UNHCR chief vows to improve conditions in East Sudan camps
April 26, 2007 (KILO 26, Sudan) — The U.N. refugee agency chief said Thursday he was appalled by the living conditions refugees have endured for decades in eastern Sudan camps and vowed his agency would remedy the situation within the coming year.
Antonio Guterres was on a one-day visit to the forgotten zone of eastern Sudan along the border with Eritrea and Ethiopia, where UNHCR caters for most of the 133,000 refugees chased to this region by decades of violence.
Guterres had previously inspected refugee camps in the western Darfur region, where more than 2.5 million people have been chased from their homes in the past four years by fighting between ethnically African rebels and the Arab-dominated central government.
“I’m not worried about our operation in Darfur, it has international support and media attention,” Guterres told The Associated Press. “But here (in Eastern Sudan) I had to come and see for myself” how bad the situation was.
“I was highly affected by what I saw here today,” he said. “This area has been neglected by us,” he said, stating the United Nations’ agency would change its strategy in the region toward creating a more sustainable livelihood for refugees.
The UNHCR chief also said he was working to reduce his agency’s operating costs so that more funds could be directed to neglected areas like eastern Sudan.
Most refugees in eastern Sudan came from Eritrea and Ethiopia, where bitter fighting chased hundreds of thousands from their homes in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
They told the UNHCR chief they had nothing in the camps and their ability to earn a meager living by working in the fields was hampered by this year’s drought.
UNHCR manages 12 camps in the area, with some 94,000 people. A 2000 peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia has led to the repatriation of nearly 100,000 people, but UNHCR says renewed violence pushed over 8,000 new asylum seekers back into eastern Sudan last year.
“I wouldn’t like to see myself living here for 15 years” Guterres said after visiting the Kilo 26 refugee camp, where he said living and hygiene conditions were “indecent.”
Guterres promised these conditions would improve within the next 12 months and said he would strive to raise the aid community’s awareness to the needs of East Sudan refugees.
(AP)