African migration remains an unresolved crisis

By Gregory Simpkins

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) June Global Trends reported that by the end of 2021, the number of people displaced by persecution, war, violence, and human rights abuses had reached 89.3 million, representing a rise of 8 percent over 2020 – more than double the number from a decade ago. Whether you refer to them as ‘forced migrants’ or refugees, that means one in every 78 persons on earth is displaced, and with the results of the Ukraine war since May, that number has risen to more than 100 million, with the related impact of the war threatening an even high number.

As troubling as that is, another report demonstrates that forced migration is even worse for Africa. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) annually publishes a list of the world’s ten most neglected displacement crises. Their stated purpose is to focus on the plight of people whose suffering rarely makes international headlines, who receive no or inadequate assistance, and who never become the center of attention for international diplomacy efforts.

In their list for 2021, for the first time, all ten crises are in Africa; The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Sudan, Chad, Mali, Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi, and Ethiopia. In some of them, there is an ongoing conflict; in others, there is sporadic violence in various areas that spurs displacement and religious and ethnic persecution; in others, the government provokes conflict that forces people to abandon their homes and farms.

Unfortunately, there is too much regularity in the countries listed. For example, DR Congo has topped the NRC list twice before (2020 and 2017). It ranked second on the list in 2019, 2018, and 2016, even though the total funding to the DR Congo humanitarian response plan was US$876 million in 2021. Still, last year 19.6 million people needed humanitarian assistance in the country. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, by the end of last year, 5.5 million people were internally displaced in DR Congo, and a further one million Congolese were refugees outside the country.

As a Congressional staff member, I was among hearings and a fair amount of investigation on the impact of forced migration in DR Congo. Militants not only raped women at the rate of 49 an hour in eastern DR Congo, but they too often do so publicly to break down traditional leadership. Suppose the village chief cannot protect his wife and daughters, and they are humiliated and violated in public; how will villagers continue to respect and follow him? This abomination is done at gunpoint and would happen even if the chief resisted causing him and the women in his family shame. All the women treated in such a manner – whether they become pregnant by an enemy soldier or not – are no longer respected or considered suitable for marriage. However, women are the cement in the building blocks of the community. Without females, no village, town, or city could thrive. Many of the people visited by such violence choose to flee, but even if they wanted to return, shame would prevent them from resuming their everyday lives. Longstanding and persistent ethnic animosities also mitigate against community reintegration. I have asked government officials, civil society representatives and church leaders about this phenomenon, and none of them had a solution in mind.

As of June 30 this year, UNHCR estimated that there were 2,336,092 South Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers in neighboring countries:

Developing countries host about 85 percent of displaced people, so it isn’t unexpected that South Sudanese would seek shelter in neighboring countries. Years ago, during a Congressional visit to the intake station and one of the refugee camps in Uganda, I noticed that their presence tends to be a potentially destabilizing factor in Uganda as it has been for the often-fragile ethnic balances in other host countries.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is a long-time ally of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army/Movement. He considers his hospitality for South Sudanese refugees his brotherly duty, but what will happen long-term to those South Sudanese who choose to stay and create majority communities in Uganda? Long-term migrant communities often engender hostility among indigenous communities, mainly because refugees receive international assistance for food, health, and education, usually in short supply for residents.

In Kenya, many Somali refugees have long been a source of discontent. In South Africa, with so many people around the continent fleeing to its southernmost country, violent outbreaks have erupted as South Africans have objected to the sometimes-higher skilled refugees taking over jobs, such as the Zimbabwean refugees. The latter have dominated the South African financial sector or refugee store owners in townships that take business away from established local businesses.

While Eritrea didn’t make the NRC’s top ten list of displacement crises, the so-called “North Korea of Africa” was considered the fastest emptying country in the world. The Isaias regime has driven thousands of Eritreans to flee the country to escape mandatory and indefinite military service and the repressive practices that have denied them freedom. The Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission reported on April 18, 2018, that by the time of that hearing, as much as 10 percent of Eritrea’s population had fled the country since 2000.

During that hearing, Rep. Randy Hultgren, then-Co-Chair of the Lantos Commission, stated, “Many of these asylum seekers are exploited by smugglers and human traffickers, or find themselves in Libyan slave markets, enduring detention, torture, and forced labor”. Many others died crossing the Mediterranean Sea for European destinations. After gaining their freedom, some expressed that they would rather endure the experience of slavery over again than be sent back to their native country to end up on open-ended imprisonment terms. The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has made conditions even more untenable for the tens of thousands of Eritreans who sought refuge in that country.

Earlier this year, the Eritrean Research Institute for Policy and Strategy wrote to UNHCR’s Philippo Grandi about the case of Eritrean Afar refugees in the Barahle district of Zone 2 (Kiblatti Rasu) in the Regional Afar State in Ethiopia.
“We are deeply concerned about the safety and wellbeing of the 15,000 refugees hosted at a refugee camp at Barahle town. As a result of the ongoing war in Ethiopia, the town and surrounding areas have become a war zone, and we are deeply concerned about the plight of the refugees there. Due to limitations of getting up-to-date information, the situation there could be much worse than the last information we received,” he said.

The international community has swiftly created refugee camps to cater to the growing cadre of African refugees. Eight of the world’s top 10 refugee camps are in Africa: Kakuma, Hagadera, Dagahaley, and Ifo in Kenya; Yida in South Sudan; Katumba and Mishamo in Tanzania, and Pugnido in Ethiopia. As mentioned earlier, conflict in Ethiopia has made the plight of refugees more precarious despite ongoing international community efforts to address their needs. The international community, with the associated assistance, maintained refugee camps for decades. Examples are the Sahrawi refugee camps in the Tindouf area of Algeria that have existed since the mid-1970s.

Given the disagreements and varied agendas within the donor communities, it has been exceedingly difficult to reach a consensus on resolving the crises that have led to such elevated levels of forced migration. So, conflicts roll on, creating even more refugees, and new conflicts continue to add to the total of displaced people.

Adding to the reasons for displacement is climate change. Africa is one place on the planet where climate change is starkly visible. The Sahara Desert wasn’t always as it is now and once contained significant vegetation and animal life, but desertification is now a quantifiable phenomenon. The ice packs at the top of mountains such as Kilimanjaro reveal a noticeable shrinking. Increased stress on water systems and farmland puts livelihoods in significant danger, causing people to flee their homes and farms for more productive, or just more survivable, areas. According to various UN agency statistics, 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services. More than 11 million of these people live in Madagascar alone. Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a preventable water-borne disease such as diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid, and worldwide, 80% of low water households appoint women and girls to fetch water.

They spend 200 million hours per day fetching water for their homes. UNHCR estimates that since 2008, weather-related occurrences forcibly displace an annual average of 21.5 million persons. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, more than one billion people are at risk of being displaced by 2050 due to environmental or other reasons.

Such an elevated level of displacement on the continent will wreak havoc on Africa’s development and economic advancement planning. How can anyone correctly estimate infrastructure needs, for example, and available human resources? The Atlantic slave trade brought millions of Africans to the so-called New World to build North, South, Central America, and the Caribbean. Still, it deprived Africa of productive people and stimulated antagonisms that continue to this day. Most people taken captive in Africa were women in their childbearing years and young men who usually would have been starting families. The European slavers usually left behind persons who were elderly, disabled, or otherwise dependent – those who were least able to contribute to the economic health of their societies. However, the descendants of the enslaved have benefited their current communities. So have many Africans who remained on the continent, but consider what could have been if Africa had been allowed to develop without many of its potentially most productive people taken away.

As solutions to Africa’s conflicts and natural disasters are ongoing development, such solutions should keep Africans’ need for sustainability and manageability in view. The time for Africa’s problems to be addressed mainly by donor nations and institutions is due. Those who want to help must create mechanisms for Africa’s salvation that Africans will manage. That will mean donor training for African governments and technicians where necessary and funding for projects Africans believe meet their needs. They will take over projects after the donor money is exhausted. It also will mean that African governments, the private sector, and think tanks must willingly take on the burden of implementing plans to address their challenges effectively. African leaders must think beyond their interests and their ethnic groups to the interests of their countries.

Aid can be a means of external control or a source of graft, but neither is sustainable nor will lead to a resolution beneficial to Africa’s people. African leaders have developed visionary plans for the continent’s future, aimed at the union for all its people. As visionary as this may seem, it is possible if all concerned function as though we all have to ability to recognize what is necessary for our mutual survival and act accordingly.

Gregory Simpkins, a longtime specialist in African policy development, is the Principal of 21st Century Solutions. He consults with organizations on African policy issues generally, especially in relating to the U.S. Government. He also serves as Managing Director for the Morganthau Stirling consulting firm, where he oversees program development and implementation. He further acts as consultant to the African Merchants Association, where he advises the Association in its efforts to stimulate an increase in trade between several hundred African Diaspora small and medium enterprises and their African partners.