Sudan, Africa’s once-largest nation, has been ravaged by civil war and famine for nearly two decades. In war-torn Darfur, 400,000 civilians have reportedly been killed since the violence erupted in early 2003. Today, almost one third of the population are internally displaced and the killing continues. While many of the survivors flee the violence in their villages and arrive at camps for internally displaced persons (IDP camps), their lives remain in danger. UN studies reveal that even though IDP camps are potentially safer than villages under attack by government-supported Janjaweed, mortality rates are alarmingly higher than the emergency benchmark.
IDP camps in Khartoum
Khartoum, Sudan’s capital is a hotchpotch of wealth and poverty that is veiled with crime and frustration. As the city significantly began expanding over the last three decades, settlements, often unregulated, began forming. A sizeable number of IDPs are living in the camps located in the cities of Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman.
Many migrants and IDPs traditionally use relatives as an entry point into Khartoum, as a means of social protection and support to secure employment. Others settle in unfinished buildings and construction sites. IDPs and poor migrants have concentrated in particular areas throughout Khartoum. Four sites – Wad al-Bashir, Dar al-Salam, Jebel Awlia and Mayo Farm are officially designated as IDP camps, in addition to several unplanned areas which the authorities regard as squatter settlements, such as al-Haj Yousif, Soba, Abu Zeid, al-Fatih City, al-Bugaah and Marzoug.
The raw and intricate history of camps and irregular sites in Khartoum is notably manifested in the names given to these locations by their communities. Examples include ‘Jabarona’ (we were forced to), ‘Karor’ (rubbish), ‘Zagalona’ (they threw us), ‘Duyum Bahri’ (the ghettos/hood of Bahri), ‘Eshash Fellata’ (shanky houses of the fellata, a communal Sudanese term for West African tribes).
The camps are filled with men, women and children from Darfur, South Sudan, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Blue Nile and other parts of Sudan. Lacking education and skills in an alien land with dissimilar culture and religion, IDPs often find it challenging to eke out a living. Constantly fearing relocation and having no consistent income, some of them are forced to resort to criminal activities ranging from petty thefts, boot legging, extortion and at times, violent crimes.
Harsh living conditions
In 2005, a group of IDPs arrived in Khartoum North and set up camp at an abandoned area overlooking the Nile. They made houses out of bamboo sticks, hay and mud, cartons and sugar sacks, and called their new home al-Jazeera (The Island). Much of the settlement is based on improvisation, and the houses are not distributed evenly – each house is adjacent to the other, with little or no spaces in between. 60-year-old Hajja Gisma, an inhabitant of al-Jazeera told her story.
“I came here with my two daughters and their children four years ago after my husband and son-in-law were both killed by the Janjaweed in Darfur. When we first arrived in al-Jazeera, we were told there were hundreds of IDPs who lived here before us but the government forced them out without offering them any sort of compensation. Now, we live in constant fear that the same will happen to us.
“My daughters look after the children during the day while I’m at work. I don’t have a steady job; every day I go door-to-door and ask home owners if they want any cleaning done. Sometimes, I sweep staircases of apartment buildings and get paid a reasonable amount of money, and other times I go back home empty handed. A week can pass by without us having any food on the table, and the children often go to bed starving. If things get really bad, we send the children out to beg for food.
“If the children get sick, we improvise using traditional home remedies like ‘garadh’ (an antibiotic plant commonly used for medical purposes).
We have no electricity or running water, and nor do we have warm clothes or blankets. When winter arrives we freeze through the night, particularly since the Nile is a stone throw away from us. During rainy season, the houses often get flooded and we have to rebuild them using whatever material we can get our hands on.”
‘Disguised discrimination’
Sudan is rife with tribalism and, even though not institutionalized, acts of discrimination are often practiced by the government. Government job hopefuls, national service recruits and average civilians applying for the National identification (ID) number are required to state the name of their tribe in their applications. The root of tribalism in Sudan can be traced back to the pre-independence era when tribal groups (including African and Asian races) found it difficult to coexist and slave trade was prevalent. Additonally, there’s a virtual hierarchy - discrimination is based upon, superiority of tribes on the basis of skin shade or ‘Arabism’.
“Back home, conditions were dire. I managed to flee with my family when I was 16, and I even attended college and graduated,” remarked 23-year-old Narjis.
“I live in a tiny house with my parents and nine siblings. We have two bedrooms with mattresses as the only furniture, a kitchen and a tap-less bathroom. I was my family’s only hope since my dad is ill and my mother is too old to be working. While I was in high school, she worked as a tea seller. After enrolling in college, she stayed home while I simultaneously studied and worked odd jobs to support the family.
“Upon graduation, I was eager to look for a job with a steady income so I can fulfil my dream of providing my family with a better life. I’ve been searching for a job for two years now, and am back to doing odd jobs. I sell peanuts and candy, while my mom is back at her old job. At the end of each month, we both hand in almost all of our salary to the owner of the grocery shop next to our house because we buy our groceries on credit.
“Even though I’m qualified with a degree in education, no one wants to hire me because of my ethnic background. They take one look at my last name and my application is immediately rejected. I fled a region of war that’s sparked by tribalism, but here I am again, in the capital, face-to-face with it once again,” she recounted.
Munzoul Assal, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and the director of Graduates Affairs at the University of Khartoum has recently published a case study on urbanization and vulnerability in Sudan. He noted that from the very start, the government has been preventing Darfurian IDPs from settling in official camps, adding that the way the government looks at the Darfur situation is very discouraging.
“For Darfurian IDPs, this has great implications on their living conditions. If they lack recognized housing, NGOs can’t locate them and provide them with healthcare and other services. As for employment, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians are jobless, so it makes sense that IDPs are in a more precarious situation, especially the males. They have virtually no chance of getting jobs.There’s a high level of discrimination that can’t be tackled in a concrete way, the whole system is based on favouritism and corruption. Even though the law prohibits all sources of discrimination, officials duck behind formal procedures and subject people to discrimination,” commented Assal.
Deprived of aid and marginalized
In 2009, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, charging him with crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity; the al Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) expelled 13 of the world’s most distinguished humanitarian organizations in Darfur in retaliation. These organizations were providing the IDPs with water, food, medicine, health services and other essential life-saving materials, and their expulsion marked a big rift in the IDPs lives.
Additionally, IDP Camps in Darfur have witnessed an increasing spread of HIV/AIDS due to the lack of proper health education and training along with prevalent gender violence. With the Janjaweed militias incessantly patrolling around the camps of Darfur, IDPs remained imprisoned and unable to look for work for fear of being arrested or harassed.
After the expulsion of the aid agencies, local NGOs found themselves faced with the challenge of acting as a replacement for the IDPs. However, their lack of funding and the hurdles they often encounter make these local aid agencies ill equipped and in no way a match for the ones that the government deported.
“After the Doha Peace Agreement, Darfurian IDPs became more marginalized than ever. People started to forget about them. Today, nobody knows what they’re going through,” said Munzoul.
This article was first published here
IDP camps in Khartoum
Khartoum, Sudan’s capital is a hotchpotch of wealth and poverty that is veiled with crime and frustration. As the city significantly began expanding over the last three decades, settlements, often unregulated, began forming. A sizeable number of IDPs are living in the camps located in the cities of Khartoum, Khartoum North and Omdurman.
Many migrants and IDPs traditionally use relatives as an entry point into Khartoum, as a means of social protection and support to secure employment. Others settle in unfinished buildings and construction sites. IDPs and poor migrants have concentrated in particular areas throughout Khartoum. Four sites – Wad al-Bashir, Dar al-Salam, Jebel Awlia and Mayo Farm are officially designated as IDP camps, in addition to several unplanned areas which the authorities regard as squatter settlements, such as al-Haj Yousif, Soba, Abu Zeid, al-Fatih City, al-Bugaah and Marzoug.
The raw and intricate history of camps and irregular sites in Khartoum is notably manifested in the names given to these locations by their communities. Examples include ‘Jabarona’ (we were forced to), ‘Karor’ (rubbish), ‘Zagalona’ (they threw us), ‘Duyum Bahri’ (the ghettos/hood of Bahri), ‘Eshash Fellata’ (shanky houses of the fellata, a communal Sudanese term for West African tribes).
The camps are filled with men, women and children from Darfur, South Sudan, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Blue Nile and other parts of Sudan. Lacking education and skills in an alien land with dissimilar culture and religion, IDPs often find it challenging to eke out a living. Constantly fearing relocation and having no consistent income, some of them are forced to resort to criminal activities ranging from petty thefts, boot legging, extortion and at times, violent crimes.
Harsh living conditions
In 2005, a group of IDPs arrived in Khartoum North and set up camp at an abandoned area overlooking the Nile. They made houses out of bamboo sticks, hay and mud, cartons and sugar sacks, and called their new home al-Jazeera (The Island). Much of the settlement is based on improvisation, and the houses are not distributed evenly – each house is adjacent to the other, with little or no spaces in between. 60-year-old Hajja Gisma, an inhabitant of al-Jazeera told her story.
“I came here with my two daughters and their children four years ago after my husband and son-in-law were both killed by the Janjaweed in Darfur. When we first arrived in al-Jazeera, we were told there were hundreds of IDPs who lived here before us but the government forced them out without offering them any sort of compensation. Now, we live in constant fear that the same will happen to us.
“My daughters look after the children during the day while I’m at work. I don’t have a steady job; every day I go door-to-door and ask home owners if they want any cleaning done. Sometimes, I sweep staircases of apartment buildings and get paid a reasonable amount of money, and other times I go back home empty handed. A week can pass by without us having any food on the table, and the children often go to bed starving. If things get really bad, we send the children out to beg for food.
“If the children get sick, we improvise using traditional home remedies like ‘garadh’ (an antibiotic plant commonly used for medical purposes).
We have no electricity or running water, and nor do we have warm clothes or blankets. When winter arrives we freeze through the night, particularly since the Nile is a stone throw away from us. During rainy season, the houses often get flooded and we have to rebuild them using whatever material we can get our hands on.”
‘Disguised discrimination’
Sudan is rife with tribalism and, even though not institutionalized, acts of discrimination are often practiced by the government. Government job hopefuls, national service recruits and average civilians applying for the National identification (ID) number are required to state the name of their tribe in their applications. The root of tribalism in Sudan can be traced back to the pre-independence era when tribal groups (including African and Asian races) found it difficult to coexist and slave trade was prevalent. Additonally, there’s a virtual hierarchy - discrimination is based upon, superiority of tribes on the basis of skin shade or ‘Arabism’.
“Back home, conditions were dire. I managed to flee with my family when I was 16, and I even attended college and graduated,” remarked 23-year-old Narjis.
“I live in a tiny house with my parents and nine siblings. We have two bedrooms with mattresses as the only furniture, a kitchen and a tap-less bathroom. I was my family’s only hope since my dad is ill and my mother is too old to be working. While I was in high school, she worked as a tea seller. After enrolling in college, she stayed home while I simultaneously studied and worked odd jobs to support the family.
“Upon graduation, I was eager to look for a job with a steady income so I can fulfil my dream of providing my family with a better life. I’ve been searching for a job for two years now, and am back to doing odd jobs. I sell peanuts and candy, while my mom is back at her old job. At the end of each month, we both hand in almost all of our salary to the owner of the grocery shop next to our house because we buy our groceries on credit.
“Even though I’m qualified with a degree in education, no one wants to hire me because of my ethnic background. They take one look at my last name and my application is immediately rejected. I fled a region of war that’s sparked by tribalism, but here I am again, in the capital, face-to-face with it once again,” she recounted.
Munzoul Assal, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and the director of Graduates Affairs at the University of Khartoum has recently published a case study on urbanization and vulnerability in Sudan. He noted that from the very start, the government has been preventing Darfurian IDPs from settling in official camps, adding that the way the government looks at the Darfur situation is very discouraging.
“For Darfurian IDPs, this has great implications on their living conditions. If they lack recognized housing, NGOs can’t locate them and provide them with healthcare and other services. As for employment, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese civilians are jobless, so it makes sense that IDPs are in a more precarious situation, especially the males. They have virtually no chance of getting jobs.There’s a high level of discrimination that can’t be tackled in a concrete way, the whole system is based on favouritism and corruption. Even though the law prohibits all sources of discrimination, officials duck behind formal procedures and subject people to discrimination,” commented Assal.
Deprived of aid and marginalized
In 2009, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, charging him with crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity; the al Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) expelled 13 of the world’s most distinguished humanitarian organizations in Darfur in retaliation. These organizations were providing the IDPs with water, food, medicine, health services and other essential life-saving materials, and their expulsion marked a big rift in the IDPs lives.
Additionally, IDP Camps in Darfur have witnessed an increasing spread of HIV/AIDS due to the lack of proper health education and training along with prevalent gender violence. With the Janjaweed militias incessantly patrolling around the camps of Darfur, IDPs remained imprisoned and unable to look for work for fear of being arrested or harassed.
After the expulsion of the aid agencies, local NGOs found themselves faced with the challenge of acting as a replacement for the IDPs. However, their lack of funding and the hurdles they often encounter make these local aid agencies ill equipped and in no way a match for the ones that the government deported.
“After the Doha Peace Agreement, Darfurian IDPs became more marginalized than ever. People started to forget about them. Today, nobody knows what they’re going through,” said Munzoul.
This article was first published here