23.04.2004
Integrating a Rights-based Approach in Humanitarian Work among Displaced Persons
LWF Department for World Service Regional Consultation for East, North, West AfricaMOMBASA, Kenya/GENEVA, 23 April 2004 (LWI) – “Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in some cases do not know the limit of their rights. They consider care givers as people mandated to provide [these] services whether they have the means or not. They ask such questions as why have you not brought our utensils, mats, or tarpaulins, why are you not feeding us with maize meal?”
This was how Mr Edward Yarkpazuo, coordinator of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) Liberia program presented some of the challenges facing the office’s work among refugees and IDPs in the West African country. He was among 60 participants in a regional consultation bringing together representatives of the ten LWF/DWS country programs in the East, North and West African region. Also in attendance were officials from LWF donor agencies and program staff from the Geneva Secretariat. The March 22-26 consultation in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa was held under the theme “The Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons,” with emphasis on a rights-based approach to displaced people’s concerns. The Kenya/Sudan program hosted the meeting.
In Liberia Ex-Combatants Instigate Conflict in Camps
LWF/DWS Liberia works among IDPs and refugees from Sierra Leone and other countries. In the country since the 1990s civil war, the office faces many challenges including cases of warlords’ administration of narcotic drugs to youth, many of whom were child soldiers, Yarkpazuo explained. So-called ex-combatants, he noted, sometimes settle in IDP camps as displaced persons, only to become the source of daily problems including strife with camp leaders. Another challenge is the impact of lucrative mercenary ventures in the West African region. Due to the civil war, boys and girls in the region have become exposed to every aspect of adult life at a very early age, he said.
But there are real signs of hope since the civil war in Liberia ended. Following the October 2003 installation of the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL), the international community including the United Nations, United States of America and European Union have pledged USD 520 million toward the peace process in the West African country.
LWF/DWS Liberia is a major partner in a priority task of the NTGL - the Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Re-integration (DDRR) of around 40,000 ex-combatants. Some 9,000 former fighters were disarmed last December, but the process was disrupted when some of them, demanding money for their surrendered guns, blamed the UN and Liberian government for not providing earlier awareness about the DDRR. When the process recommences in April, DWS Liberia will set up two of the four centers where verification, registration, awareness raising, health examination and final disarmament will take place.
The DWS Liberia office collaborates with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the government commission on refugees and IDPs’ rights to train some of its staff in the area of refugee protection. Support services provided at the two LWF-run camps – Jah Tondo and Salala – in conjunction with international and local agencies such as the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia include prevention of sexual exploitation of children and women.
On the way forward, Yarkpazuo emphasized the need for long-term human rights training for leaders of refugees and IDPs. Peacekeepers, he noted, should have an operational mandate to intervene and curtail the proliferation of rebels in a given country.
Tanzania Now Cautious of Refugees as a Potential Security Risk
From East Africa, Mr Duane Poppe, director of the Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service (TCRS) reported that the Tanzanian government had changed its attitude toward refugees over the last decade. Post-independence, the government pursued a very liberal and progressive policy of welcoming refugees as guests and providing them asylum that extended to granting enough land for subsistence farming for their economic independence and dignity. But since the early 1990s massive influxes from situations of genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, the government has become cautious of refugees as a security risk, and as people who may negatively influence the Tanzanian host communities, and who must therefore be kept in strictly controlled conditions, Poppe reported.
The government currently limits the refugees’ movement to a four-kilometer radius of the overcrowded camps, where they are totally dependent on handouts from the international community for their survival. Because of their confinement, Poppe said, refugees are unable to engage in any economic activity such as share cropping or small-scale trading to supplement the insufficient assistance received in the camps. “The refugees’ right to work for self-reliance and personal dignity is infringed,” he said. In Tanzanian since 1964, TCRS—focusing on community empowerment, disaster relief and refugees—currently works with an estimated 130,000 Burundian refugees in five camps in the western district of Kibondo. Although a significant number of the refugees repatriated following the improved political situation in Burundi, large numbers are still expected to remain in the camps until the end of this year.
In its rights-based intervention for refugees TCRS engages its related-agencies in lobbying their governments for additional grants to meet food shortfalls. The program also advocates the application of the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response – SPHERE, in western Tanzania among UN, international and local NGO staff working with refugees.
Concerning infringement on the rights of refugees to movement and work for self reliance, TCRS involves its national partner, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, in lobbying high-ranking government officials to argue for refugees’ access to land for food production. Other initiatives include media exposure visits to refugee camps aimed at “countering the popular perception of refugees as freeloaders while local Tanzanian poor people suffer,” Poppe reported. The program has organized workshops between refugee and host community leaders on the peaceful sharing of local water and forest resources, and lobbied district authorities to open markets to allow refugees engage in petty trading.
Implementing a Rights-based Approach May Lead to Tension with Authorities
The rights-based focus on refugee work is not devoid of internal and external challenges. It often brings TCRS into conflict with the government or other authorities responsible for rights protection, Poppe explained. “As long as TCRS stuck to service delivery we did not have to deal with this. “[But] as we take a higher campaigning profile, we can expect conflict,” he concluded.
Marianne Hallberg, DanChurchAid regional representative for Eastern Africa cited some potential gains in a rights-based approach to refugee work. She spoke of improved institutional dialogue with government authorities on claims at local and international levels; increased networking with a broader range of stakeholders both horizontally (at the local level) and vertically (from local, regional, national and international levels); and a stronger focus on empowerment and awareness-raising. (1,122 words)
(A contribution by Kenyan-based LWI correspondent Osman Njuguna, who attended the DWS regional consultation.)
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