Amnesty Research Mission to Chad: 20 May - June 2, 2010

Photo: AI Canada Secretary General Alex Neve and International Secretariat staff member Jean-Eric Nkurikiye, sitting with Koloma camp representatives including women from Djorlo

From N’Djamena, Chad
1 June 2010

In November 2006 our Amnesty International team spent quite a bit of time with the people of Djorlo, a village that had been attacked and burned to the ground just 10 days before we arrived in the area.  More than 40 people had been killed and a number of women had been raped.  When we met them, the people of Djorlo had nothing and had nowhere to go.  They were living out in the open, with bolts of fabric strung up in trees to provide a bit of shelter and privacy.  They were so worried that the Janjawid militias might attack again; and were equally anxious to find food and water.   Later in the mission we toured the ruins of the village and so how total the destruction had been.

Just this morning I again crossed paths with leaders from Djorlo.  Close to four years after they were chased from their homes; they have still not yet been able to return.  Instead they are now living in Koloma, a displacement site on the outskirts of Goz Beida, home to close to 8000 people.  Some of the villagers have gone back to plant crops, some have even rebuilt their homes and tried to start living in Djorlo again.  But the few who have made that effort have faced violence, theft and intimidation from criminal gangs and ethnic-based violence and threats from neighbouring Zaghawa communities.  (The people of Djorlo are of the Dadjo ethnic group.)

I had wondered if I might be able to find the Djorlo villagers again; for I have carried their faces and stories with me since we met. click for more...

Photo: AI Canada's Secretary General Alex Neve reunites with village chief Abakar Yusuf 

AUDIO FILE: This mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone. Listen to Alex's recorded message:    MP3

From Goz Beida, Eastern Chad
31 May 2010

The last thing I ever would have expected in an isolated corner of eastern Chad is a reunion!

This afternoon we made our way out to Koudigou, a camp near Goz Beida that is home to about 11,000 displaced Chadians, most of who have been there for close to four years now.  It was a bumpy, sandy track through rough terrain, making our way past sporadic groups of people coming and going with supplies of water and bundles of firewood and hay.  Also sharing the road were camels, donkeys, goats and sheep with occasional herds of cattle in the distance.  As has been the case throughout our time on the ground here in eastern Chad the sun was relentless and the heat suffocating.

Even before we had arrived a group of about 15 elders and leaders had gathered to meet with us.  We made our way into a small building that offered welcome shelter from the sun while still allowing a breeze to blow through.

We made our introductions and explained who we were, a bit about Amnesty International and the focus of our mission.  The first village chief to speak, Abakar Yusuf, then astonished me by saying he remembered me from when I was here in 2006 and had spent some time in and around the village of Adé, very near the Chad/Darfur border.  He reminded me that he had spoken with me about the very tragic death of his wife, who was shot and then thrown into their burning home when their village had come under attack by Janjawid militia.

I immediately remembered and even recognized him. I certainly recalled the heart-wrenching story of his wife’s death, which had only happened about two weeks before our arrival. In fact I recall that the report we published in January 2007 following that mission, includes an account of Abakar’s wife’s death, alongside Abakar’s photo. click for more...

Photo: AI Canada's Secretary General Alex Neve at the UNHCR compund in Guereda.

This mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone. Listen to Alex's recorded message:    MP3

from Abeché, Eastern Chad
27 May 2010

It is a very good thing when someone comes to protect you.  But it is so hard to understand why they leave when you still need to be protected.  Does that mean they had not really wanted to come in the first place?

That was the reaction I received when I asked  Arnour what he thought about the likelihood that UN troops would be leaving Chad.  He is a young refugee from Darfur who spent six years fighting as a child soldier against the Janjaweed and Sudanese military, but recently decided to lay down his arms and join his mother at a refugee camp in Chad.  He knew nothing about the debate at the UN in New York and the final vote that was to take place only a few hours after he and I spoke.  He did say that he could not imagine how it would help him or his family feel any safer; and worried that it would mean that the day when  they might all be able to go back to Darfur would likely be all the more distant. click for more...

from Guereda, Eastern Chad
26 May 2010

Putting an end to the recruitment and use of child soldiers is a pressing human rights concern in so very many parts of the world.  It is certainly an immense problem here on both sides of the border between Chad and Darfur.  The full range of armies, militias and armed opposition groups responsible for years of fighting and human rights violations here are notorious for having thousands of young children in their ranks and regularly sending them out onto the battlefield. 

For the past two days we have been interviewing a number of former child soldiers – yesterday in the town of Guereda and surrounding villages; and today at Kounoungou Camp, which is home to about 16,000 refugees from Darfur.  All have been boys.  Some are Chadian; others from Darfur.   Most joined when they were very young, including as young as ten years of age.

All have now demobilized.  With the Chadian boys it happened when the opposition group they were involved with joined forces with the Chadian military and at that point all of the group’s underage fighters were turned over to the UN.  With the Darfuris we have interviewed, they have all made a choice to stop fighting – some because they felt they had family responsibilities, others because they had simply had enough.

What all of them so very much had in common though was a similar story of what propelled them to join the armed groups in the first place: human rights violations.  They talked of poverty; they talked of insecurity; they talked of discrimination; and they talked of a lack of opportunity.  It was all about human rights. click for more...

from Abeché, Eastern Chad
23 May 2010

We have begun our work on the ground in eastern Chad and in early days much of our focus is on the impending decision of the UN Security Council about the future of the critical UN mission here.  Under pressure from the Chadian government, and with the conspicuous absence of the usual strong influence of Chad’s former colonial power, France, the Security Council is poised to agree to begin a pull out of UN troops from the east of the country, to be completed by mid-October.  It could very well prove disastrous for human rights protection, development projects and overall security.  And at this point in time it seems near irreversible.

My friend Celine Narmandji, a remarkably tenacious women’s human rights defender who I’ve worked with on missions here in the past, put it very well when we met for lunch right after my arrival in Chad.  She said: “We were abandoned before.  We’re going to be abandoned again.  The good news is that in between, for a short while, the world did care about the situation in eastern Chad.”
Right she is, but we need better news than that.

I have been going back in my own mind, repeatedly, to the many women, men and young people I met during my first Amnesty mission to eastern Chad, in late 2006.  They too talked about abandonment: in the face of a relentless wave of violence, much of it orchestrated from across the border in Darfur, hundreds of villages were razed, thousands of people killed, untold numbers of women and girls raped, and close to 200,000 Chadian chased from their homes.  They felt abandoned by their own government and the rest of the world.  And they were – there was no UN mission on the ground at that time.  And Chadian authorities, who have long neglected and played politics with the east of the country, did nothing to prevent or respond to the devastating human rights violations.  Abandonment was the right word.

click for more...

originally submitted 18 May 2010

Watch Alex Neve's video introduction to the May 2010 Amnesty research mission to eastern Chad:

Watch Video

Read the transcript below:

In a few days time I will be heading to Chad in central Africa to join an Amnesty International research team for the fourth time in the last three-and-a-half years now.

I've been going back to Chad so often because the human rights situation there is so deeply troubling. It's a human rights story that has many sorrowful chapters to it, but certainly one overwhelming concern is the ways in which the people of eastern Chad have been drawn into the devastating conflict and human rights abuses that have taken place in Darfur over the past many years

click for more...

Photo: Amnesty International delegation with Marie Larlem, Coordinator of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Liberties in Chad.

We left Chad yesterday, with heavy hearts, a sense of regret that much of our work was curtailed because of insecurity, and a determination to intensify our efforts to bring safety back to eastern Chad.  And as always -- after spending time at the frontlines of human rights struggle -- we have also left with the inspiration of this country’s many courageous and ingenious human rights defenders well lodged in our hearts and minds.

When I was last in eastern Chad with an Amnesty team, in late 2006, safety and security was the overwhelming concern.  In the face of relentless Janjawid attacks from Darfur, people throughout the east were left to fend for themselves.  The Chadian military and police did not care enough to help. Their only preoccupation was fending off the efforts of armed opposition groups to topple the government.  There was no international force on the ground.  There was nothing.  And the cost was immense: thousands killed and injured, untold number of women raped, and hundreds of villages razed to the ground.  
We called on the international community to respond.  And they did.  But more than a year later, with several thousand European and UN soldiers having passed through the region and with hundreds of international and Chadian police tasked with providing protection to refugees, displaced Chadians and humanitarian workers, eastern Chad is still a very dangerous place to be.  It is especially dangerous for women and girls who take major risks every day when they head far outside refugee camps and displacement sites in search of firewood, hay and water.

In 2006 we called on the international community to go to eastern Chad.  Now we will call on the international community to strengthen and improve the mission they have established.  And we will insist that the Chadian government itself play a more central role in protecting human rights in the region, including by finally ensuring that the lawlessness and impunity that plagues this country comes to an end.  There must be a concerted effort to bring to justice the people who are responsible for widespread human rights violations throughout eastern Chad and the rest of the country, including beating and raping women, killing and attacking humanitarian workers, and recruiting child soldiers.

We began that work towards the end of our mission.  We had meetings with senior French and US diplomats in N’Djamena, two countries whose influence here is considerable.  We began laying out recommendations for action: steps the international community needs to take, and steps that the government of Chad must be pressed to take.  We will refine our recommendations over the coming days as we pull together the findings of our research over the past two weeks.  No doubt there will be more work with members of the UN Security Council in New York.  And we will certainly want to make sure that governments hear the powerful worldwide voices of Amnesty International’s members, insisting that insecurity give way to justice in eastern Chad.

As we leave, yes, my heart is heavy. 

But the heaviness is made much lighter by the great work underway here.  I had a chance to reconnect with several remarkable human rights defenders I had met and worked with during our May 2008 mission to N’Djamena.

Blaise, the tenacious journalist whose independent radio station, FM Liberté, had been forced to close last year, is back on the air covering issues that matter, issues of justice, fairness and equality.

Celine, whose irrepressible energy in working with marginalized women was matched only by the power of the motorcycle with which she roared into neighbourhoods across the city, is still at it even though she has had some worrying anonymous death threats.

And Marie, the head of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Liberties in Chad, who we had to meet in exile across the border in Cameroon last year because of threats she had received, is once again at her desk, overseeing a growing nationwide independent human rights organization.

And this trip has introduced us to so many more.

I will of course long recall Houada, the brave journalist taking to the airwaves to discuss violence against women.

And remember Isaak, the Darfuri refugee and schoolteacher who has once been abducted from his classroom by armed opposition groups but goes on because he knows how important it is to “feed the minds” of young refugee children.

And be humbled when I think of our driver, Ibrahim, whose first concern, after being held captive by armed bandits for 6 or 7 hours was to ask about the safety of the Amnesty team.

Alongside these men and women, and the many others working for change in Chad, we will push on.  There is no other option.  

Photo: Detail from a mural by demobilized child soldiers at transition centre in N'Djamena.

One of the concerns that we have been looking into during the course of our mission is recruitment of child soldiers.  It has been common knowledge for several years that child soldiers are widely recruited in eastern Chad – by the Chadian military, by armed Chadian opposition groups and by the armed groups fighting the Sudanese military in Darfur. 

There have been promises made by the Chadian government to keep children out of its military.  Various armed groups have made similar promises.  The UN funds programs for demobilizing and rehabilitating children who have been recruited.  So are children now safe in eastern Chad?

It became clear very quickly that children are far from safe – and that the pressure and the enticement of joining in the fighting are still considerable.

We needed look no further than the faces of so very many of the Chadian soldiers patrolling the streets of Abéché and other parts of eastern Chad during over the past week.  Many certainly looked to be no more than fourteen years old at best.

We have been able to document a number of cases of past recruitment.  In Gaga Refugee Camp we spoke with the teacher of a boy who had been part of the military attack that the Justice and Equality Movement, a Darfuri armed group, tried to mount against the Sudanese capital Khartoum in May 2008.  That attack was repelled quite easily by the Sudanese government.  The boy was detained and badly tortured in Sudan before finally being seen by the Red Cross and then released.  He is back with his family in Gaga Camp, but is deeply troubled.

At Bredjing Camp we interviewed three teachers and one student who were rounded up in a major recruitment drive by the Sudan Liberation Army 3 years ago.  Some 3000 recruits from a number of the Darfur refugee camps were taken over the span of several days.  One of the teachers, who was 25 years old at the time, was teaching his class of 51 boys when SLA fighters burst in and forced everyone out, including some boys as young as 9 years of age.  They all described being beaten, threatened and kept in terrible conditions.  Eventually most were able to escape.  The SLA did not have enough food for all the new recruits, nor enough guards to hold onto them all.

All three of the teachers, themselves young men, are back in Bredjing Camp and have continued to work in the schools, even if that puts them at risk of being rounded up in some future recruitment campaign.  As one of the teachers put it, “we have to feed their minds or they will go off to fight.” 

That is something we heard at every turn in the camps.  Primary education is widely available in all of the Darfur refugee camps and an impressive number of children – boys and girls – are enrolled.  But it ends with grade eight, and there is almost nothing available after that.  At precisely the age when children would be most susceptible to a call to join the army or run away with a rebel group, the one thing that might dissuade them – a chance to continue with their studies – disappears.  Everyone – students and teachers in the camps, organizations running the schools, and UN agencies – was very clear.  The best way to confront the recruitment of child soldiers is to make secondary school education widely available.

Today in N’Djamena we spent time in a transition centre for demobilized child soldiers, operated by CARE and UNICEF.  We spoke with a 16 year old boy, who had joined one of the Chadian armed groups when he was 11 years old and remained a faithful combatant for three years, rising to the rank of captain and commanding around 200 fighters.  He participated in four battles before the leader of his group decided to join the Chadian government in 2007.  Another young man joined one of the Chadian groups when he was 15.  He was not forced but joined because he was tired of the humiliation his ethnic group was experiencing in eastern Chad.  He eventually became part of the rebel push that led to terrible fighting in N’Djamena in February 2008.  He was badly injured in that attack and showed us the entry and exit scars from a bullet wound to his back.  He now dreams of going back to the east to be reunited with his family but does not want to do so until he has been able to find work, earn some money and go back with a sense of pride. 

A Chadian government poster on the wall of the transit centre proclaims “Non à l’enrôlement des enfants” (No recruitment of children).  There is still far to go before those will be more than words on a poster.

Photo: Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights (APLFT) vehicle that was stolen by a group of armed men.

[Note: this mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone.  Listen to Alex's recorded message and read the transcript below]

Select an audio format to listen: WAV  MP3

Today was supposed to be a straightforward day of travel.  We were set to fly back to Abéché from Farchana and then make some decisions about the next steps in our mission.

But the skies in eastern Chad were hazy, heavy with sand and clouds.  We waited at the UN base here for six hours, hoping that the UN helicopter would arrive from Abéché and then turn around for its return trip, with us on board.  The word from Abéché, hour after hour, however, was that flights weren’t taking off because of visibility problems.  Attendez.  Wait.

By 3 p.m. it had become clear that we weren’t going anywhere.  But then suddenly that did not matter anymore.  The UN base was suddenly frantic with worrying news that a UN vehicle in the area had been stopped by armed men and – the first rumour suggested – three UN police officers abducted.  It had happened outside Bredjing refugee camp, where we had been working on Tuesday and Wednesday, along a road we had travelled frequently.

Very quickly UN vehicles had been dispatched from the base.  Soon there was welcome news that the 3 police officers had not been abducted.  Their vehicle had indeed been stolen, but they and others in the UN convoy they were travelling with, had not been harmed.

But almost immediately we had much more distressing news.  When we called friends at the local office of the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights in Chad to see if someone could come to pick us up and bring us back to the World Food Program compound where we have been staying these past several days, we learned that one of their vehicles had also been stopped by armed men this afternoon and two of their staff abducted.

Our hearts sank when we learned that one of the abducted men was Ibrahim, the driver who has been working closely with us for the past week.  He had worked with us in Abéché and had driven to Farchana to continue to work with us.  He had been with us early this morning when we made a short visit to nearby Farchana refugee camp.  He had dropped us at the UN base only about 4 or 5 hours before he had been abducted. Ibrahim was a lovely, quiet man, father of 3 young children.  He was always there with us and for us.  And now he might be missing.

Ibrahim had been intending to meet up with us again in Abéché to continue working with us.  Our first agonizing worry, therefore, was that he had been taken while on the road back to Abéché.   Never before had any of us faced the prospect of the possibility of such a direct link between someone’s collaboration with an Amnesty research mission and suffering some terrible harm.

For hours there was no news of our two friends with APLFT, Ibrahim and Nerambaye.  We did eventually get official word that the flights had been cancelled.  The UN police officers whose vehicle was stolen returned to the base. But no word about Ibrahim and Nerambaye.   Time came for us to return to the WFP base.  We returned to town with very heavy hearts.

Our first stop upon return to town was to the APLFT office, where all APLFT staff in the area had gathered.  The worry and distress in people’s face was heavy.  But just as we arrived, the local director’s cell phone rang – and there, on the other end, was Ibrahim.  He and Nerambaye had been released in a village right along the border with Sudan.  They had not been harmed.  The vehicle was lost.  They were in safe hands and would be returning to Farchana in the morning.  

As you can imagine, relief and joy overflowed.    

We then learned the fuller story about the afternoon’s worrying events.  Ibrahim and Nerambaye had been driving out to the village of Hardjab Hadid, which lies between two large refugee camps, Bredjing and Treguine.  They were going to pick up a group of 8 APLFT staff from offices in the area, who were coming into Farchana for a meeting.  When they did not arrive in time, the group of 8 managed to find room in a UNHCR vehicle that was returning to Farchana as part of a UN-escorted convoy.  That was the convoy – led by a vehicle of unarmed UN police, with a vehicle of armed Chadian police from the newly established Integrated Security Detachment bringing up the rear – that fell victim to the attack.  Such is the state of security in eastern Chad that a group of 3 armed men was able to easily overwhelm the UN  convoy.  Everyone was forced from their vehicles, including the unarmed UN police and the armed Chadian police.  No one was harmed.  Two vehicles were stolen.

It was soon after this had happened that the fate of Ibrahim and Nerambaye became clear. They had not made it to pick up the group of 8 because they had been stopped and abducted before they made it to the village.  A very upsetting day obviously for the hardworking human rights activists with the APLFT – 10 of their staff were caught up in these 2 incidents.  Fortunately, all have come through unharmed, though terribly shaken.

In the wake of these attacks, it is impossible not to think of how inadequate security arrangements are in eastern Chad.  UN forces took over from a European security force in mid-March.  The UN force is supposed to number 5200, but to date is only at about 40% of that level.  Stories abound of the troops being plagued by a lack of equipment and weapons.  For instance, countries have only pledged 6 of 18 helicopters that the force needs to carry out basic security operations in the area.  Similarly, the new UN-trained Chadian police force – set up specifically to deal with the crisis in eastern Chad – is not at its full levels either, 700 of 850 have been deployed, but they lack sufficient vehicles and other material essential to their work.

That must change.  The international community has promised safety to the people of eastern Chad.  We must make sure they deliver on that promise.  Ibrahim was lucky today. Someone else might not have the same luck tomorrow.

> Send a message of encouragement to Alex and the Amnesty research team

Photo:Darfuri refugee women and girls at Bredjing camp filling water containers.

[Note: this mission blog post was recorded by Alex using a satellite phone.  Listen to Alex's recorded message and read the transcript below]

Select an audio format to listen: WAV  MP3

 
"They are there on their own." 

Those words have been haunting us all day.   We have now come further east from Abéché to Farchana.  Within perhaps a 30-40 kilometre semi-circle around Farchana there are 3 major refugee camps as well as 12 sites for displaced Chadians.  Farchana itself is not far from Chad’s border with Darfur.

Our intention today had been to travel to one of the sites for displaced Chadians in this region, Arkoum.  We want to make it to several IDP sites during our mission because we have certainly come to understand that their safety and well-being is extremely precarious.

It is a universal story.  Without any doubt refugees, including Darfuri refugees here in Chad, face considerable hardship, insecurity and violence.  The international community does, however, have a much clearer role and responsibility for their protection.  Not so with IDP’s, who remain, of course, citizens of the country, in this case Chad.  Here, as is so often the case around the world, Chadians displaced within their own country have only minimal protection.  Largely abandoned by their own government and not fully protected by the international community.  And of course, still very near to the terrible human rights violations that forced them from their homes in the first place.   

It is so important that we get access to some of the sites, to see and hear first hand the challenges displaced Chadians face.   But while the refugee camps are all within fairly easy reach of the town of Farchana, our base, the sites for IDP’s are more remote and difficult to reach.  And because of growing security concerns in eastern Chad, in the wake of a rebel incursion far to the south of here in Goz Beida, the UN decided today to cancel plans for a convoy to Arkoum, which we would have been part of.  Instead we travelled to a nearby refugee camp, Bredjing, and spent the day working with Darfuri refugees.  

A human rights monitor with the Association for the Promotion of Fundamental Rights in Chad who is usually based in Arkoum had intended to travel back out to the site with us today, but was obviously unable to do so.  His worry was palpable.  It was he who kept saying: “ils sont là; tous seuls” – they are there on their own.  

It all comes down to security.  In the midst of insecurity, the full range of human rights teeters and collapses.  That of course has been the horrible reality in both eastern Chad and Darfur for the past five years.  Insecurity means killings and rape; homes destroyed and crops burned.  But it also means education, health, food and water supplies, and livelihoods are also turned inside out.

And it is still insecurity that reigns in eastern Chad.  When I was here with an Amnesty team in late 2006 the local population, thousands of whom had recently been chased from their homes in a brutal wave of attacks, felt completely abandoned.   The sad truth is that 2 ½ years later, even though international troops and police are now deployed here, displaced Chadians remain at terrible risk.

And whenever security concerns arise here, as they have again, they are the first to be cut off, the first to be abandoned.  In so many respects, the most vulnerable yet the least protected.  As our friend kept saying, they are on their own.  We must find a way to stand with them.