Traumatiserede overlevende fra rædslerne i Den Centralafrikanske Republik lever i uhumske lejre i nabolandet Tchad. I en af lejrene fik flygtningene hjælp til de første måneder, men i dag lader det til, at omverdenen har glemt dem.
DOYABA/SIDDHO/BELOM/N’DJAMENA, 8 May 2014 (IRIN): Abdou Abdoullahi stands beside the drenched makeshift shelter he built with his family in Doyaba camp in southern Chad: a few flimsy cotton shawls stretched over thin branches twisted into a cone-shape. Ten metres away lies a fetid rubbish dump and seven latrines reeking of human excrement.
“This isn’t the right way to live. This does not interest us,” he said, gesticulating to the dump and the toilets beside him.
Abdoullahi, a driver from the capital, Bangui, fled with his extended family of 25, after their houses, businesses, cars and shop were looted and destroyed.
He is one among the 10,000 residents of 17,143-strong Doyaba camp who has received no shelter – aid agencies simply ran out, and no one has picked up the slack.
Doyaba is one of 18 camps or transit sites dotted around the south; the other big sites being Siddho, home to 10,000; Bitoye, 11,000; Gore 5,612; and Doba, 5,169. A total of 97,000 returnees and refugees have been registered in Chad thus far according to UNHCR. .
After the government of Chad transported tens of thousands of at-risk families of Chadian descent from the horrific violence [in the Central African Republic (CAR)] , and provided food for some for the first couple of months, their aid fizzled out.
Charlotte Ouagadjo, head of the Ministry of Social Action in southern Chad’s Sarh town, a few kilometres from Doyaba camp, says they have zero resources other than some children’s clothes that they sporadically hand out.
Most of the inhabitants here are Muslim, are of Chadian descent though many were born in CAR, and most witnessed terrible atrocities before their escape with the help mainly of Chadian troops and Burundian peacekeepers.
“They burned my children before my eyes”
Hadjan Mohamed, who sits on Doyaba camp’s complaints committee, told IRIN his story.
“I was at home when the anti-balaka militia attacked my house. They grabbed my children and burned them – decapitated (huggede hovedet af) them – before my eyes.”
The girls, Khadija and Zara, were aged two and eight. He set off on his moped to catch the men but was shot on the way and fell. He then fled to the local mosque with the rest of his family.
“The next day they brought 120 corpses to the mosque – two of them were those of friends I had seen the day before. We were too frightened to leave the mosque.” His family stayed there three weeks until Burundian peacekeepers helped escort them to safety.
Many of these traumatized families welcome their relative safety but their lives are a daily struggle. Most are hungry – saying the 4,000 CFA per month (eight US dollar = ca. 43 DKR) per person food coupons do not last beyond a couple of weeks; many came with no possessions and have not yet received cooking equipment or other basics; many have no change of clothing, no soap to wash with.
Everyone IRIN spoke to told of having lost everything they owned: their houses, shops, animals, businesses – everything. Abdoullahi held up his driver’s license. “I used to work. This is what I know how to do, but it’s all gone,” he said.
His son Ibrahim Oumar, 25, added: “We do nothing all day. I want to finish my studies, I want to work.”
Sex for food
The World Food Programme (WFP), which is running a cash voucher scheme , said it tallied the amount following a market analysis, and that it covers the grains, protein, fat and sugar required to make up a 2,100 kilocalorie daily intake.
Some people may run out earlier because they are choosing to buy high-value items, speculated WFP head in N’djamena, Lauren Landis, “but the programme is popular: it gives people choice.”
Some say not enough people are being targeted with food: 4,000 registered camp dwellers in Siddho site receive aid out of the 10,000 estimated refugees and returnees (others have spread across villages along the border).
Several women at Doyaba and the camp’s security chief, Saïd Seleh, said teenage girls and young women regularly left the camp at night for Sarh town to exchange sex for small sums so they can buy food.
“It happens here in the camp too, they have no choice,” said camp-dweller Ashe Attou, who used to run a small shop in CAR earning the equivalent of 20 dollar (ca. 110 DKR) a day.
WFP cannot scale up its operations in any direction, though would like to increase distributions from reaching 96,000 to reaching 150,000 people.
“We have three million dollar in the bank,” said Landis. “That money will last us until June. We need 11.4 million dollar to keep this emergency programme going for the next six months.”
Malnutrition and measles
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/100053/car-survivors-endure-squalid-camp-conditions-in-chad
