HUMANITARIAN SECURITY IN EASTERN CHAD -- NEED FOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L STATE 095572 SIPDIS FOR AMBASSADOR FROM AF AND PRM BRUSSELS/LONDON/PARIS FOR AFRICA WATCHERS GENEVA FOR RMA USEU FOR FRANCIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/01/2018 TAGS: PREF PHUM CD SUBJECT: HUMANITARIAN SECURITY IN EASTERN CHAD -- NEED FOR GOC ACTION REF: STATE 43042 Classified By: PRM DAS WILLIAM E. FITZGERALD FOR REASON 1.4(D) -------------- Action Request -------------- ¶1. (C) Objectives: Security for humanitarian operations and civilians in eastern Chad will be a top priority with the impending end of the rainy season and the need to renew the MINURCAT mandate which expires in September. The international community needs urgently from the Government of Chad (GOC): (1) a signature on the MOU with MINURCAT to allow newly trained Chadian police to deploy to the field, (2) a commitment to halt Darfur rebel recruiting in the refugee camps and cooperate with MINURCAT's effort to prevent forced recruitment in the camps, and (3) an end to the use of child soldiers in the Chadian Armed Forces and fighting forces associated with the GOC. In addition, the GOC should consider contributing more from its own resources to help defray costs of assisting the internally displaced Chadian nationals. Embassy Ndjamena is requested to raise these four issues with the GOC at the highest appropriate level. Please report back no later than September 12 as UNSC 1778 of September 25, 2007 established MINURCAT for just one year and we will need to decide soonest on a USG position about the mandate and renewal. -------------- Background Factors -------------- ¶2. (C) MOU WITH MINURCAT: One of the principal tasks of the United Nations Mission in the CAR and Chad is to train up a special police force of 850 Chadians -- to be known as the Integrated Security Detachment (DIS by its French acronym) -- to provide better security for the refugee and IDP camps, nearby towns sheltering IDPs, and humanitarian operations generally by creating more secure "space". In addition to supporting this effort through its assessed UN contributions for such peacekeeping missions, the USG through PRM ("migration and refugee assistance appropriation) has provided $2 million to the MINURCAT Trust Fund to cover stipends for the police officers. Other donors have provided such voluntary funding for the other aspects of the DIS such as facilities and equipment. To date, some 275 new police officers have been trained. However, they cannot deploy to �00A;the field until the GOC signs an MOU with MINURCAT. The GOC has been stalling on signing. (Comment. This is obviously not a good backdrop for the upcoming UN Security Council deliberations on renewing, or even expanding, MINURCAT,s mandate). ¶3. (C) DARFUR REBEL RECRUITING IN THE REFUGEE CAMPS: This remains a longstanding issue complicated both by GOC equities in supporting rebels (including its brethren) to fight against the Khartoum Government and by the GOC,s depending at times on the Darfur rebels for support in combating the Chadian rebels. Reftel, which was the basis for the Embassy's last demarche on the subject, includes information about the February-April spike in rebel recruitment among new arrivals from Darfur and in the camps of Oure Cassoni (2,000 JEM soldiers trumpeting their presence around the camp perimeter to such an extent that the refugees formally complained to the prefet),Am Nabak (youth parading through the camp with arms),and Mile (recruitment of drivers for rebel vehicles before and after the attack on Ndjamena). Much of the humanitarian programming in the refugee camps is aimed at protecting refugees from recruitment -- every thing from perimeter security to providing education and after school activities to keep youth occupied. It has always been clear however -- as it is in all refugee settings around the world -- that the Chadian Government,s will to keep refugee camps from being militarized is the critical element in success of such programming. The GOC has been an uneven partner at best in ensuring that there is no rebel misuse of refugee camps through recruitment of refugees, taxation of refugees, diversion of humanitarian supplies, and trafficking of arms through camps. (All of these could technically make the refugee camps legitimate military targets for the Government of Sudan though we would clearly stress the humanitarian principle of avoiding civilian casualties.) Without the support of the GOC to prevent recruitment and militarization, no amount of humanitarian programming will achieve success. ¶4. (C) CHILD SOLDIERS: Abuse of children younger than 18 years of age by putting them into fighting forces is a widespread, worldwide phenomenon, often justified, as in the case in Chad, as a cultural norm and demanded by the exigencies of a wartime situation. Child soldiers are used by the Chadian National Army, Sudanese rebel groups that cooperate with the GOC, Chadian rebel groups, and village self defense forces. Children who are living in IDP and refugee camps are particularly vulnerable. The use of child soldiers is a violation of Chadian law as well as numerous international laws and principles. It is a type of human trafficking and a worst form of child labor. An August 2008 report by the United Nations Secretary General on children and armed conflict in Chad found that children in and around refugee camps continue to be recruited by armed groups, including by force and cites such examples as the JEM recruitment of six children from Iridimi Camp on June 17, ¶2008. The UN report also confirmed continued use of child soldiers by the Chadian army despite assurances to the French Government in advance of the EUFOR deployment that such practices would cease. In one of the most recent eggregious examples, child soldiers were used by the JEM during its May attack on Omdurman, Sudan. With developments such as the more obvious GOS support for Chadian rebels and the Zoe,s Ark affair, Deby has so far escaped the sanctions of the French or of others, though advocates for children have not, and likely will not, drop the issue. The United States has reported on child soldiers in Chad for several years in the annual Department of State Human Rights Report. ¶5. (SBU) IDPs: There are some 186,000 internally displaced Chadians as a result of attacks by Janjaweit from Sudan and the communal hostilities set off by the rise of Chadian rebel groups. Some have been displaced multiple times. These people survive through an international humanitarian effort to which the GOC contributes essentially nothing beyond the secondment of Chadian gendarmes paid by the international community despite Chad,s oil assets. Unlike refugees, IDP protection and assistance are first and foremost the responsibility of the government. The 2008 international humanitarian budget (the revised Consolidated Appeal) for Chad is $306 million of which well over $100 million is for the IDPs. Much of the international interest in Chad stems from international interest in the well-publicized Darfur situation, but even there interest is falling off given the duration of the conflict and other newer humanitarian situations around the world that claim donor interest and resources. RICE