Addis Ababa — 'We cannot sleep because of the threat of snakes, scorpions, and heavy rain.'
A large group of Sudanese refugees who have been stranded in a forest in a conflict-affected region of neighbouring Ethiopia for the past two months are facing "catastrophic" living conditions and continued attacks by local militiamen and bandits.
After escaping the war in Sudan, several thousand refugees had been living in camps allocated to them in the Amhara region by Ethiopian authorities. But the refugees escaped to a forest in May after attacks, abductions, and rapes in the camps.
Mohamed Hamid, a refugee who is stuck in the forest, said the group has been contending with hyenas and other dangerous wildlife over the past few weeks, and is experiencing humanitarian conditions that "no human being would accept".
Hamid, who worked for the UN in Sudan, said the refugees are demanding to be relocated to another country, or to be given support to return to Sudan, even as the conflict there has displaced some 10 million people and led to famine conditions.
Lucrezia Vittori, associate communications officer in Ethiopia for the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) said her organisation is urging refugees to return to the camps so they can access food and water aid while a long-term solution is figured out.
Vittori said a safer site in Amhara, near the town of Gendewuha, has already been identified, but that the timeline for opening it depends on financial resources, the current rainy season, and the security situation.
Hamid said he is sceptical of the plan and feels like refugees are "being held hostage". "This [new] camp is also located in the Amhara region," he said. "Local people advised us against accepting. They told us that we would continue to be killed there."
Rebellion broke out in Amhara last year, when a militia called Fano began fighting Ethiopia's federal government. The militia had supported the government's war in the Tigray region but felt betrayed by a 2022 peace deal and a crackdown against its fighters.
Some reports blame Fano for the abuses against Sudanese, though refugees who spoke to The New Humanitarian described assailants simply as "militiamen from the mountains" or as armed residents of villages near the camps, which are called Awlala and Kumer.
Some armed villagers were assigned by the government to protect the Awlala camp, and were the source of much of the trouble there, according to refugees interviewed by The New Humanitarian.
The Ethiopian government agency in charge of refugee affairs, the Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS), did not answer emailed questions about the insecurity and the government's plans for the refugees in time for publication.
Dangerous and deficient camps
Ethiopia has received 55,000 people from Sudan since the war between the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the regular Sudanese army erupted in April 2023, while around 2 million people have been forced out of the country in total.
Refugees have faced hurdles wherever they have fled, from punitive visa rules and illegal deportations to a massively underfunded regional refugee response that is unable to provide adequate food, water, health, and education services.
Refugees in Amhara said they have faced extreme hardship since arriving last year in the region, which is the second most populous in Ethiopia and shares a border with Sudan.
On a visit to Kumer camp in February, The New Humanitarian met a man who had been abducted, several victims of rape, and a family who said a relative had died of suicide due to trauma and a lack of medical support.
The nearby Awlala camp, meanwhile, had virtually no services and the ground had cracked apart after a recent drought. Snakes and scorpions were coming out through the fissures.
Refugees said a string of security threats in both camps culminated in the shooting of an 18-year-old boy at a market next to the Awlala site, which is around 70 kilometres from the border. The teenager is now being treated in a hospital in Addis Ababa.
On 1 May, Awlala and Kumer residents left the camps for the town of Gondar to meet the local UNHCR representative. However, they said their path was blocked by Ethiopian authorities, forcing them to settle in a forested area beside the road.
Hunger strikes and 'food blackmail'
The RRS rejected The New Humanitarian's request to visit the forest site, however sources shared photographs and described dire conditions in a series of telephone interviews.
Images show people living in shabby and sodden makeshift tents propped up by sticks in a site with no latrines. In some pictures, rows of men and women are holding up signs that say they are on hunger strike.
Refugees said 4,250 individuals are currently living in the forest, a substantially higher number than the 1,000 UNHCR said are at the site. Refugees said access to food is a major problem, and that malaria cases are increasing due to recent rains.
Zolkha Mohammed said her six-year-old child is suffering from malnutrition. "Her body is getting thinner, her stomach is swelling, her nails have stopped growing, and she is losing her hair," said Mohammed, who worked as a secondary school teacher in Sudan.
"For the last two months, we have been eating only the cheapest food on the market: sorghum flour and shiro - a very spicy chickpea-based stew that we are not used to," Mohammed added. "It makes children sick and they sometimes refuse to eat it."
Hamid, the former UN worker, said RRS officials have prevented refugees in the forest from receiving monthly food distributions from the UN. He said this constitutes "food blackmail" and is designed to force the refugees to return to Awlala and Kumer.
UNHCR's Vittori confirmed that food distributions are not taking place in the forest. However, she said this is because it "not possible" for agencies to do distributions "on the road side".
Some support to the forest camp has been sent from Sudanese benefactors in the diaspora, but an internet shutdown imposed on Amhara by the government has restricted the refugees' ability to receive funds via e-banking applications.
Attacks continue: 'They started hitting me with the back of their rifle'
Refugees who spoke to The New Humanitarian said they initially felt relief when they settled in the forest - especially since soldiers and police were sent for their protection - yet security incidents have continued to plague them.
On 15 June, a trader from Khartoum called Adam Mohamed, said he was returning from a market near the forest site when three armed men beat him up, while seven others stood watching.
"They tried to take my basket and searched my pockets," Mohamed said. "I resisted, so they started hitting me with the back of their rifle. I lost my balance but they kept beating me once I was on the ground."
Mohamed said the attack left him with a gaping facial wound that is still bleeding nearly two weeks later. He said the bandits stole his telephone and that his wife and two children have been unable to sleep at night because of the trauma.
Another incident occurred the following day when a 31-year-old pregnant woman called Adila Ahmed was shot in the head while returning to the camp from Gendewuha, according to a testimony shared by her husband, Essa Tom.
Tom said his wife was on a bus that crossed a village where a fight had broken out between residents and armed men from surrounding mountains. He said the armed men deliberately shot at the bus, killing his wife, and two Ethiopian nationals.
"I would have preferred to have died in her place because she was looking after our children," said Tom, an electrician who left Khartoum in June 2023. "I'm lost now. Adila was my whole life."
Tom said the day after his wife's funeral - which took place in the hills around the forest - he went to visit her grave with a group of other refugees, but militiamen arrived on the scene forcing the group to retreat.
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Hamid, the former UN worker, also relayed a 23 June incident, in which a woman from the camp was stopped by thieves while returning from a market. The thieves stole her food and money, threatened her with weapons, and slapped her, he said.
Requests for evacuation
The difficult situation has forced around 1,500 refugees to return to Sudan or to head to third countries - including Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia - since May, according to numbers shared by a committee representing the refugees.
Mohamed, the trader from Khartoum who was attacked earlier in the month, called on UNHCR and the Ethiopian authorities to help evacuate the rest of the refugees to a safer country, or to Sudan if the former proves impossible.
"Evacuation is our request," Mohamed told The New Humanitarian. "As long as UNHCR and the RRS are responsible for us, they must seek a solution for us."
Hamid said authorities currently won't let the refugees travel as a group to the Sudanese border because of a state of emergency imposed on Amhara. He said the journey is also too dangerous and pricey to undertake as individuals without support.
Zolkha Mohammed, the mother of the malnourished child, called for international organisations and the international community to step up and "immediately evacuate" the group to a safer place.
"We are suffering here," she said. "We are mothers, [yet] we cannot sleep because of the threat of snakes, scorpions, and heavy rain. We do not have enough material to protect our heads and those of our children."
Edited by Philip Kleinfeld.
Augustine Passilly, Freelance journalist based in Ethiopia, and previously in Sudan
