Washington, D.C. — Africa's refugee numbers are grim enough. 460,000 have fled Sudan, placing it at the top of Africa's refugee list. Angola's war has driven more than 400,000 across borders. Congo-Kinshasa 350,000 refugees. Chad makes the list with 55,000. Nigeria 7,000 while tiny Eritrea has more than 300,000 refugees outside its borders. According to the just-released World Refugee Survey 2001, more than 2.9 African civillians in 20 nations fled their homes and across borders last year to escape violence and repression.
But refugee flight doesn't end the story, according to Jeff Drumtra, Senior Africa Policy Analyst for the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), which produces the annual report. "The uprooted persons number is the worst of all."
Officially, "refugees" cross borders in flight to safety, while "internally displaced" persons have been forced from their homes but remain in the country. Sudan's number jumps to nearly 4 million, when displaced persons are added. Eritrea's to 750,000. "Uprooted" combines the categories of "refugee" and "displaced" and that number has passed 13 million in Africa, says Drumtra.
He and other observers see no signs that these numbers are about to shrink. "War is the single biggest reason" for refugees, Drumtra says, "and while we all talk about negotiating an end to these wars we try to do peacekeeping on the cheap."
The consequence, to Drumtra, is continuing warfare and growing numbers of refugees. Pointing to events in Angola, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone over the past 10 years, Drumtra argues that, "Peacekeepers go in poorly trained, ill-equipped, in too few numbers, are taken hostage or just fail to keep peace, and another round of war begins. The test case now will be Congo. Is there any confidence that the international community will put together what is needed? History doesn't justify such confidence."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Continuing civil warfare that spills across borders makes Africa's refugees distinct in another way. In many places, they don't find regfuge, even after they flee their countries. "In most places in the world refugees can flee to at least one safe place. But a large number of Africans who flee to their neighbors find their neighbors beseiged by ruthless insurgents," says Drumtra. "Sierra Leonean refugees went to Guinea in the mistaken notion that they had fled into places of refuge, but war found them. Sudanese fled into northern Uganda and the atrocities of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)."
In 1999 the UNHCR referred almost 4,000 Sudanese children and young adults to the United States for refugee resettlement. In the late 1980s they had fled, most of them young boys, to Ethiopia trying to escape the conflict in southern Sudan. They were forcibly returned to Sudan and then fled to northern Kenya. By this time all trace of parents and family had been lost. Now they will be resettled in 28 states, because refuge can't be found in Africa.
