REFUGEE PROTECTION IN EASTERN CHAD - Part 1

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NDJAMENA 000357

SIPDIS

SIPDIS, SENSITIVE

STATE FOR AF/C, PRM/AFR:MLANGE,S/CRS:PNELSON-DOUVELIS/JVANCE/ JBEIK

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREF PGOV KCRS SU CD
SUBJECT: REFUGEE PROTECTION IN EASTERN CHAD - Part 1

REF: NDJAMENA 257

NDJAMENA 00000357 001.2 OF 004



1. (U) Summary: A team from the DepartmentQs Bureau of
Population, Refugees, and Migration/Africa Office (PRM/AFR)
and the office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and
Stabilization (S/CRS) visited Sudanese refugee camps in
eastern Chad from March 20-28 to monitor USG-funded protection
and assistance programs for refugees and conflict victims and to
focus particularly on concerns about camp security/neutrality.
This message focuses on the current status of the various elements
that constitute refugee protection Q to include non-refoulement,
physical security, registration/documentation, protection of women
and of children, gender-based violence (GBV) prevention, and
civilian character of camps. A summary of recommendations is in
the last paragraph.


2. (U) The cornerstone of refugee protection Q first asylum
is still firmly in place despite Chadian weariness with hosting
refugees. Registration and documentation of refugees is
progressing well but the Government of Chad (GOC) is holding
up the issuance of ID cards. Physical ecurity of the camps
is primarily in the hands o gendarmes whose numbers have finally
been incresed by about 100 as was foreseen in a special PRM
contribution to UNHCR. However, with an average four weapons
per detachment of 18, the gendarmes woefully under-equipped.
And they have not been paid since the beginning of 2007 as UNHCR
and the GOC have been negotiating a new contract. Concerning the
need to arm the gendarmes, we were informed that only President
Deby has the authority to rectify their lack of weapons.
Thankfully, the gendarmes have stayed on the job. Physical
security of refugees inside the camps is generally not an issue;
security outside the camps is, particularly as refugees seek fire-
wood. Depletion of firewood in the vicinity of the camps is both
an environmental and protection concern and UNHCR needs to more
aggressively address the need for alternatives to traditional wood
stoves. While alternatives are costly, UNHCR must level with
donors that it is a pay-now-or-pay-more-later situation.


3. (U) Insecurity in eastern Chad requires humanitarians to
travel by convoy and observe strict curfews, limiting both the
number of staff and the contact hours that humanitarians have
with refugees. The resulting negative impact on protecting
children, maintaining the strictly civilian character of the
camps, and fulfilling the High CommissionerQs five commitments
to refugee women is becoming more evident. Probably the most
difficult challenge to child protection in terms of girls is the
custom of early marriage in a polygamous setting where the
economics of survival favor the custom. The most difficult
challenge with respect to boys Q as ever Q is to avoid their
recruitment into fighting forces. Education (formal and informal)
remains the primary point of entry for protection of refugee
children. However, due to insufficient funding, standards in
primary education are not being met, and refugee leaders pleaded
for secondary education and other activities for youth.


4. (SBU) Maintaining the exclusively civilian character of the
refugee camps is becoming increasingly challenging as the Darfur
crisis drags on, with increased refugee frustration and hence
susceptibility to recruitment, the emergence of the Chadian rebels
as another factor, and increased Chadian government boldness in
using/seeing the refugees used in the Chad-Sudan confrontation.
Problems identified to date are recruiting, including forced
recruiting, in some camps and the presence of weapons and
sometimes combatants in camps. Potential camp security/neutrality
risks that have NOT/NOT been clearly identified/verified to date,
but to the possibility of which UNHCR and partners should be alert
include diversion of supplies and food to combatants; rebel
training within camp boundaries; taxing of refugees to fund arms
procurement; intimidation of refugees to provide support for
military activities; and use of refugee camps to shelter combatants

from conflict. Routine rebel visits to family members who are in
refugee camps are generally not too problematic provided that
weapons are left outside of camps and no military activities are
undertaken inside the camps. UNHCR continues to deliver the non-
militarization message in all of it dealings with the GOC and with
refugee leadership. Speaking to refugees and townspeople in
Kounoungo Camp on March 25, President Deby said all of the right
things about no weapons/recruitment, but the GOC commitment on
enforcement does not appear to be strong. The USG and other
donors should redouble efforts to press the GOC to fulfill its
responsibilities. Strategies to pursue include camp relocation,
empowerment of refugees to resist militarization (e.g.
strengthening womenQs decision-making in the camps and providing
alternative educational/ vocational activities for youth) and the
fielding of a UN police-type force that would help protect the
refugee camps in part by keeping rebels out. End Summary.


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Introduction


5. (U) State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration/Africa

team of Margaret McKelvey and Geoff Parker, accompanied by S/CRS
detailee to Embassy Ndjamena Charles Wintermeyer, visited Sudanese
refugee camps in the areas of Bahai, Guereda, Iriba, and Farchana
from March 20-28 to monitor USG-funded protection and assistance
programs for refugees and conflict victims and to focus
particularly on concerns about camp security/neutrality. Parker
also visited the Goz Beida area refugee camps as a participant in
the annual UNHCR Country Operations Planning exercise March 11-18.

(Wintermeyer had also previously visited Goz Beida with USAID/OFDA
TDYer Victor Bushamuka to review the situation of internally
displaced Chadians.) This message focuses on the current status
of the various elements that constitute refugee protection Q to
include non-refoulement, physical security, registration/
documentation, protection of women and of children, gender-based
violence (GBV) prevention, and civilian character of camps.

First principle Q first asylum


6. (U) The cornerstone of refugee protection Q no forced
repatriation and the right to seek and enjoy asylum Q is judged
to be still firmly in place in Chad despite growing Chadian
weariness with the presence of over 230,000 refugees from Darfur.
Of potential concern, however, is the inability of UNHCR field
officers in Guereda to conduct border monitoring missions to verify

that all is well since late November 2006 when ethnic tensions and
Chadian rebel attacks led to increased UN security restrictions on
staff movements.

Physical Security


7. (U) The camps continue to be essentially open to anyone who
wants to enter despite the presence of an official entry point
staffed by Chadian gendarmes. Gendarmes do patrol around, and
more recently even inside, the camps. The PRM QS/CRS team observed

one incident where a commercial vehicle (i.e., a pickup truck
filled to overflowing with various sacks, kettles, and other
items dangling) was being unloaded for inspection by the gendarmes
after having been apprehended in the camp without authorization.


8. (SBU) With the exception of Kounoungo Camp, physical
security of refugees inside the camps is not currently a great
concern. Kounoungo presents a special case as non-integrated/
non-reconciled Chadian rebel members of the FUC
(United Front for Change) have entered the camp via their
association with some Chadian Tama who managed to fraudulently
register as refugees. These FUC personnel have been the
perpetrators of several attacks on Zaghawa refugees (see reftel).


9. (U) Obviously, the physical security of refugees outside of
the camps, notably of refugee women/girls going to collect
firewood and/or tend to animals, is an ongoing concern. This
threat stems primarily from the conflict with the local population
over natural resources. In some cases, gendarmes accompany those
who go on the UNHCR-organized collection of firewood.


10. (U) The firewood issue is both an environmental as well as
a protection issue. UNHCR has attempted to address the issue by
distributing and promoting the use of the QSave 80Q fuel efficient
stove that is supposed to use only some 20% of the firewood
consumed by traditional cooking methods. The stoves are also
safer and at Breidjing Camp, refugee women leaders reported that
they had banished families that refused to use the new stoves to
the outskirts of the camp in order to minimize the danger of fire.

But financial considerations are limiting the number of stoves that

UNHCR can distribute so only the largest families have received
stoves so far. Moreover, since UNHCR-provided firewood represents
only about 30% of what refugees need, the use of the stoves will
not necessarily result in a dramatic cost savings or an immediate
answer to the essential depletion of firewood in the vicinity of
camps. For the Guereda camps, in 2005 gendarmes accompanied women
up to 20 kilometers outside the camps to collect firewood; now in
2007, they must go 80 kms to find sufficient wood. Clearly a
fuel crunch point is coming more quickly than it would appear a
solution to the Darfur crisis is coming. UNHCR worries that
trying to introduce alternative cooking methods such as kerosene
and/or rapid distribution of QSave 80Q stoves to every refugee
family would be prohibitively costly. But not coming to grips with
the impending firewood crisis could engender even greater costs in
the not too distant future. Unfortunately, solar power has not

NDJAMENA 00000357 003.2 OF 004


been a successful alternative in the camps owing to the dust and/or

to the length of time required to cook food. Recommendation: The
PRM team urged UNHCR at the Abeche and Ndjamena levels to address
the firewood depletion issue much more aggressively from a
business-minded perspective of pay now or pay more later.
Pressure to follow up and to explain the financial equirements
to donors sould continue.]


11. (BU) The long-awaited increase of the Chadian gendrme
force (with funding from State/PRM to UNHCR)is reported by UNHCR
Security Officers to finall be in place with the addition of six
patrols of fifteen gendarmes each (located in the five Field
Offices in the east Q Bahai, Iriba, Guereda, Farchana, and Goz
Beida -- and in Abeche) along with five liaison officers and
three coordinators. Along with the 18 gendarmes stationed in
each of the twelve camps in the east and the 16 gendarmes spread
across the southern camps, there should be a total of some 330.
Whether all of the assigned gendarmes are in place at any given
time is another issue. Despite an earlier expectation that
gendarmes would rotate among camps, most of those to whom the PRM
QS/CRS team spoke had been in place since 2004. A critical
concern with respect to the gendarmes is their lack of weaponry
to accomplish their protection/law and order mission. In at least
some camps, there is not an arm for each gendarme (leading to the
wry moniker of Qgens sans armesQ). Apparently only President Deby
himself can order that arms be given to gendarmes; at least at
Kounoungou Camp (reftel) the gendarmes had an opportunity to
inform Deby of their lack of weapons. Recommendation:
Protecting our current investment in the gendarme force, ensuring
that gendarmes charged with protecting refugees/camps and
humanitarian operations have adequate weaponry to discharge their
duties should be part of the bilateral USG-Chadian dialogue.


12. (SBU) Another issue with respect to the effectiveness of the
gendarmes is the fact that none had been paid since the beginning
of 2007 owing first to delays in signing the annual UNHCR-GOC
memorandum of understanding on the gendarmes because of UNHCR
reluctance to pay increased costs (which UNHCR feared would go not
to the gendarmes but into the pockets of GOC officials) and second
to delays in the movement of funds from UNHCR to GOC accounts.
Perhaps remarkably, the gendarmes have stayed on the job while
running up IOUs with local merchants for food and other
necessities. UNHCR planned to give some direct payments to the
gendarmes so as not to prolong the delay in providing stipends
into April. Recommendation: Embassy/Ndjamena should track the
stipend issue to ensure that it is resolved favorably and that
gendarmes are paid as quickly as possible.


13. (U) Physical security of humanitarian workers themselves is
also a factor in whether they can provide the requisite
protection for refugees. Targeted for their vehicles, radios,
and money, humanitarians have been traveling in convoys under
gendarme escort since the Chadian rebel assault on Ndjamena in
April 2006. This diminishes the number of contact hours that
humanitarians have with refugees and takes gendarmes away from
their primary camp protection role. Even if Eastern Chad were to
be re-designated as Qphase 3Q security vice Qphase 4Q, as some such

as new OCHA coordinator Daniel Augstberger have suggested would be
appropriate, the need for security escorts would not likely
diminish. Going from four to three could be very helpful, however,

in terms of increasing the number of humanitarian staff allowed
in the field.

Registration/Documentation


14. (U) All of the current camp populations are registered in
UNHCRQs ProGress system. In Oure Cassoni and Am Nabak Camps,
however, the individual pictures to go along with the data entries
have not yet been taken. Each married female is registered along
with her children as a family unit while the men are registered
separately with their various wives cross referenced. While
refugees do have their individual copies of the ProGress
registration, they do not yet have individual identification
cards that UNHCR funded owing to the GOCQs indecision on
authorizing their issuance. Babies, whether born in a camp
health facility or at home, are given birth certificates using a
Chadian double coupon system; the mother receives one copy which
could eventually be used to seek Chadian nationality for a child
that might want it. In Briedjing, the PRM team saw relatively new
babies having their pictures taken to be added to the familyQs
ProGress file. Recommendation: The USG should weigh in with
the GOC (in consultation with UNHCR) in getting the individual ID
cards distributed as soon as possible.

Child Protection

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15. (U) As with many activities in the community services area,
insecurity that limits humanitarian contact hours with the refugee
communities also hinders full implementation of child protection
measures. Christian ChildrenQs Fund, for example, withdrew from
Kounoungou and Mile Camps following multiple Guereda security
incidents and is behind schedule in implementing PRM-funded efforts

in Touloum and Iridimi Camps.


16. (U) Tripoli minimize considered.
TAMLYN