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Shire, Ethiopia, a historical commercial city in the northern Tigray region has been overwhelmed with displaced families since war broke out last November. For VOA, Yan Boechat takes a closer look at some of the many camps created to house the region’s roughly 2 million displaced people.
Source: Voice of America
Countries accused of abusing their peoples’ human rights will come under the lens of the U.N. Human Rights Council over the next three weeks. Dozens of thematic issues and country reports on topics including the COVID-19 pandemic will be addressed during the session, which begins Monday.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, will present an oral update on the human rights crisis unfolding in Myanmar since the military coup there on February 1. Her report is likely to reflect condemnation of the military leaders’ violent crackdown on the civilian population and, what she sees as a looming threat of civil war in the country.
The council also will hear updates on the human rights situation in other countries, including Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, South Sudan, and Syria. Separately, observers view events in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region as one of the most serious human rights issues around.
The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says reports of imminent famine, summary executions, rape and other atrocities perpetrated in Tigray warrant action by the Human Rights Council. He is calling for the adoption of a resolution condemning these practices at this session.
“A resolution should clearly name the governments,” he said. “We know that Ethiopian government forces have been major perpetrators of these crimes along with, as you mentioned, the Eritrean forces. It is important to recognize the Eritrean forces did not invade Tigray. They were invited in by the Ethiopian government.”
Violence erupted in Tigray in November when forces of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation front attacked federal military bases in the region. The Ethiopian government responded with the use of military force.
High Commissioner Bachelet also will present a report on police violence and systemic racism against people of African descent. The death of African American George Floyd while in police custody in the United States last year triggered a special council session one year ago.
Roth says he believes the report should have a strong focus on the United States. He adds, however, that systemic racism is a global problem and should be treated as such.
“Our concern is really that the council creates some kind of mechanism to continue this. It is not just a one-off report, but there is a more systematic effort to address root causes and to push for accountability…I do not say that at all to try to minimize the situation in the U.S. The U.S. should be a critical focus of those efforts,” he said.
The council’s last session in February focused on efforts to combat COVID-19-related violations. Bachelet will present a report on how states are responding to the pandemic. COVID-19 also will feature as a sub-theme into reports and panel discussions this session.
Source: Voice of America
Marking World Refugee Day, June 20, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, is calling on host communities to show more sympathy and love for those fleeing crises in their home country and who are now threatened by COVID-19. The UNHCR says Cameroon is home to close to half a million refugees, mostly from Nigeria and the Central African Republic.
Portraits of famous refugees adorn the walls of the annex building of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Among the most famous is Somali-American supermodel Iman, who became a refugee in 1972, Jamaican singer Bob Marley and Hong Kong-born film actor Jackie Chan.
UNHCR says the exhibition is designed to encourage refugees who have given up hope. The U.N. agency says people displaced from their countries by conflict can succeed in life if they work hard.
The refugee agency says Cameroon, with a population of around 25 million, is now home for close to 2 million refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced Cameroonians seeking refuge.
Among the 2 million are about half a million refugees, 322,000 of whom are fleeing violence in the neighboring Central African Republic and 117,000 are Nigerians escaping Boko Haram terrorism. Others are from Niger and Chad.
Olivier Guillaume Beer is the UNHCR representative in Cameroon. He said his agency is encouraging Cameroon and the refugees to live in peace.
“This is a day where we would like to have people understand that behind these figures, you have women, you have children. Each of them with his or her own story of violence, of persecution. People lost everything. Children lost their school, they lost their friends, parents lost their jobs and they need to restart a new life in a very difficult context. On World Refugee Day, we show empathy, solidarity to these people,” said Beer.
Beer said when Cameroon reported its first cases of COVID-19 in March of last year, the UNHCR made protecting refugees a priority. He spoke on Cameroon state radio, CRTV, on World Refugee Day.
“In remote centers where they [refugees] are, we did not have isolation centers, we did not have tents, we did not have masks. So, the first thing that the UNHCR did was to support the government, support the regional health directorate to make sure that if refugees and host communities are tested positive, they can find a way to be treated,” he said.
Cameroon said it deployed mobile health workers to test the refugees for COVID-19 in remote areas.
Lawrence Diyen Jam is the highest-ranking Cameroonian government official in Garoua Boulay, an administrative unit on Cameroon’s border with the C.A.R. He said his office receives many reports of confrontations between host communities and refugees.
He said last week, many people were wounded in conflicts between Cameroonian farmers and ranchers who fled the C.A.R. with their cattle. He said Cameroonians are not happy when cattle from the C.A.R. destroy their crops, causing hunger in local communities. He said there is regular fighting between refugees and their host communities over water resources.
Twenty-seven-year-old Yussuf Abdoulaye is a C.A.R. refugee. He said in spite of the challenges, Cameroon is still more peaceful than his country. He said he is not thinking of returning to the C.A.R. soon.
Abdoulaye said he and 16 other civilians fleeing post-election violence in the C.A.R. were warmly received by Cameroonian authorities and the UNHCR in Cameroon’s eastern town of Garoua Boulay. He said the community freely offered farmland to grow corn and beans. He said he is very happy because there is peace in Cameroon. He said he is encouraging refugees to respect the country’s laws.
Ten years ago, Cameroon had fewer than 250,000 refugees.
This year, Cameroon said it offered food and mattresses to C.A.R. refugees on its eastern border and Nigerian refugees in the Minawao camp on its northern border.
UNHCR Cameroon says it has received only 23% of the $100 million it needs to take care of the growing needs of refugees in the central African state. This year’s Refugee Day theme is together we heal, learn and shine.
Source: Voice of America
Hundreds of displaced families trampled down the stairs carrying stained mattresses, logs and kindling for cooking and sacks of clothing and food.
The families, more than 5,000 people in all, had fled battles in the northern Tigray region to Shire, a historical commercial center. Now they were being forced to move again.
When they arrived in Shire after the war broke out last November, schools and universities were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic so it made sense to use the buildings as temporary shelters. But now, the government wants students back in school, and one week ago, Axum University was evacuated.
“Authorities told us a month ago we had to leave,” said Kidan Weldemariam, a 47-year-old mother of eight on the day of the evacuation. “Since then, they have come every few days. The only difference is — now they are using force.”
As families packed, officials from the United Nations also briefly visited the camp. Scores of people crowded around as one official spoke to a soldier in uniform. She said that the new camp is not ready and the move is unjust. But when reminded her office helped coordinate this move, the official quickly conceded and told people to follow the soldiers’ orders.
Outside the building, three-wheeled vehicles known as “Bejajes” in Ethiopia lined up to transport the families to a location where the new camp was being set up. It is the cheapest way to travel in this part of Tigray and young men tied mattresses to the roofs of the blue cabs.
As droves of people continued to hustle up and down the stairs, Haben Tariq, 12, watched the action. “What do I do?” he asked.
Families were leaving as units, but he was alone. Like thousands of other children, he and his parents were separated as they fled the war last year.
“How can I find my mother?” he said. “Maybe if I tell my story she will find me?”
Refugee day
Worldwide, more than 80 million people are living outside their homes, forced to flee war or persecution, according to United Nations statistics. Nearly 60% remain in their home countries, sometimes forced to flee the same conflict over and over.
On June 20, the U.N. recognizes World Refugee Day, but there is not much to celebrate. In the past 10 years, the global population of forcibly displaced people has more than doubled.
In Tigray, many displaced families were split up in the chaos, with about 2 million people fleeing within Ethiopia and more than 60,000 others crossing the border to take refuge in Sudan.
At another camp in Shire, families crowd into tents propped up in the dirt surrounding classrooms, where as many as 35 people sleep in a room. With a newborn baby strapped to her back, Alem Belay, 26, said she hadn’t spoken to many of her family members since the war began last November.
Her family fled to Sudan, but she was pregnant at the time, so she couldn’t go with them. Alem fled to the nearest “safe” town, where her farm animals were confiscated and her husband was arrested.
“They said to him, ‘We know you are a fighter; where is your gun?’” Alem said. “He didn’t have a gun, but they took him, and our cattle.”
Long crisis
War in Tigray first broke out last November after months of heightened tensions.
Then, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front attacked northern federal bases and the Ethiopian National Defense Force swept through the region. Eritrean forces are now fighting alongside the federal government and both the Eritrean and Ethiopian sides have associated militias.
Civilians in Tigray have reported widespread looting, beatings and mass killings. Hundreds of women and girls have reported being raped by soldiers and many more assaults are believed to have gone unreported. The U.N. warns famine is occurring in some places.
And on top of these horrors, the economy has been crushed. Cities are packed with displaced families, while farms go untended and food is not grown.
“I was a farmer with good lands and I grew sorghum,” said Belay Abera, 67, as he packed his few things to move out of an Axum University dorm room. “But I was displaced just before the harvest and arrived here with nothing.”
Source: Voice of America
Tanzania Authorities Warn of Third Wave of COVID-19 A few days after Tanzania expressed its interest in joining the COVAX global vaccine-sharing facility, the government warned citizens of a third wave of COVID-19 and directed that all precautions to be taken, including the wearing of face masks. Authorities say cases are on the rise in all bordering countries, including Uganda, and that there are indicators the disease may again hit the country.
Speaking with journalists Saturday, the director of prevention from Tanzania’s Heath Ministry, Leonard Subi, insisted citizens take all necessary precautions to protect themselves from infection.
He reminded all citizens not to ignore COVID-19. The ministry has begun to see an indication of the occurrence of the third wave of COVID-19 Subi says. He added this is due to the monitoring reports of the disease being carried out by the ministry and the interaction between Tanzanians and other nations.
In April of last year Tanzania stopped publishing COVID-19 data as the then president, the late John Magufuli, declared God had eliminated the infection.
Soon after Magufuli’s death in March of this year, new president Samia Hassan started a change in handling COVID infections, including admitting its presence. Now the country is waiting for vaccines.
Opposition politicians such as Yerico Nyerere from the Party of Democracy and Development, or CHADEMA, say the government should emphasize controlling movements particularly in the area bordering Uganda, where the virus has hit strongly.
Nyerere says those areas that have interactions with countries such as Uganda, where there is a high wave of the virus, should enforce serious controls, if possible, even closing the border with Uganda. He says Tanzania does not want to enter into the stage that Uganda has reached, lockdown.
Tanzanians see the need for the government to enforce nationwide prevention campaigns that will also reach village people.
Dar es Salaam resident Imani Henrick says she thinks the government should put in place an inclusive strategy, including encouraging people to wear masks and wash their hands. She says and there should be supervision from the government, not just saying people should take precautions. Henrick says there are people in the villages who know nothing about precautions and they can’t even afford face masks. So, Henrick adds, the government should come with a strategic plan, even including distributing free face masks, particularly for those in the villages and those who mostly meet with large numbers of people.
For Ibrahim Chawe, another Dar es Salaam resident, things have changed and he hopes the government will fully implement all the precautions that were recommended by the COVID-19 committee formed by Hassan, including the publication of data.
Chawe says publicizing information about COVID-19 and telling people to take precautions is a big step compared to the previous period. Chawe adds that before, wearing of masks was not approved of, but now there are major changes in how the infections are being handled.
Since Hassan took office in March she has sought to gradually bring Tanzania in line with global public standards for tackling COVID-19.
Source: Voice of America