IRIN Focus report on Camacupa’s IDP camps

A patch of bare earth dotted with smoking fires has become home to the hundreds of people who arrive each day at the displaced people’s camps outside Camacupa in the Angolan province of Bié. Sleeping out in the open during the cold highland nights may be hard - but it is nothing new. More than 200,000 people are already living in huts or tents in the camps around Camacupa. People began arriving in large numbers in March, when there was no emergency feeding or health provision in the town. Reports from the town at that point suggested that between six and 10 children were dying each day as a result of malnutrition and disease. In May, the government declared the military situation to be secure enough to allow humanitarian agencies to start work in the town. The situation has since been brought under control, due largely to the distribution of WFP supplies, the opening of a supplementary feeding centre, and more recently a therapeutic feeding centre by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF). But the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned recently that additional food distributions would be required, particularly given the constant arrival of displaced people. While some have reached Camacupa directly from their home villages, or after spending months in hiding, the largest group of people are arriving after walking 60 km along the road from Cuemba, a neighbouring town. A father of five told IRIN that he and his family had been hiding in the bush for seven months, living off what they could find after suspected UNITA rebels attacked their home village of Salampinja. “Our house was destroyed, and all our food was stolen - so we fled to the bush. But we found only a little food there.” Soldiers of the Angolan army eventually found them and brought them to Camacupa. “I have no home any more - my home is here,” the man said. “We can’t go back, we have nothing.” Shelter remains another problem. A high mortality rate earlier this year was attributed to respiratory infections brought on by the cold nights - blanket distribution has become another priority. Oxfam officials who visited the camps recently expressed concern that bureaucratic delays were hindering the allocation of land to the new arrivals, which was in turn preventing them from building the shelters they needed. A single mother of five told IRIN she and her children had fled to the bush following attacks on their village before ending up in Cuemba. But she had been there only a few days when local officials told her to go to Camacupa. There, she was told, there would be medical treatment for her children. Cuemba remains off-limits to aid agencies operating in the province; the government has no effective health facilities there, and food distribution is either absent or inadequate. Her story is one that is repeated throughout the camps around Camacupa, especially among the newer arrivals. Officials in Cuemba are instructing families to go to Camacupa because food and medical treatment are available there. Humanitarian staff are talking of a systematic strategy by the administration to push people into those areas where the agencies are allowed to operate, in order to free the government of the responsibility of helping them. In the past month, both MSF and Oxfam have condemned the Angolan government for failing to deliver humanitarian assistance to people in areas under its control. The military authorities in Cuemba have warned agencies in Camacupa that at least another 15,000 people are likely to be making their way along the road in the coming months. With the military apparently exercising a strong degree of control over the flow of people to Camacupa, that warning is being taken seriously. Meanwhile, the people arriving in Camacupa often divulge their stories only with caution. One man said he had come to Camacupa from Cuemba in June “because the government had told us to”. He was promptly scolded by bystanders, who said he should not be saying such things about the authorities. Supporters of the ruling MPLA party keep a close eye on activities in the camps, listening carefully to the questions posed by visiting journalists - and even more carefully to the answers. One of the longer-established residents described, in the presence of one of these camp “officials”, how the government had promised food and seeds. When asked whether this promise had been kept, he tactfully side-stepped the question: “We had to find other means of obtaining these things.” The “officials” swagger round the camps, demanding cigarettes when they feel the need. One of them took it upon himself to assist a nurse who was screening mothers and babies. Whenever the nurse asked the mother whether she had breast milk, the man would eagerly squeeze the mother’s breast on the pretext of checking. Outside the MSF therapeutic feeding centre in Camacupa town, Dominga, a shy 18-year-old, sat with her four-year-old child who was receiving treatment. She told IRIN she and her family had been captured by UNITA, held for months in the bush, and then recaptured by the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) - who took her not back to her home village, but to Camacupa. Dominga, her parents and her child now live in a tent settlement near the town. Once the treatment at the feeding centre is completed, she has no intention of going anywhere else. “I have seen too much suffering,” she says, echoing the sentiments many of Angola’s approximately four million internally displaced persons (IDPs) share.