Burundi

Historias reales

Child protection efforts at refugee camps in Western Tanzania

© UNICE Burundi

Isador arrived with his brother Melchior in Karago camp in a remote region of Western Tanzania in March 2000. Their story is not clear. They do not know how old they are or what part of Burundi they came from. All that is known is that their parents were killed in an attack on their home, after which they fled across the border to the refugee camps. Isador, the younger of the two, has barely spoken a word since.

Jasna Blasko, a child protection officer and head of the UNICEF office in Kibondo, has been trying to help them. Working through art, she tries to help these traumatized children overcome the horrors they have witnessed. Clutching a handful of crayons, Isador draws a picture of what he would like to be in the future. The group of 20 children aged between 6 and 16, spend this rainy afternoon drawing pictures and dreaming of their future as presidents, drivers and farmers. Jasna and her small team of social workers try to piece together how these young unaccompanied minors came to the camp and help them to trace their families. She sees the sessions as a way to build up a sense of trust on the part of the children so they will be willing to share any small recollections that may help to identify their families.

It is an enormous task. With thousands of people fleeing the ongoing civil war in Burundi, the number of children who have lost contact with their parents or family members is large. Often with no formal documentation, Jasna and her team undertake a number of steps to try to either find the child's parents or a living relative. They meet and interview the children, try to place them with foster parents and take their photos. All this information is collected in one central database and the photos are used in tracing albums and displayed in the eleven camps spread over the region. The search involves both meeting with children who have lost their parents and with parents who have lost their children; they try to connect parents or relatives with a lost child.

This is not a simple process in the best of circumstances but working in a huge area with limited infrastructure, capacity and funding, it can be a particularly frustrating challenge. Especially when the window of opportunity to identify and unify families is short. As Jasna Blasako explains: "The children are often very small, all traumatised, emotionally disturbed and they don't remember their family members. It is not even possible to know if they are orphans or not. We do photo tracing but it takes time. If too much time passes these children will grow and they will change. I am not even sure if for example in two years one aunt will remember the face of her nephew who left Burundi when he was six months old."

UNICEF took over the responsibility of tracing and family reunification from the International Committee of the Red Cross in October 1999. As international attention on the Burundian refugees has waned and funding has been depleted, more and more international organizations have pulled out of the region. Along with the UNHCR, that manages the camps and the World Food Programme which provides food rations, UNICEF works with the remaining handful of NGOS to cater to the almost half a million people who have fled the ongoing instability in Africa's Great Lakes region.

Jasna, a Croatian, who has seen the devastation war can cause in her own country, was responsible for family tracing and reunification in Rwanda. UNICEF is fortunate to have found someone with her experience and dedication to face the challenge that these new responsibilities entail.

It is a tough struggle to justify the time, logistics and resources needed in family tracing and reunification, when funding is already tight and the need for even the most basic of services is severe. But as Jasna describes case after case of children, who have lost contact with their parents or who have been successfully reunified, one realises that to compromise this programme is to ultimately sell out to a belief that these children are not entitled to the same sense of dignity and assistance as their European counterparts. With her earnest conviction and passion, Jasna makes the case that this process is essential, not just in the immediate future but also in the long-term reconciliation of the country. The data collected serves as an important part of a historical memory to serve these children in rebuilding their future and that of their country. Ultimately, UNICEF must work to provide these young children with their most basic needs, and must also ensure that every effort is made for them to be able to discover who they are and where they have come from.

The family tracing and reunification efforts underway in Western Tanzania will hopefully be linked to similar efforts in Burundi. All the data will be used to continue the process on both sides of the border and eventually, it is hoped, the information can be used when the refugees finally resettle back in their country.

Child protection issues are many, and unaccompanied minors like Isador and his brother, are often most at risk. They not only face the trauma and pain of the past but also the daily threat of ongoing violence within the camps. Living alone, these children must struggle to protect themselves and the little they have.

Miyongere Cesali,17, lives with her two brothers, Livusimani, 10, and Ndacayisba, 15, in a small mud hut house in Block D of Karago camp. She arrived earlier this year after her grandfather passed away. Their parents and older brother were massacred in 1996 and since then she has had the responsibility of raising her two brothers. Miyongere, quiet and timid, explains that life in the camps is very hard. Dependent on food aid, with no opportunity for formal work, and with boredom and frustration rife, girls are particularly vulnerable. Although she does not want to admit it, her pregnancy is already starting to show. The neighbours openly gossip that she has a bad reputation and preys on men. Moses, the social worker explains that it is sadly common for young girls, especially in Miyongere's case, while trying to support her brothers, to sleep around in an effort to supplement their food rations.

Desperation often drives young girls into prostitution but they must also confront the daily threats of rape and sexual abuse. A network of counselling services has been set up to provide some level of support for women who have been raped but it is still difficult to ensure that these acts of violence are properly punished and the women protected.

One young girl, an unaccompanied minor, who lived alone, explained how she was gang raped by four men while collecting firewood. At the time she was four month pregnant and supposed to be getting married. The fiancé has since left her and married another woman. Now three months on, and despite the fact that all four of her attackers live in the camp, and know her, only one has been arrested. It is with the help though of the counselling and protection services that she is being moved to another camp.

It is in very difficult circumstances that UNICEF continues to provide not just basic services for children but tries to ensure that their rights are protected.

The destiny of Burundi and the region in general is dependent on many factors. One of the most important, that is often forgotten by the international community, is how these children growing up in these refugee camps, often dislocated from their families, their culture and history, can rebuild their sense of dignity, self worth and hope in the future.