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INSIGHT

African Refugees

Aired October 5, 2006 - 18:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN HOST: A refugee's life. In African camps, mere survival is success. But for the lucky few who go beyond, who get out, achievement brings the unfamiliar. Utility bills, job searches and memories of the life they left behind.
Hello and welcome to INSIGHT. I'm Stephen Frazier.

Imagine life without a home, without enough food or water to get through the day, without the proper medicine to treat your sick child. What there is plenty of is war, disease, despair, and this is reality for an African refugee. A harsh life where babies die of hunger, where relatives are murdered and sons are kidnapped to fight in wars.

On today's INSIGHT, a refugee's struggle, first, just to survive the camps, and later on in our program how to rebuild after leaving them.

We're going to begin with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting from Chad, where refugees from the Darfur conflict have settled.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Everyone here has a story.

"Like night riders, they came after midnight," this man tells me. He's talking about the Janjaweed, a pro-government militia accused of atrocities across Darfur, armed gunmen on horseback.

With a single bullet, they crippled these twin girls. Scrambling for their lives, they ran on shattered legs, desperate to escape Darfur. Though the wounds are healing, they may never recover from the terror.

(on camera): How many of you feel safe here? Nobody. How many of you lost somebody during this conflict? Almost everybody.

(voice-over): This woman lost a daughter. Her story is so painful, her mother must speak for her.

As she was fleeing, she put her two-year-old little baby girl on her back. Two years later, she still can't talk about it, but her mother witnessed it all. Gunfire rang out and suddenly her daughter went quiet and limp, shot dead with a bullet meant for her. Now they are bonded by that terrible moment and by their new lives as refugees.

(on camera): How is your life here in this camp?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We live in the situation that you see right now. We don't have many things.

A lot of people ask, what does a refugee camp look like. Well, you're looking at one of the biggest ones, where so many of the 200,000 displaced people from Darfur are living. These little huts is where people actually live. These trees are actually bound together. They're sorogon (ph) trees. They use this to actually pound food into a paste that they can cook. And over here is where they keep some of their water.

It's not enough. Everyone tells us that all the time. They don't have enough food, they don't have enough water. This is where they're living now. This is how they're living.

(voice-over): Few of them know how they're going to get through next week, much less if or when they'll ever return home. Even so, they're trying to create new lives.

(on camera): Look at all the brightly colored clothing around here. These are all refugees that actually come to this market to exchange goods. They don't have any money, so they actually barter one service for another, so they can take some of these goods back to their homes.

(voice-over): Or what they now call homes. Huts, really, made of sticks, women preparing what little food they have.

(on camera): Besides food and clothing, what do you want for your grandchildren?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Food and education.

GUPTA (voice-over): The children also have stories. So many of them are of losing their parents.

LAURA PEREZ, UNICEF: We've heard just really terrible, heartbreaking stories. I heard the story of a young girl who is 14 who was gang raped by 15 men, 15 Janjaweed. Children who witnessed the murder of their parents. We're heard stories of mothers and girls being taken from villages by Janjaweed. We don't know where they're taken to. Just atrocities and horrible, horrible stories that are traumatic. These children are traumatized, and adults are traumatized as well.

GUPTA (on camera): Yes, the stories are horrifying, and so many of them start just beyond those hills, where the Sudan-Chad border is. So many people came by foot, walked all the way to these refugee camps.

What we find, though, is they have so much in common with people in other parts of the world. Yes, they want food and water, but they also want their own land. And, most importantly, they want education for their children.

(voice-over): When their sleep is not broken by nightmares, they dream the dreams we all dream. It's so basic. They want a better future for their children. They want their kids to be safe.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Gazbeta (ph), Chad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRAZIER: For a growing number of refugees, life in the camps is the only life they have ever known. As months of displacement stretch into years, mothers have given birth, babies have grown into young children, their memories of their true homes fading, or nonexistent.

Here again, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on the plight of the youngest refugees.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): So happy, in part because they have no idea what they do not have. Life in Djabal Refugee Camp. Their smiles conceal a startling fact: this conflict has raged so long, an entire generation of children knows only the life of refugees. They were born into it.

(on camera): No doubt, it is not easy to take care of people in a refugee camp, but here is where it gets really difficult. This is a structure built specifically to take care of malnourished children. For example, Ashdadumi (ph), here, who is two years old and weighs less than 10 pounds. Her mother knows she doesn't have a very good chance of survival, but they're doing the best they can, trying to get her to eat as much as they can.

(voice-over): Just for comparison, an average 26-month-old in the United States weighs 27 pounds, almost three times what Ashda (ph) weighs. And here, even a slight cough in a young baby can become life threatening.

(on camera): We see so much abdominal breathing here. She's not even using her lungs to actually breath. That's a sign that she's really struggling, trying to get some air. She's in respiratory distress.

There's no breathing machine here, there's no breathing machine there, so what happens to a child like this?

DR. HENRY MURAMBO, DJABAL REFUGEE CAMP: We do our best. We use what we have here. They're not the most modern, what we have.

GUPTA (voice-over): Without some way to help this baby, it is unlikely she will survive, but in this refugee camp, she's been given at least another day. But some times some of the best treatments are anything but elaborate. Cereals and oils mixed together, part of a nutritional plan funded by UNICEF.

It helps little Ashda (ph), who is just days gains a few ounces. Good news.

But as they get older, if they survive to get older, it will get even harder still.

(on camera): It's over 100 degrees here today, but this is part of what life is like in a refugee camp, typically. They have to live off the land. They take these seeds, for example, and pound them into a paste that they can eat. Sometimes they take these stalks after they harden and actually use them to build a hut.

It is not an easy life for so many of the children that you see here, but it's a necessary one for the time being. They're praying they can get back to Sudan, but that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon.

(voice-over): They want to return to a place they've only heard about but never known. Their homeland.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Gazbeta (ph), Chad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRAZIER: Just ahead, some spend years in refugee camps, displaced and dependent on aid, but a fortune few get a chance to make a new life for themselves somewhere else. A look at the different set of challenges they face when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRAZIER: The English city of Hull is a world away from the refugee camp these Congolese natives once called their home away from home. It's safe, comfortable, even liberated. But adjusting to life in these new surroundings presents its own unique set of challenges.

Welcome back.

At the beginning of this year, they knew little, if anything, about Britain, and now they're living there. In March, a small group of refugees in a Zambian camp were given the chance to move to northern England as part of a British government resettlement program. In many ways, life is better, but it is not always easy.

Simon Israel has our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON ISRAEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Not "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but breakfast in Hull for the Meza family, mother, father and six children. Their lives are no longer in danger. They now live in a four-bedroom house, a world and a life away from their two-room hut in Camp Kala (ph), where they survived for three years. They were accused by other tribes in the camp of being cannibals. The girls were tormented daily at school. But not anymore.

FURANA MEZA, RESETTLED REFUGEE (through translator): When I came here, I feel so happy to find out how much they respect women. Back home, a woman has got daughters, only daughters, they don't respect and they don't see her as a woman. Here it makes me feel happy and power to see girls and know they're going to be somebody. So that makes me happy. Very, very happy, as a happy woman.

ISRAEL: There are the inevitable culture adjustments, but after only six months under the Home Offices Gateway Program, they no longer feel like strangers in a town not exactly renown for its diversity.

But then they are chaperoned through their first year. This is managed migration. Unlike asylum seekers, their stories of suffering are already accepted. Their task is to acclimatize, but that's not without struggle. Every week, they bring their problems to this community center. Inherited bills from previous, unknown tenants, for example, long before they even left the refugee camp. The refugee counselor will act as their guide and protector.

The Home Office papers they were handed in the camp in Zambia are proof of their right to settle in Britain, but it's not enough for some of the country's more bureaucratic institutions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He applied for the drive license and they sent all the forms back to him, so he don't know what to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the DVMA (ph), where the driving processing is done, they don't know your status, so that's why they are confused, as you can imagine. There are just a few people who are on the resettlement program, and there is a lot of counterfeit in this country. So that's why they are unable just to issue you a driving license at once.

ISRAEL: Survival in the camps taught these Congolese refugees to be as self-sufficient as possible. Now they're doing the same thing in Hull. They share an allotment with a local family.

NADINE THOMPSON, HULL RESIDENT: Hull isn't really a very multicultural place, and it's been really nice getting to know people and it's been good for the children to meet non-English speaking people, which you don't often come across in Hull. So, hopefully, they'll pick up some French. So it's been lovely to share the allotment.

ISRAEL: This is the Congolese version of the good life. Six months ago, Etienne Kalilwa was finishing off his last orders in Camp Kala (ph). He's a tailor by profession, but persecution in the UNHCR camp meant he and his family couldn't stay. Now he's planning a similar career here.

ETIENNE KALILWA, RESETTLED REFUGEE (through translator): I'd like to be employed in the United Kingdom as a tailor, but if I can't find employment, I will work as self-employed.

FORTUNATO MAKIBA, RESETTLED REFUGEE: Whatever they were telling us in Africa is very different to what we are seeing here. People were telling us we will be slaves. We will be doing many things, doing bad jobs like cleaning dead stock. They were giving us a lot of worry.

ISRAEL: Hull is one of only eight local authorities so far to sign up to the Gateway Program. It's contracted to provide education and social services. It's small scale to help meet the Home Office commitment to resettle 500 refugees a year of the millions now in UNHCR camps all over the world.

Hull took just 72 from Camp Kala (ph) this year. They were selected by UNHCR as the most vulnerable from the 20,000 who exist in this camp in northern Zambia. They all received three days of what's called cultural orientation classes before they left Lusaka and it was here they were warned not to expect paradise.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You will have some culture shock. It's normal and temporary. You will come over it after a few months.

BERTHIN KAMBALE, RESETTLED REFUGEE: I think that has happened, you know, that's something which we don't know, you know. As we are saying, we didn't know U.K.. Sometimes when you are on the other side, not only what people are saying but what we are thinking in our mind, sometimes people can call U.K. or somewhere else paradise, but when you reach the place, you won't find it a paradise. It will be where other people live in.

ISRAEL: Free education, housing benefit, child benefit, job seeker allowance plus support services will see them through their first year. They are under pressure to get jobs, though. But language is the hurdle.

Dunia Meza was a nurse in the Congo, but his qualification counts for little here. He's under pressure to work in a factory, but he wants a U.K. nursing qualification as soon as possible.

DUNIA MEZA, RESETTLED REFUGEE: I have learned that over from job center, and I told them I am not used to this kind of job. I have already showed them my qualification. If you can just look for me a job which is similar, to health, that I can be doing. Factory packer is very difficult and I didn't even apply for that.

ISRAEL: Dozen more Congolese families are halfway through the year- long resettlement program in Rockdale (ph). Many of them have been housed on this estate, and most keep a low profile. But among them is a 59-year- old human rights activist who became Camp Kala's (ph) school inspector.

Chanda Kapesa was also head teacher at this school until he and his family had to leave to escape persecution in this camp of mixed tribes. He's now been elected parent governor at his grandson's new school in Rockdale (ph). His daughter, the boy's mother, died in the camp.

Today is his first meeting with the head teacher since the election. He's desperate for a job in education. Language is a barrier, but so is his age.

CHANDA KAPESA, RESETTLED REFUGEE: The rule of this country is up to 65. I'll go up to that age, and after I'll see. I can do other things, just to help, when I am still strong.

ISRAEL: Under the stairs at home, Chanda works on another ambition. His autobiography. He now has the time and space and security to compose his thoughts and memories about life as a human rights campaigner under various oppressive regimes in the Congo. He and his family have survived and are eternally grateful to the British government and others for making that possible.

(on camera): Rockdale (ph) and Hull are two of just a very small number of northern towns prepared to take refugees under this program. The government boasts it's reached its target of 500 for this year. But that follows three years of utter failure, partly because of the political fear of being seen to be positive in this sensitive area of immigration.

Hull and Rockdale (ph) are still deciding whether they're prepared to take more next year and there are serious problems persuading other local authorities onboard. In fact, a Labor Party fringe meeting on the Gateway Program this week had to be cancelled because of lack of interest.

Simon Israel, Channel 4 News, Rockdale (ph).

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRAZIER: And here we take a break. When we come back, life without. Is it possible to go home ever, or go on elsewhere, after life in the camps?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FRAZIER: The United Nations says there are 8.4 million refugees in the world, a number that has actually dropped in recent years, in a good way. Last year, more than a million people chose to return home to places such as Afghanistan and Liberia.

Welcome back.

Actually, the United Nations distinguishes between refugees, people who have fled their homes and taken refuge in another country, and internally displaced people. These are people with the same hardship who stay on in their own country.

The United Nations estimates there are 23 million people who are internally displaced, with very high populations in Iraq, Somalia and Darfur. Any way you categorize it, though, it is a very difficult life.

And joining us now to talk about it, African and beyond, in fact, is Emira Woods, who is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus.

Ms. Woods, thanks for making time for us.

EMIRA WOODS, FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

FRAZIER: We have been watching two reports. One from a refugee camp in Chad, another with Congolese refugees now in England. And, you know, it appears, sad to say, that in both of those cases, life is better than it would be at home. I'm wondering if you think that means that these temporary, well-intentioned arrangements could become permanent.

WOODS: Well, without a doubt, people always have that yearning for home. No matter where they are, they think of home and returning to home. They maintain their connections to their land, to their ancestors who are buried on that land, and want, without a doubt, to return.

So what is needed is actually creating a space where people can voluntarily return, as is happening in the case of Liberia, that you mentioned earlier. But we have to also create opportunities where people unable to return have both the security and a means of making a living, of putting their children in good schools, of having stable housing and health care. We have to make those opportunities available to people who don't have the option of returning home at that moment.

FRAZIER: How quickly can that sort of thing happen? I mean, we're looking here at families where the children are growing up fast. I know you are conversant with very sophisticated devices, like debt cancellation and fair rules for international trade. Those macroeconomic solutions don't seem to be quick enough to create the conditions those families we're looking at right now need now.

WOODS: Well, we have to look at the root causes. What is pushing people off their land. Yes, often it is political crisis, as you have in the case of Darfur, with the government trying to consolidate power and taking it out on the civilians. And in those instances, we have to move to protect the lives of civilians, right?

But we have to also notice the economic consequences that are resulting in these migration patterns. It is very much the lack of jobs. You know, even in countries that are incredibly resource rich, whether it's the Niger Delta flowing in oil, but yet the benefits don't flow to the people, unless people have jobs, unless they have decent schools to send their children, there will be these continuous pushes, and I think we have to add to that also the environmental damage that's happening.

If you saw recently the toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, there are numerous wastes being dumped in waterways across Africa, and when you recognize the environmental damage that's being caused, clearly it is putting pressure on the land and forcing out even more populations from their land.

So we have to address these root causes. It is through economic stability, it is through democratic expression and it is through a stable social base where people have a stake in their future that we can stem this flow of humanity as we see it.

FRAZIER: All of those, noble ideas, and may be adopted by many governments, but here, you know, we're talking about one of the biggest conflicts in Africa right now, Darfur, where the international community is so eager to help and is being rebuffed by the government there. So how do you work your way around that kind of resistance?

WOODS: Well, you work your way around by continuous negotiation. We, as an international community, a year ago came out with this wonderful protocol, the responsibility to protect, right? And yet, the protocol was without teeth, without an implementation mechanism.

So what we have in front of us is an excellent example where we can have the African Union as the first responders. You know, the Liger case is a perfect example there again, where you can have the regional body providing that first response for the first year to two years in many cases, right, as is the case in Darfur.

FRAZIER: And then send in some muscle.

WOODS: And then move on, recognize that there is an international responsibility as well, and move on to make sure that that international responsibility has a proper mandate to protect civilians.

But beyond the peacekeeping, we have to also look toward, again, addressing the root causes, and as we pay attention to the security question, we must also pay attention to the peace negotiation. We cannot just drop it and assume that an agreement made in May that hasn't really been signed by all the parties is an agreement that gains legitimacy. So we have to work on the political negotiations that will bring the power sharing arrangement, that will bring the economic resource sharing, that will bring greater long-term stability, not only in Darfur, but in all of Sudan.

FRAZIER: All very thoughtful, all very difficult, too, but we're grateful for these insights today.

Emira Woods, thank you.

WOODS: I'm grateful for the opportunity. Thank you.

FRAZIER: And with that, we've reached the conclusion of this edition of INSIGHT. Thank you for joining us.

I'm Stephen Frazier.

END

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