Photo: Ken Oduor/IRIN

At least 7,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees have streamed into Kakuma since January 2012

KAKUMA,  – Six years after leaving a Kenyan refugee camp for his home in Sudan, where a 2005 accord was supposed to have put a permanent end to decades of civil war, David Aguer is back again, with his stepmother and six siblings.

“I can’t believe that the optimism is now gone and I don’t know if we will have peace again. When I left [Kenya], I didn’t know I would be back, but today, I am a refugee again,” Aguer, 27, told IRIN in the camp in Kakuma, which is soon set to surpass its capacity population.

Aguer was one of the founding residents of the camp, set up nine years into the war between Sudanese government forces and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

“I first came to Kakuma in 1992 when I was just seven years old and called it home – until I went back together with other young people. We went to school here in Kakuma and finished our schooling in Sudan. For me, being back here is nostalgia tinged with sadness,” Aguer said.

In March 2011, his home village, Tajalei, in the Abyei region, the locus of one of several disputes between Sudan and the now independent state of South Sudan, was destroyed in an attack by militias.

Like tens of thousands of Abyei residents Aguer’s family fled southwards to the border town of Agok as Sudanese forces moved into Abyei.

Recent weeks have seen an escalation of hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan.

In March 2011, Aguer’s home village of Tajalei was attacked by a militia group which burnt down their huts, leaving them homeless. Rumours that the Sudanese army might attack Tajalei, Aguer told IRIN, prompted him and his family to move to Kenya.

“Recently there have been rumours that the Sudanese army might attack us there. I didn’t want to wait to see them kill us, so I convinced my stepmother that we move to Kenya where we can be safe,” he said.

“We walked for 30 days to arrive here and the children are now tired. My mother died here the last time we were refugees. Now we are waiting for registration to start a new life again.”

Waiting game

With a child on her back and four others clinging to her dress, Emily Akuol, 35, stands in line patiently waiting to see a registration official. For her, nothing has changed in Kakuma since she left it three years ago, except her circumstances and those of her children.

“They [her children] were beginning to get used to South Sudan, tilling our farms. Now they are back to the place where I gave birth to some of them. The children are now confused whether they are Kenyans or South Sudanese,” she told IRIN.

Her village, Wek, in Jonglei State, has witnessed waves of inter-communal conflict. Her house was burned, her crops destroyed, and her husband was among those killed. However, Akuol told IRIN, she is hopeful that Kakuma, where she lived for 18 years before going back to what was then southern Sudan, will offer her some peace.

“I have no home to go back to. Now I will look for something to do here in Kakuma and I hope my children will get an opportunity to go to school. I used to be a hawker here before I went back to south Sudan,” she said.

Photo: Ken Oduor/IRIN

Dashed hopes: David Aguer is a refugee again

Kakuma almost full

As of 10 May 2012 Kakuma was hosting 94,844 people from 13 countries in the region, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Initially designed to host 100,000 people, the camp could reach its capacity by the end of June, according to UNHCR.

Jeff Savage, UNHCR senior protection officer in Kakuma, told IRIN: “Even though people from Somalia make up 50 percent of the camp population, new arrivals have mainly been from South Sudan and Sudan due to the conflict in those two countries.”

Camp officials told IRIN 7,711 new arrivals have been registered in Kakuma since January 2012, 75 percent of them from Sudan and South Sudan.

“We receive 100-150 new refugees daily, mainly from South Sudan,” said Savage.

South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 but conflict pitting rebels against government forces, inter-communal fighting and clashes between the two countries have seen tens of thousands displaced, according to UN agencies.

Plans are under way, according to UNHCR, to set up another camp, build more classrooms in the available schools, and set up health facilities in anticipation of a new refugee influx.

“We are trying to cope with what is available, but Kakuma could soon reach its capacity… We are mobilizing funds to scale up the humanitarian response to cope with the new refugee influx,” Savage, told IRIN.

Meanwhile, the US Agency for International Development’s FEWS NET warns: “The food security situation for refugees entering Kakuma refugee camp from South Sudan may deteriorate if the number of refugees increases… If the capacity of the camp is surpassed, refugees are likely to experience poor access to shelter, food, and other needs. At the same time, the erratic nature of the long rains need close monitoring because flooding may occur in many localized areas, leading to high food insecurity for many affected households.”

ko/am/cb source www.irinnews.org

TEL AVIV,  – The arrest and imprisonment earlier this month of the head of Israel’s biggest trafficking ring of young women will deter some of those involved in sex slavery, but former victims and activists say much more needs to be done to stop the practice.

Rami Saban, who headed the largest trafficking operation discovered in Israel for years, received an 18-year jail sentence on 10 May. Saban and three partners are said to have trafficked thousands of young women from eastern Europe, although no one can provide the actual figure. Some 13 victims testified against him.

”They got rid of the plain ones and kept only the pretty and thin ones,” said T., one of those who gave evidence. “We were taken to a house somewhere, I don’t know where, and told to strip. They checked our bodies, our skin, birthmarks, scars. We were instructed about our `work’ here and given fake ID cards. Then they taught us a few words in Hebrew for work purposes, and took photos of us for a catalogue.”

Saban and his partners bought and sold young women from the former Soviet Union “like cattle” and ran brothels in Israel where they were forced to work every minute of their waking hours, sources said. The operation ran with hardly any interruption from 1999 to 2008.

The women were recruited mostly in Moldova and Ukraine, most on false promises of work in Israel as cleaners or carers, then they were flown to Egypt before being smuggled into Israel. Testimonies collected by NGOs working with trafficked women speak of rape and abuse by Bedouin smugglers on the journey.

Rita Chaikin, coordinator of the NGO Isha L’Isha, which supports trafficked women, said: “We applaud the police for this important operation. I hope the women involved in this case will not come to any harm. We also hope that the court will not be lenient towards the suspects and will also award compensation to these women for the suffering and damage they’ve endured.”

Saban will have to pay only 15,000 NIS (US$3,800) to each of the 13 women, but Chaikin is hopeful the sentence will deter traffickers from following in his footsteps.

A prosecution witness said they were sold to brothel owners at prices ranging from US$3,000-10,000, depending on age and appearance on arrival in Israel.

Suffering

But that was the beginning of their suffering. According to some of the victims, they were mistreated at the hands of their “owners” if they refused to work, cried or got drunk. They would also work for a month with no pay until the money owed to the pimp was paid off.

“We were fined for everything,” T, another former victim, said. “If the client was unhappy for some reason, if we tried to talk him into helping us, if we got drunk, or cried or did not put on makeup or refused some sexual acts, we were fined. I was beaten by clients and by my `owner’. We were told that if we tried to run away, they will harm our families back home. After three months of no pay we were told we would receive 20 NIS per client (5US$), while the `owner’ charged the clients 250-300 NIS (US$60-75).”

T. tried to commit suicide twice and finally managed to escape. Now she lives in Maagan, a shelter for trafficked women in central Israel, where the women receive treatment and vocational training. The shelter was established in February 2004 by Israeli authorities following the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report in 2003, which stated: “Israel is a destination country for trafficked persons. Women from Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries in the former Soviet Union are trafficked to Israel for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.”

Apart from establishing the shelter, the Israeli government also instituted a series of actions by police which made trafficking of women much harder, including special training for police officers to identify and rescue victims from brothels. But much more needs to be done.

According to the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report, Israel “does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Israel continued law enforcement actions against sex trafficking and continued to make strong prevention efforts.”

One trafficking survivor who resides in Israel, but did not testify in the trial, told IRIN: “I am happy at the verdict and the efforts this country is making but I still remember my clients who had no qualms about `buying’ my body for an hour and never questioned their doings, as if I were a piece of meat.”

td/eo/cb/oa source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN

Damage-strewn landscape years after fighting ended in Sri Lanka’s north

COLOMBO,  – Life is slowly returning to normal in northern Sri Lanka, but three years after a decades-long conflict was officially declared over, jobs and housing are the prevailing concerns of returnees.

Most of the estimated 448,000 people displaced before or during 2008 by fighting between government forces and rebels wanting an independent Tamil state have returned to the Northern Province, according to the latest figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Some 13,000 are still living in temporary camps - mostly from areas infested with land mines, which may take a decade or more to clear due to lack of funding. 

Nevertheless, the worst seems to be over. “It is hard to believe it has been three years, life has changed so much. During the war, our sole focus was how we were going to survive the next day or the next hour,” said Nishanthan, an orphan in the town of Kilinochchi, which was once an LTTE base.

Nishanthan, who goes by one name – a common practice in parts of the island – grew up in a foster-care home and was forced to postpone his university entrance exam in August 2009 by heavy fighting. At the age of 19 he fled to his home village, returning to Kilinochchi in 2010 where he has since resumed his studies.

“Things have improved, but there is still a lot more to do,” said Saroja Sivachandran, director of the Centre for Women’s Development (CWD), an NGO  in the northern district of Jaffna.

Unemployment

There are no official unemployment figures for the region but experts say joblessness, especially among returnees, is likely to be widespread because work is scarce. 

Anushka Wijesingha, an economist at the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, a national think-tank, [ http://www.ips.lk/ ] told IRIN there were two factors hampering job creation in the north: lack of capital investment and residents’ inadequate skills. As a result, whatever jobs have been created are often filled by more qualified southerners.

An estimated 40,000 war widows are particularly hard hit and need more targeted programmes, Sivachandran said.

Despite pockets of positive news in the north, like the booming district of Vavuniya and the fledgling cottage industries launched by returnees with government grants, the overall needs are still “overwhelming”, Sivachandran noted.

While Vavuniya District has an average household income comparable to more developed districts untouched by war, such as Colombo, where the capital is located, Vavuniya’s boom may be fuelled by post-conflict reconstruction, said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan at the Point Pedro Institute of Development in Jaffna.

But such affluence escapes the tens of thousands waiting for permanent shelter. As of early March, less than 17,000 of the more than 100,000 homes required were under construction, OCHA said.

The Indian government has pledged to build over 40,000 houses, with construction expected to begin by mid-2012, according to diplomats. 

ap/pt/he source www.irinnews.org