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Approximately 465,000 Sudanese were refugees or asylum seekers
at the end of 2000: some 200,000 in Uganda, about 70,000 in Ethiopia,
an estimated 70,000 in Congo-Kinshasa, at least 55,000 in Kenya, 35,000
in Central African Republic, about 20,000 in Chad, some 12,000 in Egypt,
and nearly 2,000 new Sudanese asylum applicants in Europe.
An estimated 4 million Sudanese were internally displaced—the largest
internally displaced population in the world. A huge population of Sudanese
exiles lived in Egypt and elsewhere, many of whom considered themselves
to be refugees although host governments did not give them official refugee
status. At least 100,000 Sudanese became newly uprooted by violence during
2000.
Sudan hosted 385,000 refugees from neighboring countries: about 350,000
from Eritrea, some 25,000 from Ethiopia, about 5,000 from Uganda, and
nearly 5,000 from Chad.
Pre-2000 Events Civil war has persisted in Sudan virtually non-stop
since 1983. The conflict has contributed to the deaths of an estimated
2 million or more people and has left more than 4 million people uprooted.
Most of the violence and population displacement have occurred in the
southern half of the country, home to an estimated 5 million to 7 million
people.
Sudan’s long conflict is fueled by racial, cultural, religious, and
political differences between the country’s northern and southern
populations. The northern population is largely Arab Muslims. The southern
population is overwhelmingly black Christians or adherents to local traditional
religions. Major internal divisions within the north and the south have
also aggravated the violence.
The main southern rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army
(SPLA), and its political arm, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement
(SPLM), have officially sought political autonomy within a united Sudan.
Some southerners have advocated secession from Sudan and establishment
of an independent country in the south. The SPLA has joined with northern
political groups opposed to the Sudanese government to form the National
Democratic Alliance (NDA), which has launched military attacks in eastern
Sudan in recent years.
Sudan’s current governmental leaders staged a coup to gain power
in 1989. Controlled by the hardline National Islamic Front (NIF), the
government has armed militia groups that attack military and civilian
targets in the south. Several rebel factions defected to the government
during the 1990s, and several pro-government factions defected to the
rebels, adding to the volatile military situation.
Combatants on all sides have targeted and exploited civilian populations.
The Sudanese government has launched regular air strikes against civilian
and humanitarian targets and has blocked humanitarian relief deliveries
to numerous locations. A combination of drought, violence, and aid blockages
by Sudanese authorities triggered a famine in southern Sudan’s Bahr
el-Ghazal Province in 1998 that killed tens of thousands of people. Rebel
factions have manipulated aid programs to gain food for their troops and
have conscripted new soldiers from camps housing refugees and displaced
people.
By the end of 1999, Sudanese government forces and their allies controlled
several key towns in southern Sudan, while the SPLA operated widely in
rural areas of the south and controlled a growing number of secondary
towns and villages.
Some of the worst violence during 1999 occurred near extensive oil fields
in the Upper Nile Province of the south, where the government opened a
lucrative oil pipeline to the north and engaged in what many analysts
described as a “scorched earth” policy against residents. Violence
in Upper Nile Province intensified further when pro-government factions
based there clashed against each other.
New Displacement and Violence in 2000 More than 100,000 Sudanese
became newly uprooted during 2000, including 30,000 new Sudanese refugees
who fled to neighboring countries.
Six main conflict zones existed during the year. The SPLA launched a military
offensive in Bahr el-Ghazal Province in the south, officially ending a
widely violated two-year cease-fire there and capturing the town of Gogrial.
Thousands of persons reportedly fled their homes in the government-controlled
town of Wau in anticipation of an SPLA attack that did not materialize.
Pro-government militia continued to loot villages and abduct women and
children in Bahr el-Ghazal Province, including 300 abductions in a single
raid in February. Northern militia have abducted some 5,000 to 15,000
residents of Bahr el-Ghazal during the past 15 years, according to a UN
report.
The second conflict area was the northeast, near the Sudan-Eritrea border.
The NDA continued a military offensive in the area and briefly threatened
the strategic town of Kassala. Tens of thousands of people fled to 18
camps for displaced persons.
A third conflict area was the Nuba Mountains region of central Sudan,
where government forces pressed a military offensive. The geographic isolation
of the Nuba area and a Sudanese government prohibition against humanitarian
aid flights there effectively limited information about the level of violence.
Eastern Equatoria Province in the extreme southeast corner of Sudan was
a fourth zone of conflict. The local ethnic Didinga population clashed
with SPLA soldiers who were primarily ethnic Dinka. “The SPLA...was
behaving as an occupying army,” a UN human rights report stated in
September. “People were often mistreated and sometimes had the feeling
that they were in a foreign country.” More than 2,000 persons fled
the area to a refugee camp in nearby Kenya.
A fifth conflict area during 2000 was the oil-producing region of southern
Sudan, in Upper Nile Province, home to large ethnic Nuer populations.
For the second consecutive year, a complex web of fighting in the province
among Nuer factions, within pro-government factions, and between pro-government
and rebel forces forced at least 50,000 persons to flee their homes. In
one provincial district, three-quarters of the residents were displaced.
Some fled westward to neighboring Bahr el-Ghazal Province. Others fled
to safer locations within Upper Nile Province, such as Bentiu town, where
they arrived in “alarming nutritional state,” according to Action
Contra La Faim (ACF), a relief agency.
Critics of the Sudanese government charged that large-scale population
upheaval in Upper Nile Province, in the vicinity of the oil fields, was
a deliberate strategy to depopulate the area. “Oil is exacerbating
the conflict,” stated a Canadian government report that analyzed
the link between a Canadian oil company and the war. “It is hard
to deny that displacement is now, and has been for some time, because
of oil.”
The Canadian report charged that Sudanese authorities practiced scorched-earth
tactics and that “attacks and displacements are leading to a gradual
depopulation. It is necessary to bring an end to these vicious displacements.”
Intensified aerial bombardments by Sudanese government planes against
civilian and humanitarian targets throughout southern Sudan and the Nuba
Mountains region effectively constituted the country’s sixth conflict
zone. Humanitarian organizations, including the U.S. Committee for Refugees
(USCR), documented at least 167 aerial bombings during the year. Additional
bombings went unreported and uncounted.
Fourteen persons died in February when an aerial attack struck a school
and relief center in the Nuba Mountains. Sudanese government planes bombed
a hospital in March, killing three, and struck an outdoor market in Yei
town in November, killing 19 civilians and wounding 45. Government bombings
in southeastern Sudan in September killed 11.
The large number of bombings pushed people from their homes and disrupted
farming and other economic activities. Several bombings targeted humanitarian
aid planes and relief operations (see Long-Term Displacement and Conditions
below). Sudanese leader General Omar El-Bashir pledged in April to end
bombings of civilian targets, but the aerial attacks continued. A UN human
rights investigator reported in September that he was “profoundly
shocked” by the bombing campaign.
Peace negotiations made no progress during the year. The United Nations,
led by the U.S. government, voted to deny the Sudanese government a seat
on the UN Security Council because of the country’s human rights
record. Analysts reported that military expenditures by the Sudanese government
had nearly doubled since 1998, financed by the country’s new oil
revenues.
Long-Term Displacement and Conditions Seventeen years of warfare
have cumulatively left nearly 4.5 million Sudanese uprooted from their
homes, including an estimated 4 million internally displaced persons and
more than 450,000 refugees. Hundreds of thousands of others, perhaps millions,
have migrated from the country in search of better economic opportunities,
primarily to Egypt.
Up to 1.5 million people were believed to be internally displaced in the
south. Nearly 2 million Sudanese—most of them southerners—have
fled or migrated northward to Khartoum, the capital. Hundreds of thousands
more were internally displaced in central Sudan’s Nuba Mountains
region.
About 2.6 million persons were displaced within government-controlled
areas, including some 300,000 who have fled to government-controlled towns
in the south, according to UN estimates. The remaining 1.4 million displaced
people were in areas of nominal rebel control in the south, where civil
administration was virtually non-existent. Many displaced families have
fled from place to place repeatedly during the course of the war. Few
uprooted persons in the south lived in camps; most lived in destitute
conditions that were virtually indistinguishable from those of other impoverished
residents.
An estimated 2.4 million Sudanese needed food aid, according to an assessment
by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization in August. The World Health
Organization reported that malaria and diarrheal diseases were responsible
for 40 percent of all reported illnesses. Only a handful of hospitals
and health clinics functioned in southern Sudan.
Some of the worst deterioration in humanitarian conditions during 2000
occurred in Upper Nile Province, where worsening violence created large
new population upheavals and Sudanese government restrictions prevented
regular relief deliveries. “Displaced people are living in deplorable
conditions, without shelter, sleeping on the ground in pouring rain,”
the ACF relief agency reported. “Epidemic risks are very high.”
A UN humanitarian report on Upper Nile Province warned that “agricultural
activities have been abandoned and hunger is prevalent as households’
food stocks have been left behind or destroyed.” One-fourth of the
residents in some parts of the province suffered malnutrition and were
in “dire need of assistance,” Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF) reported. UNICEF provided immunizations, high-nutrition crackers,
plastic sheeting, and mosquito nets for displaced people who reached the
Upper Nile town of Bentiu.
Humanitarian conditions remained fragile in Bahr el-Ghazal Province in
the aftermath of the area’s 1998 famine. Some displaced families
returned to their homes in the province, and local crop yields improved.
Isolated food shortages persisted, however, and local communities struggled
to accommodate newly uprooted people from Upper Nile Province. “People
are going several days without food” in some parts of Bahr el-Ghazal,
a humanitarian assessment concluded.
In the Nuba Mountains region of central Sudan, more than 170,000 displaced
persons lived—many of them involuntarily—in some 72 government-established
“peace villages.” CARE delivered 14 tons of seeds, tools, and
other supplies to civilians in rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains
in July. The one-time-only delivery was the first time in years that Sudanese
government authorities allowed aid deliveries into SPLA-controlled areas
of Nuba.
Warfare, administrative restrictions, and logistical challenges continued
to hamper humanitarian relief efforts. Ten humanitarian aid workers were
killed during the year. Sudanese military planes bombed relief planes
in July belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross and
MSF, and in August struck an important UN humanitarian hub in the town
of Mapel, in Bahr el-Ghazal Province. MSF charged Sudanese bombers with
“deliberate targeting” of humanitarian projects.
“The UN Secretary General is deeply concerned over the security of
humanitarian personnel and facilities belonging to Operation Lifeline
Sudan,” said a UN statement in August, announcing a one-week suspension
of relief flights to southern Sudan. In November, UN agencies reported
that “the humanitarian operating environment is deteriorating, with
humanitarian workers coming under increasing risk of attack, bombing,
and hostage taking.”
The Sudanese government charged that some relief organizations “have
had negative effects of prolonging the war” and threatened to tighten
controls over international aid programs in the country. Eleven of the
40 relief agencies operating in southern Sudan closed their programs in
early 2000 in a dispute over new rules imposed by the SPLM. The 11 agencies
complained that the new rules by rebel leaders jeopardized the political
neutrality and flexibility of aid programs. Most of the 11 organizations
resumed operations later in the year. Aid workers also charged that SPLA
soldiers continued to steal food deliveries, citing several major incidents
during the year.
UN relief agencies received about $100 million of the $130 million they
needed for assistance programs during 2000. The funding shortfall curtailed
projects in health, sanitation, education, and human rights. UN agencies
issued an appeal in November for $194 million to fund humanitarian programs
during 2001.
Internal Displacement in Khartoum Nearly 2 million displaced persons,
many of them from Sudan’s war-ravaged southern region, continued
to live in the vicinity of Khartoum. Approximately 220,000 resided in
four official camps; most other displaced families occupied 15 dilapidated
squatter neighborhoods. About 40 percent of Khartoum’s population
were displaced persons, according to a UN estimate.
Conditions for displaced occupants of the capital were generally poor.
A WFP survey in 1999 found that 80 percent of the displaced population
were “very poor” and typically spent four-fifths of their meager
incomes for food purchases that met only half of their nutritional requirements.
Fewer than 10 percent received food aid. Fewer than one in ten displaced
people in the capital held formal jobs, according to an earlier UN study.
Three in ten had no access to medical services.
UN studies reported that only one-third of displaced children in Khartoum
attended school, and many of the 10,000 or more street children in the
capital were from displaced families. “Very little has been done
to help the displaced in terms of livelihood support,” the UN Development
Program stated in a funding appeal to international donors.
Refugees from Eritrea The estimated 350,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan
at the end of the year included approximately 320,000 long-term refugees
who have lived in Sudan for up to 30 years, as well as some 30,000 new
refugees who arrived during 2000.
About 80,000 Eritrean refugees fled to northeast Sudan in mid-2000 to
escape their country’s intensified border war with Ethiopia. Some
estimates put the number of new arrivals as high as 95,000. Thousands
of the new refugees stayed in Sudan only a few weeks before rapidly returning
to Eritrea. An estimated 50,000 repatriated by year’s end—half
of them with assistance from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
and half on their own.
The new arrivals rapidly settled into an existing refugee camp, Shagarab,
and two new camps. UNHCR airlifted relief supplies from Europe, and local
Sudanese charities provided significant assistance. “The new refugees
were in reasonably good health, had taken some of their possessions with
them, and also benefited from the generosity of the host population,”
a UNHCR report stated.
Although no major health problems developed, UNHCR staff complained that
the Sudanese government’s refugee bureau slowed the distribution
of much-needed tents and hampered other emergency response efforts. UNHCR
established a new office in the town of Kassala to oversee aid programs
for the new refugees. UNHCR temporarily evacuated staff from Kassala in
November after an attack on the town by Sudanese rebels.
The 320,000 long-term Eritrean refugees who remained in Sudan had fled
Eritrea in the 1980s or earlier during their country’s war for independence.
About 150,000 resided in some 20 camps and settlements in eastern Sudan.
An additional 170,000 long-term refugees resided on their own in towns
such as Kassala, Khartoum, and Gedaref.
Camp occupants received food aid, health and education programs, literacy
and technical training, and special aid for women and children from UNHCR
and other assistance groups. About 12,000 children attended 30 refugee
schools in the camps. UNHCR distributed 400 sports balls and 600 athletic
uniforms to refugee schools in the first half of the year. A program to
save trees through the use of fuel-efficient stoves reduced fuel consumption
by half at some refugee sites, UNHCR reported. Aid workers planted nearly
40,000 new trees at refugee camps.
Officials of Sudan, Eritrea, and UNHCR signed a tripartite agreement in
April to begin an organized repatriation program for long-term Eritrean
refugees. About half of the refugees are expected to repatriate eventually,
but their return has long been delayed by political and social tensions,
as well as by disputes between Eritrean authorities and UNHCR.
Under the tripartite agreement, the repatriation program was supposed
begin in mid-2000. However, renewal of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war
in May forced authorities to cancel the return program before it began.
Many refugees intended to repatriate to the southwest corner of Eritrea—an
area hit hard by the mid-year fighting. By year’s end, authorities
hoped to commence the repatriation program in 2001.
Refugees from Ethiopia Most Ethiopian refugees fled to Sudan in
the 1980s to escape civil war and human rights abuses in Ethiopia at that
time. Nearly 75,000 have returned home to Ethiopia since 1993—including
1,000 returns during 2000—leaving an estimated 25,000 Ethiopian refugees
in Sudan at the end of the year.
Beginning in March 2000, most Ethiopian refugees in Sudan no longer received
automatic refugee status. UNHCR stated that conditions in Ethiopia had
improved since 1991, and therefore it declared a “cessation”
of refugee status for Ethiopians who arrived in Sudan prior to 1991.
The year 2000 was a transition period, as some refugees awaited a problem-filled
repatriation program, others sought to remain in Sudan as non-refugees,
and still others attempted to maintain refugee status through individual
asylum claims. A screening program began in November for some 3,000 Ethiopians
who requested individual refugee status.
About 15,000 refugees requested assistance to return to Ethiopia. Only
1,000 managed to repatriate by year’s end because of delays caused
by the Ethiopia-Eritrea war and landmines in returnee areas.
As the year ended, about 12,000 Ethiopian refugees continued to reside
in designated camps. Others lived on their own in urban areas.
Refugees from Other Countries Nearly 5,000 Chadian refugees remained
in western Sudan. They fled their country years ago and have assimilated
into local Sudanese communities, where they did not require assistance.
Many have expressed a desire to repatriate; an unknown number might have
done so during 2000. A planned UNHCR assessment trip to the refugees’
remote location was cancelled by government travel restrictions during
the year.
Many of the estimated 5,000 Ugandan refugees have lived in southern Sudan
for 20 years or more. UNHCR had no contact with the refugees.
USCR Actions The U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) conducted two
site visits to southern and eastern Sudan during the year.
USCR established a reporting network to monitor aerial bombings by Sudanese
government planes against civilian and humanitarian targets during 2000.
USCR research found that at least 167 aerial bombings occurred—two-and-a-half
times the number of attacks that occurred in previous years.
In January, USCR hosted a public briefing to review development needs
in southern Sudan. In March, USCR publicly urged a strong U.S. government
response in the aftermath of a Sudanese government aerial attack that
killed 14 school children in the Nuba Mountains region. In May, USCR warned
of a pending attack by the Sudanese government military against an Islamic
holy city in eastern Sudan and urged combatants to declare the city a
“neutral zone.”
In August, USCR reported on intensified aerial attacks by the Sudanese
military against civilian targets and urged the international community
to issue a forceful condemnation. “These bombings are clearly deliberate,”
USCR stated. “The Sudanese government is targeting southern Sudanese
civilians and relief workers who seek to save the lives of those civilians.”
In a separate August statement, USCR warned that international relief
efforts in Sudan were in disarray caused by poor management, lack of international
political support, and restrictions by Sudanese officials against aid
programs. USCR warned that Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) “faces
some of the most serious threats in its 11-year history.”
Another USCR analysis in August stated that “serious concerns remain
about whether the UN’s OLS can survive much longer in the face of
the Sudanese government’s persistent strategy of deliberate aerial
bombings, aid blockages, bureaucratic restrictions, and broken promises.”
USCR warned that “it is only a matter of time before Sudanese officials
take another round of steps to disrupt or irreparably cripple” relief
efforts.
In an August letter to the UN secretary general, USCR urged an immediate
review of relief programs “to help assure maximum feasible protection
to [relief] workers, consistent with not abandoning the vulnerable Sudanese
civilians they serve.”
As bombings continued in September, USCR charged that “top officials
in the U.S. government, in the United Nations, and in Europe treat these
bombings as if they are business as usual, as if these are trifling matters
that kill unimportant people and violate unimportant international standards.”
USCR testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in September and
urged U.S. officials to strengthen human rights monitoring in Sudan, protect
international relief efforts from Sudanese government restrictions, and
provide greater support for grassroots reconciliation programs to dampen
ethnic hostilities in southern Sudan. “By virtually any measurement,
the human rights and humanitarian situation in Sudan is cataclysmic,”
USCR told Congress. “The people of southern Sudan have reason to
feel abandoned by the international community.”
In October, USCR issued a fact sheet summarizing the grim humanitarian
and human rights situation in Sudan. USCR praised the U.S. government
for defeating the Sudanese government’s bid for a seat on the UN
Security Council. “The government of Sudan is viciously breaching
every human rights and humanitarian standard for which the UN stands.
The Sudanese government even engaged in bombing a civilian target in south
Sudan on the day the UN vote occurred. Its electoral defeat in the UN
General Assembly should be welcomed by all who value the United Nations
and the principles it is supposed to embody,” USCR stated.
At a press conference on Sudan at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in November,
USCR criticized the American media for “journalistic irresponsibility”
because of their failure to report regularly on the emergency in Sudan.
“The media,” USCR stated, “have ignored the human deaths
in Sudan as if the people there are human garbage.” In a separate
analysis in November, USCR revealed that aerial bombings in Sudan were
almost twice as frequent during 2000 as previously realized.
In December, USCR urged that Sudan be suspended from the United Nations
“for its continuing, egregious violations of international law and
of the UN charter. If a government doing such things can remain in good
standing within the UN system, then UN membership is cheapened and morally
meaningless.”
USCR successfully urged U.S. officials to maintain financial support for
hospitals and health clinics in southern Sudan that were on the brink
of closure because of inadequate funding.
