Langlesing | Flyktninghjelpen

Langlesing

Slik når vi frem med nødhjelp der krigen raser

Anglo Woku never imagined he would be considered a refugee in Sudan in his twilight years. Especially since he left the Southern part of the country for a better life almost 50 years ago.
“I escaped in 1969, shortly after the civil war broke out. I ended up in Khartoum. I was working for the military. I was married, had a family and friends. Sudan gave me a good life,” he said.
The conflict between North and South raged on for 22 years until a peace agreement was brokered in 2005. Then in 2011, the people of the South voted for independence and South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, was born.
This new dawn however caused all sorts of legal uncertainties for the South Sudanese living in Sudan, particularly in the years following independence.
“I lost my Sudanese identity,” Anglo, 78, explained: “I went from being a public servant to a refugee.”
In 2011 following the independence of South Sudan, Sudan passed laws that had a detrimental impact on the identity of people with Southern heritage.
They automatically lost their Sudanese nationality and were now considered South Sudanese. Even their children, despite being born and raised in Sudan, were given a new nationality. Many people had no intention of returning to South Sudan, a country, largely unknown to them and this created a legal dilemma on questions around their legal status.
Under the Four Freedoms agreement signed in 2012 between the government of South Sudan and Sudan, South Sudanese were to be granted freedom of movement, residence, economic activity and the right to acquire and dispose property. They were also awarded prima facie refugee status, however the legal status of those who lost their Sudanese identity following the cessation, but with no intention of returning, remains unclear.
Some however made the decision to leave for South Sudan both spontaneously or with the assistance of the UN through facilitated returns.
As part of the organised returns, those willing to repatriate were assembled at departure points. However, in 2013, conflict erupted in South Sudan and the operation was stalled leaving thousands of South Sudanese in limbo and stuck in departure points, to this day.
These departure points, now known as Open Areas, are home to over 31,000 South Sudanese living in nine Open Areas across Khartoum. Anglo is among those languishing in these areas with no rights or access to a decent standard of living.
While registration efforts continue, it is estimated that there are around 154,700 refugees living in nine Open Areas including Um Badda, Jabal Aulya and Sharq El Nile across Khartoum state. They make up approximately 55 per cent of the overall South Sudanese refugee population and are among the most vulnerable members of Sudanese society.
Life is tough in the Open Areas and thousands have limited access to food, water, healthcare or livelihoods.
“I found myself jobless and homeless with no rights, no identification and I have been here ever since,” Anglo revealed further.
Fondly known as ´the Sultan´, the name given to well-respected leaders in the community, Anglo went from the upper echelons of Sudanese society to being exiled to a dusty, sparce flat land called Nivasha on the edge of Khartoum’s city limits.
He and thousands more live an invisible existence here, virtually hidden from the rest of the Sudanese population who struggle on with life in a country buckled by years of oppression, debt, government corruption, international sanctions, recurrent drought-related famines and humanitarian chaos. Out of sight and out of mind seems to the policy for urban refugees in modern day Khartoum.
“I did not want to become a refugee. I worked hard as a citizen but this happened. My children have moved back to South Sudan, but my wife is here. My children have jobs and they are safe. We had planned to move back there but there is no way out now. I have no money and we are struck here.”
Like several others, Anglo is a trapped in an administrative quagmire that no organization or agency has the full funding, capacity or support to resolve.
The Commission for Refugees is the body mandated to manage refugee affairs in-country including registration and refugee status determination. It is funded by UNHCR, which maintains a supervisory role, is currently dealing with a backlog on registration. Access to documentation remains a key challenge for all unregistered refugees. Biometric registration is ongoing however it will take time before the backlog is cleared.
The winter sun is setting as we arrive at Nivasha settlement and paints a golden syrupy hue over the far out and forgotten community.
Terra cotta-coloured cuboid homes line the vicinity like blocks on a Tetris game. Curious heads peep out from glassless windows of makeshift shops, indicating some market infrastructure but nowhere near enough to serve the disadvantaged population.
Bells tinkle from under the throats of overburdened donkeys carrying the only available water to the residents. A teenage boy rides on top and raises his thumbs to smile as the camera flashes and lights up the expansive area that will soon be in plunged into darkness.
There is limited electric, running water, and food scarcity plays constantly on the minds of mothers desperate to feed their growing children.
“There is no food,” said 70-year-old grandmother Apuk.
“We are constantly hungry. I have never known hunger until I came to these settlements,” she said.
A handful of local agencies including WFP offer humanitarian assistance to the 11,000 people of the settlement but there are virtually no income-generating activities available to provide a sustainable away from a reliance on aid.
As a result, many residents venture into the nearest neighbourhoods or markets for daily work opportunities. Men find casual labour while the women find cleaning or housekeeping jobs.
“My daughter when she gets work, provides around 50 Sudanese pounds per day (less than a dollar). If we get money, we get a meal once a day. But if she finds no work, we have to search for food in the night to ensure the children get something to eat,” Apuk said.
“We often come home with nothing.”
Like many vulnerable communities around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a crippling economic effect on people fiercely reliant on daily labour wages.
Restrictions and lockdowns forced the city to close and dried up the only work opportunities available to men and women living hand to mouth. The cash-dependent people of Nivasha are no different to the cash-dependents of Naples, Nairobi or New York. Pandemic poverty affects all.
With no adequate health or sanitation facilities around, Nivasha is a welcome host for coronavirus among other diseases. And if anyone is sick, there is no ambulance to take them to a hospital. The nearest hospital is miles away and the only way to travel is an expensive and unaffordable taxi or motorbike ride.
With the recent inflation rate, certain food commodities such as red meat, dairy products and fish are also expensive. Everything is expensive in economically-fragile Sudan.
As Anglo points out, people need more than subsidies to be able to afford to eat, they need opportunity.
“This land is good. It can be productive for food with the use of small backyard land, but the community does not have the support to start food production activities,” he explained.
“If they had their own vegetables, they could eat them and sell them. There are many women here that are farmers. They know what to do. They would like to start farms or shops.”
Apuk reveals that she grew up on a farm in South Sudan and remembers her young life well.
“We had a good life. We had food, plenty to eat. We were fishermen. I miss the taste of fish, I used to eat it every day,” she smiled.
“I feel safe in Sudan but I just want my children to eat. I want them to have some life. I am old but they are not. I have lived and worked in Sudan, but I would like my community to live better,” she said.
Anglo admits life is not what he expected it to turn out but finds comfort in the many friends he has found in the community. As he talks, several men of various ages gather around him in a brotherly circle. “He is a good man,” says George Allam Lolika-Khalil, the Sultan of another camp, “he cares for the community. He tries to make things right for us especially the children.”
Anglo believes that with the new democratic government, Sudan has the potential to grow but he would like to see the refugee community better served and no longer forgotten.
“If they don´t provide livelihood opportunities or training. We will just waste away. We are now known as refugees but many of us have lived here all our life and we just want to continue living without struggling. We just want to feel settled in the country we have always called home,” he said.

Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC

Khartoums glemte flyktninger

After receiving training in construction and masonry, former child soldier Mark* constructs a latrine outside his grandmothers house in Kasai-Central, DRC.

*Name changed to protect identity

Photo: Itunu Kuku/NRC

En tidligere barnesoldats største kamp

Mohammed Damaj inside his home at Al-Alad camp for displaced people, which NRC built. Mohammed lost his right leg some years ago but has used carpentry skills he learned from an NRC training to improve his shelter and make it more like home.

Photo: Riona McCormack/NRC

– Vi er alle én familie nå

9 ting du bør vite om:

Nødhjelp der krigen raser

Lebanese and Syrian children, who were affected by the Beirut explosion, are participating in the Psychosocial support sessions implemented by the Norwegian Refugee Council to help them deal with their traumas.

Photo: Zaynab Mayladan/NRC

Slik lærer barna i Beirut å håndtere traumene

A child drinking water in Kharef camp, Yemen, thanks to a new solar-powered pump linked to a borehole.

Når vannet forsvinner

Som giver er du med på noe spesielt i Sudan

Lærer barn på flukt å lese og skrive midt i pandemien

9 grunner til at:

Karavaner med migranter forlater Honduras

Long lines of people are waiting outside the NRC office in Um Rakuba camp.

Most of the refugees waiting are young men, which makes up a majority of the ones who have fled Ethiopia. We were told stories of fear of recruitment to the militia, or of being killed if suspected to belong to TPLF.

Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC

Menneskene som flykter fra Tigray i Etiopia

Da korona-alarmen gikk

Abdul-Aziz whispering on her mom ear

Bygger et nytt hjem i ruinene av det gamle

Øyeblikk av håp

Flyktet, og flyttet inn i fiendens hus

Leilti (30) and her daughter Lela (3) are tired after their first night sleeping under the open in Um Rakuba camp. They arrived with the rest of the family of five the day before and are waiting together with a big group of new arrivals close to the entry of the camp. Leilti is five months pregnant, and found the journey to Sudan very hard.

"I wish I don't have to give birth to my baby in this place, " she tells NRC.

Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC

Vi gir nødhjelp til Tigrayflyktningene i Sudan

Endelig kan Amina (7) smile

Gaver med mening

Kjøp en gave med mening til jul!

Slik skaffer vi mennesker på flukt et sted å bo

Ahmed får bli i leiren etter hasteforhandlinger

Her family fled to Lebanon from their home in Syria after being caught up in the war there, in 2013.

They moved into their current tent in 2006.Thanks to wood supplied by NRC, the family have been able to double the size of their home since they first bought it from its previous tenant. NRC also supplied and maintains toilets in their settlement, supplies water for drinking and washing, hygiene kits and waterproofing materials.

_____________________
Photo: Sam Tarling/NRC

Slik forvandlet Fatima det beskjedne teltet til et familiehjem

Thick mud blocks the way for a family who has been forced to flee their home in Honduras.

Tusenvis er hjemløse etter orkanene i Honduras

The Norwegian Refugee Council helped the family by installing cupboards and supplying material to cover and reinforce their tent, as well as installing and maintaining toilets in their settlement and supplying drinking water.

Photo: Sam Tarling/NRC

Ti år gamle Malak har bodd i telt hele livet

Oppdrag: å få mennesker som har flyktet til å føle seg hjemme

Monique poses for a photo behind her new house.

Photo. Itunu Kuku/NRC

Endelig hjemme etter fem måneder på flukt i skogen

H.K.H. Kronprins Haakon

Møtte ungdom på flukt

Amina (7) har bodd fire år under en plastduk

Mahmoud’s family received help from the Norwegian Refugee Council to complete repairs to their home after it was damaged by the explosion at Beirut port on August 4th.

————————————————————————

Photo: Sam Tarling/NRC

Krigen tok hjemmet deres – så smalt det igjen

Gaver med mening

Den store julegaveguiden

Fatima Bashir, 9, sits with her mother Sarah Mohammad Omara Shehadeh, 42, in her family’s apartment in Karantina, Beirut, Lebanon, on October 23, 2020.

«Hjemme» er der håpet bor

7 grunner til at et hjem er viktigere enn du tror

• What drew the individual to this line of work – why did they choose to do it, how did they get into it

Our lives, my life, changed the day of the tsunami hit the shores of my hometown, Batticaloa in the east of Sri Lanka. It was just after Christmas, 26 December 2004, to be exact. My country was in the middle of a brutal civil war when the tsunami took the lives, our homes and schools, and reshaped our future in the blink of an eye.

Immediately after the tsunami, the school that I used to play basketball at was turned into a center for people who had lost a roof over their head. I was in my late teens, just out of high school and looking to study further and work in ICT. The tsunami changed everything. Together with my friends, we pulled our resources, and bought basic items, such as clothes, food, and toiletries, to provide some relief to our communities and friends. A local NGO stepped up and we signed up as volunteers. We organised distributions, accompanied people to the hospitals to find their loved ones, helped with search and identification of the deceased, and started major cleaning operations of our towns. Those first weeks after the tsunami were horrific.

Eventually, I joined ‘Eastern Humanitarian Economic Development’, a local NGO under umbrella of Caritas and worked with them for four years. I started in Communications and Reporting. It was important to me to be able to share the stories of those affected by the tsunami.

I worked with local NGOs and INGOs in my own country for years, supporting tsunami recovery and war-affected communities, before moving to South Sudan and eventually joining NRC in Yemen, moving on to Mosul, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

• What ‘enemy’ were they battling (the spread of COVID-19, COVID-19 deaths, malnutrition, lack of clean water, etc.)

My enemy was and remains insecurity – across Afghanistan. I learned from a young age to live with and in insecurity. We suffer the most when we least expect it. Most of the places I have worked in, NRC enjoys a degree of acceptance and we are often not directly the target, but that does not provide us with a security blanket.

Managing insecurity became even more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic in Afghanistan, which has come with a different kind of insecurity – one that is compounded by disbelief, stigmatisation, and misinformation. This required real creative thinking and operational adjustments to ensure staff is able to safely stay and deliver.

So much of NRC’s work, its acceptance to operate safely in areas that are dangerous at the best of time, has had to incorporate trust-building with communities, local governance structures, and armed actors around how to best keep safe during a pandemic. COVID-19 spread across Afghanistan like wildfire, often as a direct result of misinformation, disbelief, and people’s inabilities to keep themselves safe in the face of the pandemic. For many Afghans, social distancing is a luxury they cannot afford. Working from home for those that depend on a daily wage is simply not possible.

• Deeper issues that humanitarians and first responders face in their daily lives – stigmatisation, access difficulties, dangers, lack of support etc.

It is often hard to imagine what Afghanistan could look like again when peace comes. The country is a perpetual state of strife and conflict, communities torn apart by violence and insecurity. A family’s primary focus is on making ends meet in a time where insecurity and economic hardship as a result of conflict are the main drivers of displacement and poverty.

Much like the tsunami that hit my own war-torn country, the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across communities already struggling to stay safe and put food on the table. Witnessing this is frankly heartrending and affects humanitarians deeply. Yet, in the face of this daily reality, I have seen some amazing acts of kindness between people, who have opened their doors and shared their resources with those most in need – from the smallest initiatives between neighbours to country-wide campaigns in support of the plight of Afghans. I am profoundly humbled by the level of dedication from my Afghan colleagues, who despite their own struggles and the risks associated with the spread of COVID-19, continued to provide food, cash, shelter, and protection to their fellow Afghans. Their commitment brought me back to the shores of my own country and reminded me that humanity ultimately prevails in the face of adversity.

• What are some of the biggest challenges and obstacles they have to overcome in this response?

Mid-March arrived with the threat of international flight suspensions and border closures, which meant that many of our international staff would be trapped in Afghanistan without safe and adequate access to medical care. The decision to evacuate the vast majority of our expat staff came at a critical time where I was asked to step into the role of Acting Country-Director, leading a team of five remaining expats and almost 1.400 national staff through the first weeks of the outbreak.

I won’t lie, it was scary to take on such a level of responsibility. Across the country operation, the mantra was clearly endorsed by all staff: NRC stays and delivers. But to honour our commitment as humanitarians meant striking a careful balance between acceptable levels of risks to our staff, beneficiaries and operations with the need to stay and deliver.

For our country operation, the biggest challenge lies in that careful balancing act – between staying and delivering, honouring our commitment as humanitarians, whilst constantly adjusting our operational modalities to ensure that we do not expose staff and the people we serve to unacceptable levels of risk. There is no science to this, there is no magical formula that allows you to arrive at a logical conclusion. It comes down to leadership, teamwork, integrity, and commitment.

• What lessons did they learn along the way?

What I have learned from swimming in the deep end so to speak is that it is an ongoing process where the stakes are high and mistakes are costly. Transparency in decision-making and inclusive leadership proved to be everything.

The outbreak of the pandemic sadly highlighted that we were somewhat ill-prepared. We have all sorts of protocols and procedures established and practiced for many different scenarios – from mass displacement, to surges in conflict, complex attacks and the like, but we were ill-prepared to deal with a medical emergency of this nature. We are prepared to live with and around war, but when the pandemic hit, we had to develop strategies for operational realities where the threat is invisible, indiscriminate, and so much is still unknown.

I am proud of how the Afghanistan team used the challenge to equip the organisation at large to respond. We developed a strategic partnership with WHO to support risk communication and community engagement around the spread of the virus, developed programming and attracted funding to tackle the secondary effects of the outbreak, such as food security and water and sanitation-related needs, and mobilised across the country to ensure cash could be distributed in a safe manner to people who lost their livelihoods and access to services.

And amidst all of the programmatic priorities we managed to keep sight of the needs of our colleagues, equally affected by the sudden onset of the pandemic, by setting up a dedicated a Staff Care Unit, tasked with contact tracing in case of anyone contracted COVID-19. This speaks to the constant balancing act between NRC’s mantra to stay and deliver, and the need to do so safely.

• Has this work or this emergency response changed them in any ways and if so, how?

During this pandemic, Afghanistan really became home for me. It became an indefinite mission, a place where I knew I would be for while – without the luxury of a break. I learned to make Afghanistan home, appreciating the little things that give comfort in an insecure environment in uncertain times. The morning greetings from the colleagues, the familiarity of the call to prayer, the kindness showed by our colleagues who knew that, as a Sri Lankan, staying to deliver meant giving up being able to return to my home country indefinitely, gave me a profound sense of gratitude. This, in turn, kept me grounded and motivated to carry on the important work NRC is doing for the people in Afghanistan.
Photo: Enayatullah Azad/NRC

– Vi rammes hardest når vi minst forventer det

Portrait of Ali Alhajori.

– Vi trodde aldri vi kom til å bli dem som måtte flykte

June 19, 2020. Colombia: Hector Castillo (23) is a Venezuelan migrant native from Caracas. He just received a bag and stuff from the NGO NRC to give him better walking conditions. He is in Colombia since one and a half years. He's been walking all day with two other friends. They hope to reach the city of Paipa, some 200 km from Bogota, where the aunt of one of his friends will give them shelter for a while. Today he says, in relation to the crisis: "The only thing we can do is walk.". Credit: Nadège Mazars for NRC

Flyktningregnskapet

Flyktningtallene forteller ikke hele historien

*Caption pending*

Photo by: Zaynab Mayladan/NRC

Flyktningregnskapet

Disse 10 landene tar imot flest flyktninger

Flyktningregnskapet

Noen få land tar ansvar for verdens flyktninger