially important in West and Central Africa where it often occurs with the consent of the parents and sometimes, of the children themselves, notes a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report.

But a “near total absence of data” on the scope of the problem prevents media coverage of the issue, which is essential in influencing public opinion, noted the 2002 UNICEF report. A decade later, the problem persists. “It is hard to count the number of children [affected]. It is even difficult to talk [about them] because their attitude shows that [the children] themselves are convinced that the work they are forced to do is not normal,” Marianne Flach, UNICEF’s representative in the Congo, told IRIN.

“The parents in the countries of origin do not even know what happens to their children in the countries of destination,” added Flach.

Children and their families are ensnared by the empty promises of a better life, leading to the smuggling across borders every year of hundreds of thousands of children, denying them education, health, the right to grow up within a family and to protection from exploitation and abuse, say experts.

Kidnapping on the rise
In Cameroon, says the State Department report, trafficking operations usually target two or three children, such as when rural parents hand over their children to a middleman promising education or a better life in the city. But traffickers there are increasingly kidnapping their victims, as heightened public awareness means parents are giving away fewer of their children to middlemen.

“Trafficking is nothing but abuse,” Marcelline Pambou Loubondo of the NGO Movement of Mothers for Peace, Solidarity and Development, told IRIN.

“The traffickers are looking for a better life. They want to get rich very fast, which is why they employ children.”

The children are often forced to engage in petty trade day and night, lest they are beaten up, added Loubondo.

The presence of local and foreign armed groups also poses a threat to children’s rights, as do burgeoning oil and mineral sectors. In the DRC, for example, armed groups continue to abduct and forcibly recruit men, women and children as combatants, labourers and sex slaves.

A significant number of unlicensed Congolese artisanal miners – men and boys – are also exploited in situations of debt bondage by businessmen and supply dealers from whom they acquire cash advances, tools, food, and other provisions at inflated prices, and to whom they must sell the mined minerals at below-market prices, notes the State Department report.

In Equatorial Guinea, children “…are believed to be exploited in Malabo and Bata where a burgeoning oil industry creates demand for cheap labour and commercial sexual exploitation”.

According to delegates at the conference, source and destination countries need to form bilateral accords given the trans-border nature of trafficking.

Weak law enforcement 
At present, those involved in human trafficking are not systematically targeted by law enforcement officials even as trafficking seems to undergo a “seemingly uncontrollable rapid expansion”, noted Congo’s Social Affairs Minister, Emilienne Raoul.

In Gabon too, according to the US State Department report, the lack of enforcement of counter-trafficking laws has meant there have been no convictions, despite the arrest of more than 68 suspected trafficking offenders between 2003 and 2010.

While trafficking is often associated with clandestine migration, the merging of these two issues has serious consequences, with trafficked children seen as young offenders rather than victims in need of special protection measures, notes the International Organization for Migration.

“Human trafficking is a form of migration particularly detrimental to human rights,” added Robert Kotchani, a UN human rights official.

But, “in the same manner that slavery ended, human trafficking can equally end”, said Viviane Tchignoumba Mouanza, a magistrate and president of the association of female jurists in the Congo. “It is a problem with the mentality, sensitization and reach of the law.”

lmm/aw/mw

By Rania Spooner

A moving encounter with a young girl who called a detention centre home may have touched the West Australian Premier, but it has not changed his position on offshore processing.

Premier Colin Barnett told the story of a meeting with a girl who when asked where she was from told him the name of a detention centre, rather than her nationality, at citizenship ceremony in Perth today.

“It was just one of those experiences that came along, I thought this little girl was very vulnerable, very shy, I imagine had a very troubled childhood,” he said.

“I felt sorry for her but I genuinely felt very proud of our country, Australia, and that a little girl like that has a second chance and a chance at a full life.”

Mr Barnett has previously called on the Australian Prime Minister to reconsider John Howard’s Pacific Solution to process asylum seekers on Nauru.

Today he said he didn’t care where they were processed as long as it was not on Australian soil.

“I don’t see why we have a political standoff about whether it’s Nauru or Malaysia or anywhere else,” he said.

“It does seem sensible to me that people wanting to come to Australia can have their requested at least processed and assessed before they come onto Australian soil.”

However, he said his encounter with the refugee had opened his eyes to the “harsh reality of one child’s experience”.

“Australia does have a very proud record of accepting refugees, asylum seekers and of humanitarian aid,” he said.

“It’s something I believe Australians support and if you look at our history 7 million of us were born overseas.”

After welcoming 2100 new Australian citizens today Mr Barnett said he wanted to see the Federal Government and Opposition working together on a solution.

“It’s not an issue that’s going to go away,” he said.

“We are on the edge of a very vulnerable, very disruptive part of the world,” he said.

People have started returning to Angola under the relaunched voluntary repatriation programme. These people were on the first convoy from Bas-Congo province to northern Angola last November. (Photo: G.Dubourthoumieu/ UNHCR)

Pedro is the kind of urban professional that Angola needs to help build stability and a viable future after years of devastating conflict.

But he was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and has mixed memories of the short time that he stayed in the land of his parents after Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975. Recalling his life, Pedro went from the depths of losing his parents as a boy, and having to fend for himself, to the high of graduating from university.

He shared his tears and laughter with this UNHCR writer and also explained his difficult decision to return to Angola with his Congolese wife and his four children. “I want to go back to Angola because I want to participate in the development of my country. I want to help develop my country in the field of education,” said Pedro, who teaches Latin and French at a secondary school in Kinshasa.

The whole family has registered to go to Angola under a voluntary repatriation programme that was relaunched late last year by UNHCR and the governments of Angola and the DRC. Some 15,000 people have gone back to date, while an estimated 120,000 returned with or without assistance from 2003-2008.

Pedro was not ready to return earlier, but now says that with peace restored in Angola he wants to complete a journey that has taken him on an at times rocky and unpredictable path. “They want to see their country [too],” the 45-year-old added of his children.

His own journey began in DRC’s Bas-Congo province west of Kinshasa, where he was born not long after his parents fled across the border in the mid-1960s. In 1975, when Pedro was eight years old, Angola gained independence from Portugal and his proud mother decided to go back.

“My mother was always telling people that she returned to Angola with her children because she wanted them to know their country,” said Pedro, recalling a brief period of plenty and of happiness. That bright memory has stayed with him. But a year later, civil war broke out, and they were on the run again.

“We fled into the forest, but we could not survive there and we had to return to our village. When there were problems in the village, we lived in the forest. We were staying one month in the forest and then one month back in the village. I was scared.”

In 1978, his mother realized that their lives were in great danger and they had to make a run for the border. It ended up as an arduous and dangerous month-long journey. “We were hiding in caves. My legs were swollen,” said Pedro, who remembered it all like yesterday. And one day they ran into an ambush.

“We were attacked between two hills and some women had to leave their children behind. My mother told me that I should follow her and if she was hit by a bullet, I should follow the people going to Zaire [as the DRC was then known].” But she made it through and they crossed the border a few days later, after surviving on cassava roots scavenged from the abandoned fields they passed.

The warm reception they received from the local people in Bas-Congo, including gifts of clothing, made a lasting impression on Pedro. And he had his first contact with UNHCR, when the family were registered as refugees at the agency’s field office in the Bas-Congo town of Kimpese and given food.

It was a very tough childhood, an emotional Pedro reflected, almost breaking down when telling UNHCR about his struggle to survive on his own after the death of his beloved parents when he was just 12 years old. “I lived alone with my little sister and worked in the fields. My older sister was working in a nearby town and one day she came to pick up my sister, but she did not take me. She said that I should stay where I was and continue working in the fields.”

The bright and resourceful boy decided to walk to Kimpese and seek help from UNHCR. The journey took two days, but it was the right decision. “UNHCR supported me and helped me to go to school in Lukala. I went to secondary school in Ntuadisi. When I finished secondary school, UNHCR gave me a scholarship and I went to university, where I studied French and Latin.”

Pedro graduated from Kinshasa’s Université Pédagogique Nationale in 2010 and found a job at Saint Antoine’s school. He had a rosy future. But something was missing. Although immensely grateful for the opportunities he received in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he decided that the best way to fulfill his potential, thank UNHCR and help others in need, was to go and build a life in Angola’s Uige province, where his mother came from.

“My parents used to tell us about Angola. I do the same with my children,” Pedro revealed. “And now they don’t stop asking me when we will go to Angola.”

By Celine Schmitt in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo

The UN has denounced the bombing of a camp housing some 5,000 refugees in South Sudan near the border with Sudan.

A boy was injured and 14 other people went missing during the air raid in El Foj in Upper Nile state on Monday, the UN refugee agency said.

A Sudan army spokesman told the BBC that Sudanese forces had not carried out any bombing raids in the area.

South Sudan split from Sudan last July and since then their relationship has deteriorated.

Both countries accuse the other of backing rebels operating in their territories and it is not the first time South Sudan has been bombed – there were attacks in Upper Nile state and Unity state last year.

Refugees fled
The UNHCR says a plane dropped several bombs on Monday morning which landed on the transit site for those who have fled the conflict in Blue Nile over the border in Sudan.

“Bombing of civilian areas must be condemned in the strongest terms,” Mireille Girard, UNHCR’s representative in South Sudan, said in a statement.

The BBC’s James Copnall in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, says the UN did not say who was responsible, but the refugees will almost certainly suspect the Sudanese Armed Forces.

Blue Nile is one of three border areas – along with South Kordofan and Abyei – where fighting has broken out since South Sudan’s independence.

Many rebels in these regions fought alongside southerners during the decades-long civil war that ended with Khartoum agreeing to the south’s independence.

Sudan’s army spokesman Khalid Sawarmi said Sudanese forces had been recently involved in fighting against rebels in Blue Nile in the village of Aroum.

“We attacked them and drove them out of this place. [We] did not use any planes or Antonovs there,” he told the BBC.

Following the strike on El Foj, most people have now fled the area or have been helped to relocate by the UN, the agency says.

The authorities in Upper Nile state say they do not have first-hand confirmation of an incident at El Foj.

However Upper Nile’s Information Minister Peter Lam Both did accuse Sudan of carrying out another air raid in the state on Sunday.

He told the BBC that three people were killed and four wounded in Khor Yabous, near the border with Sudan.

He also said South Sudan’s army had fought off an attack by militias around this time.

The UN says more than 78,000 people have fled Sudan since last August because of fighting in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Our correspondent says the latest incident highlights the bad relationship between the two countries as well as the difficult situation many refugees face.

Recently the focus has been on oil resources, with South Sudan deciding last week to shut down its production rather than, as it sees it, have some of its oil stolen by the north, he says.

The two sides are currently discussing how to share their oil resources at talks in Ethiopia.

But whatever the full truth of the matter, the greatest concern to many is security not oil, our reporter says.

Analysis

Martin Plaut
BBC World Service Africa editor

Relations between Khartoum and Juba are clearly at breaking point. Since South Sudan won independence last July, there has been no end of trouble along their border. At times their armed forces have clashed, using tanks and aircraft, but no all-out conflict.

But the dispute over oil could push relations over the edge. South Sudan has decided to close its oil production after Sudan seized crude oil piped through its territory to reach international markets. Both countries depend almost entirely on oil for their revenues. They have few alternatives to fall back on.

For South Sudan there is the option of finding a route to the sea via Kenya. There are reports that the authorities in Juba will announce the building of a pipeline through Kenya next week. Another possibility is taking the oil in tankers by road. Both are hugely ambitious, but South Sudan argues that it survived years of war and could survive whatever comes its way.

For Sudan, the reduction in oil revenues has already caused difficulties, with people complaining of rising prices.

Both Sudan and South Sudan have much to lose by continued confrontation, but at the moment there seems little appetite in either capital to find a compromise.

By Alana Buckley-Carr

Children from the Horn of Africa are growing up in Perth with identity issues as they try to adapt to a Western culture while living with traditions of the past, according to migration experts.

Last financial year, WA took in the lowest number of Sudanese in almost 10 years, with just 144 settler arrivals born in Sudan.

It was significantly lower than the 789 who settled in WA in 2004-05 at the height of the Darfur conflict which saw millions of people displaced and hundreds of thousands killed.

The Department of Immigration allocates its refugee intake one-third each from Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia.

Stephen Bowman, director of the Mirrabooka-based Edmund Rice Centre which helps new arrivals, said after the influx of Sudanese families several years ago their children were growing up in a confusing environment where they were trying to ascertain their own identity.

“For adults in particular, gaining the English language is very challenging,” Mr Bowman said.

“The children adapt to the language much more quickly.

“That can then lead to a change in power in the family unit because the children are used as interpreters by their parents.”

He said fear and ignorance from the Australian public was also part of the problem.

“I don’t think its necessarily racism but marginalisation, isolation,” Mr Bowman said.

Another expert who deals with migrant support services said many of the African teens would struggle in school, look different to the typical Caucasian student and were trying to find their identity at home where they were being brought up with traditional culture, while living in Australia.

The expert said many of the problems arose from this lack of identity and lack of appropriate activities for the teens, who lived in lower socio-economic areas where there was not a lot of spare money for social activities.

As a result, youths from the same ethnic group would cluster together to feel a sense of belonging.

Members of a family of southern Sudanese sit in their shelter after arriving in South Sudan from the north. (Photo: Paul Banks/ UN Photo)

Reida Sustine was two years old when her parents fled Juba in the south and headed northwards to the national capital, Khartoum, during the Sudan civil war. Like many others from the south, her family tried to forget the conflict. As she grew older, she made a living from selling fish caught in the Nile, which divides at Khartoum.

The capital may have been a refuge, but daily life was a struggle. When South Sudan became an independent state 25 years later on July 9, 2011, Sustine knew it was time to go home. She gathered together her belongings and rode a barge heading south down the Nile. In two weeks she arrived back in Juba.

Sitting in a UNHCR transit centre, she and her family wait for a bus that will take them home to South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state. “I don’t know what home will be like,” says the 27-year-old. “But I know it will be better than what I have had. I’ll start a business and everything will be alright.”

Since October 2010, more than 365,000 people have headed to South Sudan – a sizeable number made their lives in the north but have strong links to the south. Those making the journey arrive with their belongings and a fierce sense of hope. But many are also vulnerable. UNHCR and its partners work to verify that their return is voluntary.

Together with the International Organization for Migration, UNHCR also helps transport the most vulnerable, assisting and protecting them during their transit home. The agency manages way stations and assists in the provision of food and medical care.

Once returnees arrive, they are given initial food rations supplied by the World Food Programme. Those with only a few belongings are given reintegration packages, which include mosquito nets, blankets, sleeping mats, jerry cans, buckets, soap, pots and pans, and plastic sheets.

In some cases, UNHCR also assists the new arrivals in starting new communities. It runs a transitional shelter programme along with community-based projects, including livelihood and basic infrastructure. Both are aimed at providing opportunities for vulnerable returnee communities and for host communities. Since 2005 more than 800 such projects have been completed, including 330 involving construction or rehabilitation of schools, health clinics and water facilities.

“Many of these people have to start from scratch,” says Rebecca Ondoa, a community services associate for UNHCR. “People ask themselves, ‘Where do I put my children? Where do I work? How do I manage a family?’ They need help to put the pieces together.”

Last year, UNHCR funded the construction by a Kenya-based aid group, ACROSS, to build affordable mud-brick homes for new arrivals in Juba’s Gudele West community. The agency has helped to build a school and establish water points for the community. It worked to provide local residents with the tools to make their own bricks, some of which they can sell to supplement their income.

For Poibe Bawaras Kune, the programme has meant that she now has a place to live. “I am so happy to have a place that is mine,” says the 45-year-old. “We had no money to put up a structure. UNHCR mobilized people in the community who tried to build for us. It helped us so much.”

Like others heading south, Kune spent much of her life in Khartoum before returning to Sudan. She remembers the best days of her life as the ones she spent as a child growing up in Juba before the war.

In Khartoum, she eked out a living washing laundry. When she left for the capital as a 20-year-old she thought she would never return. “You dream something you want to do and you are unable. So you’re better to leave it alone,” she says. “Now South Sudan is an independent state . . . The way is open for us now we have come back home.”

By Greg Beals in Juba, South Sudan

By Jerome Taylor

Thousands of poor migrants from across Africa are being kidnapped by Bedouin gangs

Refugees from sub-Saharan Africa are being kidnapped, tortured and ransomed for thousands of dollars in the Egyptian Sinai in what human rights activists say is the world’s forgotten hostage crisis. Over the past year, thousands of desperate migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia have been kidnapped by Bedouin tribesmen who are taking advantage of continuing instability in Egypt to ramp up their lucrative trade.

Migrants have reported being rounded up by gang members and held in specially constructed jails where they are frequently tortured until relatives in Europe or Africa come up with thousands of dollars.

Testimony compiled by human rights groups reveals that torture with electric cables and molten plastic is routinely used against victims as they make desperate calls home to plead for cash. Many kidnap victims claim to have been raped by their abductors, and there are reports that captives who have been unable to raise funds have had organs removed for sale on the black market.

Critics have accused the international community of standing idle in the midst of a kidnapping scandal that has drawn little attention compared with Somali piracy, whose victims are often white employees of multinational corporations rather than poor Africans.

Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest based in Rome, receives regular calls to his Vatican office from the families of kidnapped migrants as they try to liaise with loved ones or kidnappers. “There are no real efforts being made to save these people,” he told The Independent. “The inertia of the [international community] is a godsend for criminals who get rich. The millionaire business around this trafficking is forcing hundreds of families into debt for amounts that they will pay for decades, in order to save the lives of their son, daughter or husband. Many sell everything, or end up in the hands of usurers”.

Most of the sub-Saharan migrants making their way to the Sinai desert are from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan – three impoverished African nations which have a history of persecuting political opponents and ethnic minorities. Most of those fleeing are hoping to reach Europe, where there are already sizeable populations from their countries.

Before the turmoil created by the Arab Spring, many migrants trekked through the Sahara to reach Libya, Algeria and Morocco in the hopes of finding work or catching a boat across the Mediterranean. Most now have no choice but to enter Europe via the Sinai and Israel, forcing them into the hands of Bedouin tribesmen who have long engaged in smuggling arms, drugs and people after years of chronic under-investment and prejudice from central government in Cairo.

Dr Khataza Ghondwe, an expert on sub-Saharan Africa working for the non-governmental organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide, says the plight of kidnapped refugees has been ignored for too long. “The Sinai has been a pretty lawless place for years and [ousted President Hosni] Mubarak made no effort to halt the abuse of refugees by tribes there,” she said. “But since the revolution things have got even worse. Their plight has slipped off the radar entirely.”

She thinks people within Eritrea, and not just the Bedouin, could be benefiting from the smuggling routes. “I was in Kenya earlier last year speaking to an Eritrean man,” she said. “As we were talking, he got a call from his brother who was being held in the Sinai and asked for him to send money as soon as possible. The bank details he gave were for a branch in Asmara [the capital of Eritrea], not Egypt.”

According to a recent Israeli government report, an estimated 11,763 people were smuggled into Israel through the Egyptian border in 2010. Last week, the Knesset passed new legislation making it easier for the authorities to speed up deportations, leading to an outcry from human rights groups.

Doctors working for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, a charity which examines migrants on arrival, conducted interviews with 800 refugees, with 78 per cent reporting that they had been kidnapped, tortured or held for ransom at some point during their journey through the Sinai. A separate survey by the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv, found that 50 per cent of migrants had reported being raped in the Sinai, including many men.

Egypt’s ability to police the Sinai has been historically hindered by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which limits the number of troops Cairo is allowed to place on the country’s eastern flank. After a successful attempt by Islamist suicide bombers to infiltrate the Sinai border last August, Israel has allowed the Egyptians to increase troop numbers, but little of the extra resources have been put into tackling the human trafficking networks.

The migrants have given testimonies with detailed descriptions of where they were held. One group operating out of the Mansoura area is known to be run by a man called Abu Musa and his brothers Ali Hamed and Salim. They use two distinctive red houses with Chinese pagodas outside their gates to imprison their captives. The towns of Rafah, Mansoura and Al-Jorra are also known to contain purpose-built prisons for hostages. Despite the details provided, however, authorities are taking little action.

The most recent telephone call received by Father Zerai was last Thursday, when a woman said she was part of a group of 20 who had been taken captive, including six children. “The woman who called for help talks about continuous mistreatment, starvation and violence,” he said. The kidnappers reportedly demanded $30,000 for each captive and threatened to remove organs from those who could not pay.

“The situation is getting worse and worse,” added Father Zerai. “Something must be done.”

Tortured in the desert: Smugglers’ victims

TLS: A 19-year-old Eritrean woman
When I was still in Sudan, I agreed to pay the smugglers $2,500 to transfer me to Israel. When I arrived in Sinai, the smuggler sold me, along with a group of other people, to another smuggler named Abdullah. Abdullah demanded an additional $10,000 from me. I had no way to raise that sum of money. Abdullah raped me for five days and two other smugglers raped me as well. As a result of all these rapes, I got pregnant. Only after eight months was my father able to send the smugglers $5,000; they released me and allowed me to cross the border to Israel. I must have an abortion. My husband should not know what happened to me in the desert.

MN: A 35-year-old Sudanese man
The smugglers asked whether we knew anyone in Israel or Europe and asked for our relatives’ phone numbers. They would call our relatives and then bring a stick and beat us so that we could be heard shouting and crying. They told our relatives that if the money arrived that day, we’d be in Israel the following day. Sometimes they asked for $2,500 and sometimes for an additional $3,000. The more someone cried when they were beaten, the more money their relatives would send.

AIS: A 21-year-old Eritrean woman
So that we would convince our relatives to send money, the smugglers beat our shins with a stick. They also burned our arms and legs with a plastic stick with hot metal at the end. I still have wounds and scars from the beatings and the burns. I was a virgin when I arrived in the desert. During the first few times that I was raped I cried and resisted, but that didn’t help. They wouldn’t leave me alone. After that I stopped resisting. Only when $2,800 arrived did the smugglers unchain me. They transferred me to someone named Ibrahim and he transferred me and 30 other people to the Israeli border.

An armed herder looks after his cattle near the border town of Moyale, Kenya (Photo: Siegfried Modola/ IRIN)

Hundreds of families displaced during weeks of fighting between two communities in the northern Kenyan district of Moyale have ignored pleas to return by government officials who say the situation has returned to normal.

“Calm has been restored, we have not had a single incident of attack [lately], our intelligence personnel, local leaders are vigilant just in case any person or group plans to attack any group,” Issaih Nokuru, the regional commissioner for Upper Eastern, told IRIN on 19 January.

Nokuru said police and the army had been deployed to the district and 24-hour patrols were ongoing.

A few hours after the commissioner spoke to IRIN, fresh clashes broke out in Manislle, a village on the outskirts of Moyale town.

“’Fighting between gangs, tribal militias from the Borana and Gabra communities started at around 2 pm today,” said one local official.

“Regular police and rapid deployment teams were send to Mansille. They were unable to access the place because of the heavy fighting. They are back in [Moyale] town. We fear many have been killed. A number of people are fleeing to the town,” he said.

Residents said the weeks of conflict had led more than 15 settlements and grazing areas to be abandoned, with those who used to live there fleeing to Marsabit, Wajir and Isiolo districts, neighbouring Moyale.

Fighting between the Borana and Gabra communities began in December, mostly over control of resources such as water and grazing land but the conflict has also been linked to politics. General elections in Kenya, which frequently spark violence, are due later this year or early 2013.

Nokuru said plans were under way to help displaced families return to their homes, adding that they would be provided with food and shelter.

“We cannot talk of assisting people who are nowhere to be found, they need to go back to the villages to enable us to establish what they need so that we can make a request to the government and appeal to aid agencies for assistance,” Nokuru said.

Regarding measures to curb the fighting, Nokuru said all home guards in the district had had their government-issued weapons confiscated following reports some had taken part in inter-communal clashes over cattle and pastureland, which claimed dozens of lives.

“A vetting process to recruit fresh new home guards and police reservists will be conducted by next week; we want a team from both communities who will help the police maintain security rather than cause trouble,” he said.

Thousands of the displaced who fled across the border into Ethiopia have yet to return, local residents said. The fighting has also affected hundreds of Ethiopian pupils who attend schools in Kenya as many remain closed.

Wario Mohamed, a management committee member of Oda Primary School – on the outskirts of Moyale town – said thousands of people, including school-children, teachers and civil servants, were camped in Ethiopia’s Oromia and Region 5 provinces.

“More than 8,000 people from villages, farms and grazing areas have fled to Ethiopia; some are still fleeing, nobody is going back home, apart from a few men who are returning to salvage their belongings which they left as they escaped,” Mohamed said.

Herders walk through a sand storm in an arid landscape near the border town of Moyale in northern Kenya (Photo: Siegfried Modola/ IRIN)

He said at least 3,000 Borana are camping at Kabana in Oromia region while an estimated 5,000 members of the Gabra are camped at Arballe in Region 5 province in Ethiopia.

These numbers could not be independently verified. In Addis Ababa, a spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) told IRIN: “Apart from the rumours that we hear, we don’t have any concrete evidence that suggests a large number of Kenyan refugees are coming to Ethiopia.

“But still we are planning to send a task force soon to see the situation for ourselves,” said Kisut Gebre Egziabher.

Mohamed said most of those in Ethiopia were without food, tents and mosquito nets: “They have not received any assistance.”

On the move

An official at the government’s Arid Lands Resource Management Programme office in Moyale, who requested anonymity, said hundreds of families displaced from the rural areas of Moyale had moved to Moyale town, while more than 100 Gabra families had moved to Wajir North, Marsabit and Isiolo districts.

Mohamed Golicha, a local councillor, said many displaced Moyale residents had ignored a directive by the government to return to their homes, fearing more attacks.

“These [displaced] people have no homes to return to; their house were burnt, all the Borana homeguards were disarmed; our people are likely to be attacked if they go back, it’s better for them to stay in Ethiopia and seek asylum,” Golicha said.

Salat*, a resident of Oda in Moyale, said he had moved his family to Ethiopia and was afraid to get them back, saying they had been threatened with more attacks should they return.

“Our people are suffering, Ethiopia is only offering assistance to people in Kabana, our people [the Gabra], particularly the elderly and the children, are suffering, almost all of them abandoned their livestock after their house were burnt,” he said.

Salat said those who had fled to neighbouring Wajir district were suffering the most as pressure was being put on them to leave the area.

Education hit

According to the Moyale branch of the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT), some 34 public and 14 private primary schools have not opened, with hundreds of pupils and at least 450 teachers still displaced.

Adan Abkul Sabura, KNUT’s Moyale executive secretary, said: “A total of 13,000 and 3,000 learners in both public and private primary schools remain displaced and out of school as a result of this conflict; some have lost their homes, some have lost relatives, belongings and many are traumatized. It is impossible for them to resume learning soon.”

He added that four public and a private secondary school also remained closed, estimating that more than 2,000 students had fled with their families to Ethiopia or to live with relatives in Moyale town.

A civil servant from Moyale, who spoke to IRIN in Isiolo town, said members of his community had been threatened not to return to Moyale.

“I am a nurse and many of us, as well as many teachers, will not go back; it is obvious delivery of government services to the public has been disrupted, I will not go back,” the civil servant said. “We have requested transfers out of Moyale or we shall simply resign.”

*Gave only one name