Sudanese Refugees Pay Price for an Ethiopian Conflict

Mukanzi Musanga

Tuesday, 17 December, 2024

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University student Amin Hassan (not his real name) fled Khartoum last year after the Sudanese capital was besieged by Sudan’s civil war.

The 27-year-old arrived in Metema, an Ethiopian border town, alongside other asylum seekers in June 2023.

From here, he was moved to the Kumer refugee camp in the Amhara region, where he expected to find a place of safety.

Instead, a terrified Hassan was greeted by the sight of local men roaming the area armed with guns.

“I’m originally from Darfur where I was born and raised in a war,” Hassan said. “I went to school in a war and I know that devastation far too well. So when I saw guns everywhere, I knew we were going to suffer.”

Within a few hours of their arrival, Hassan and other refugees had been assaulted and robbed by militia. He lost everything including his refugee identification documents.

And the attacks continued, especially at night when armed men regularly stormed the camp to rob the residents.

Having escaped war in their own country, Hassan and other Sudanese refugees found themselves trapped in the middle of an ongoing conflict with Ethiopian government forces and the local Fano militia.

Refugees interviewed by IWPR say that both the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which runs the camps, and the Ethiopian government failed to protect highly vulnerable people. The refugees claim that not only were the camps situated in unsafe locations but were also poorly resourced with inadequate food and medical supplies.

“The unforgivable error made by Ethiopian authorities and the UNHCR was placing us in a volatile area with an armed conflict and leaving us there to die,” Hassan said.

Ongoing Conflict

The Sudanese civil war, now in its second year, has killed more than 60,000 people and displaced over 11 million. Some 50,000 are believed to have travelled to Ethiopia, which hosts more than a million refugees, making it the second largest hosting country in Africa.

Ethiopia has also experienced unrest, with a 2020-2022 conflict in the north of the country against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Although the local Fano militia had allied with the Ethiopian army during that conflict, fighting erupted between the two in April 2023 and intensified in August after Addis Ababa decided to disband all regional armed forces.

This has destabilised the Amhara region and led to far-reaching human rights violations against both local inhabitants and the tens of thousands of refugees seeking shelter there.

The Ethiopian government established two zones for refugees in the Amhara region, Kumer and Awlala, administered by UNHCR and partner agencies.

Hassan said that there were severe shortages of food and medical facilities at both sites. Women, children and the chronically ill suffered the most.

“The UNHCR health team would occasionally come by but only for about four hours and then leave with their medical supplies. Since a few of the refugees were trained doctors, we implored the medics to spare some medical supplies for us to use in times of emergencies and they sometimes did,” Hassan said.

A cholera outbreak swept through Kumer camp in August 2023. With only rudimentary latrines for thousands of people, heavy rain turned the grounds into a health hazard.

Hassan said that scores of people died.  Fearing for their lives, some people tried to leave the camp, but all the roads were closed.

Camp officials, he alleged, had been dismissive of safety concerns. For instance, he said that residents were worried that tents pitched in what they described as “obvious waterways” would present a flooding risk in the event of heavy rainfall.

Indeed, Rihana Asadi and her husband, Yousif, lost two of their five children to severe floods on the night of September 12, 2023. Inas, who had just turned 12 that day, was holding onto her three-year-old sister Aisha when they were both swept away.

Yousif told IWPR that they never found Aisha’s body.

“I searched for my children that night but I couldn’t find them. We found Inas’ body in a nearby river the following day but Aisha was nowhere to be found. We never got the chance to lay our baby to rest,” he said.

Trapped by War

Meanwhile, the attacks by militant groups continued.

One night in Awlala camp, 20-year-old Amer Mohamed was walking to his tent when militiamen seized his phone and shot him.

The bullet penetrated his neck and shattered his right jaw as it exited through his mouth.  

“I still struggle with speaking and chewing food. I’m in need of reconstructive surgery to fix my jaw but I can’t get it here in Ethiopia,” said Mohamed, who spoke to IWPR in Addis Ababa where he had sought further medical care.

His life was saved by volunteer doctor, Adan Khalid (not his real name).

“I found him lying in a pool of blood and I wasn’t sure he would pull through. Six other people had also been shot and were critically injured. I called a UNHCR worker in the region to report the attack and ask for help but he said they couldn’t do anything. We had to wait until daybreak,” Khalid recalled. All he could do for Mohamed was administer first aid and stabilise him as best as he could.

Yousif said that more than 50 people, both women and men, had been kidnapped by the militia in Kumer camp.

“During one of these attacks, a two-year-old was fatally shot and I was scared the same would happen to my children,” he recalled.

In another incident, Hassan said, gunmen stormed the camp and raped three Eritrean women and two Sudanese girls.

In May, he and others tried to leave the camp amid what he described as “rampant” militia kidnappings and shootings, but were turned back by Ethiopian military and federal police.

“They called the UNHCR representative who told us to go back to the camp because the government forbade him from giving us food outside of the camps,” Hassan said.

Instead, the group sought refuge in the Awlala forest where they went three months with scant recources.

“UNHCR said if we remained in Awlala forest, the government of Ethiopia wouldn’t protect us,” Hassan said. “We had been there for two months without any attacks but after the last meeting we had with them, the Fano militia entered the camps and attacked us. So many people were injured and others died.”

During this July attack, more than 20 people were injured and two women were killed. Life became so bleak that Hassan reported that some of the refugees had taken their own lives.

“We woke up one day and found a woman’s body hanging on a tree,” he continued. “Sadly more people who felt like there was no way out for us committed suicide.”

He added, “Despite the danger, some of us decided to go back to Metema on foot. Rather than wait for death in the forest we had fled to, we walked for seven days not knowing if we would make it.”

In July 2024, the Ethiopian government’s refugee and return service and UNHCR decided to close the Awlala and Kumer settlements and transfer the refugees to Aftit, another site in Amhara they deemed safer.

Hassan and his group refused to relocate to Aftit after seeing armed gunmen in the area, preferring to stay close to the border town of Metema. As a result, he said, officials threatened to rescind their refugee status and take away their ID cards.

“Ethiopian government officials would come with guns to meetings held by the agency in a bid to intimidate us and force us to go to the new camp. They threatened to deport us,” he said.

Hassan said that Sudanese intelligence officers had also come to Metema to force them to return home.

“We told them to first stop the war if they wanted us to return. But they mocked us saying it was unacceptable for young men to stay in camps with women instead of volunteering to protect our country by fighting against the people who displaced us,” he said.

Yousif agreed to move to Aftit, but still fears for his family’s safety.  He said that the camp is not guarded and the area has also fallen into the hands of Fano militia.

“Everything is still difficult even in this new camp,” he continued. “The war is still going on around us and gunfire sounds fill the air daily. Sometimes the Fano militia fighting with Ethiopian federal forces scramble into the camp for cover. We are trapped here and can’t leave if we want to because the roads are closed.”

“This land has violently rejected us and taken so much from us,” Yousif said. “I’m so scared that I might lose my remaining children and wife. My wife wants us to go back home to Sudan but there is nothing left for us in Omdurman because of the war, which also killed my parents and brother. I feel like I’m losing myself too.”

Contacted for comment, UNHCR said in a statement that it remained “very concerned about the challenging security situation in and around the refugee sites in the Amhara region”.

The UNHCR statement made clear that the Ethiopian government was responsible for choosing and providing land for refugee settlements, adding that at the time Awlala and Kumer were established, “the situation in Amhara was relatively stable”.

However, over the last year security in the region had “significantly deteriorated”.

“Despite this, UNHCR remained present in the region and continued providing services through partners to different settlements, including health, water and food,” the statement continued. “We also continued to advocate with authorities for heightened support, including the deployment of security personnel in and around the Awlala and Kumer refugee camps, so that aid agencies including UNHCR could continue to safely deliver essential services.”

Regarding the death of Yousif and Rihana’s children in September 2023, the UNHCR statement noted that the family had chosen to relocate themselves outside the designated safer area of the camp itself.

“Sadly, it appears that if they had remained within the delineated boundary of the Kumer refugee site, the incident likely could have been prevented,” the statement continued. “UNHCR and partners visited the affected family, provided them with psychosocial support including covering burial expenses. We also relocated the family to a safer location.”

In response to allegations about the lack of food distribution, UNHCR said that “due to serious security concerns,” provisions could not be provided outside the camps. However, those refugees who had fled to the forest were regularly visited by UNHCR staff and humanitarian partners.

In August, nearly 3,000 refugees staying at Awlala and Kumer and those nearby were relocated to Aftit.

UNHCR noted that “a small group of refugees decided against relocating to Aftit and preferred to continue towards the Metema transit center on the border with Sudan, despite the great risk and the presence of unidentified armed groups. UNHCR advocated for police forces to accompany the group on their journey to Metema and ensure their safety.

Intensified clashes late last September resulted in the intermittent provision of services to refugees in Aftit and in the Metema transit centre, although UNHCR and partner activities had since resumed.

Ethiopian officials did not respond to requests for comment.