Feature - Govt orders evacuation of camps near Addis

For the people of Kaliti it is home: a ramshackle network of huts made of straw and plastic sheeting. Two latrines and three taps are their luxuries. Almost three thousand people - reliant on the erratic pirated electricity, little food and almost no money - live in this squalid, fly-infested camp. But Kaliti is not unusual. Dotted around the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, there are at least 14 such camps for internally displaced people (IDPs). They house more than 17,000 people, and disease is rife. Now, however, the government wants them to move on. Already the police and local authorities have cleared three camps. The families in the remaining 11 camps have been told to leave by 19 September. The police are on hand to ensure they do so. International organisations no longer help these people. Two enormous tents, donated by the European Commission in 1991, now ripped, tatty and falling apart, illustrate the extent of international support received here. Food-for-work schemes have ended, the charities working at the camp having now pulled out. When the charities arrived in 1991, they stressed that they did not want the people of Kaliti to become dependent on aid. FLIGHT FROM ERITREA Many who live in the camps – at one stage around 57,000 people were housed in 53 camps - have remarkable stories to tell of their flight from what had then been the province of Eritrea, shortly before it gained independence. They fled grand homes and good jobs as Ethiopia’s former Marxist regime crumbled and collapsed. Fighting broke out in the Red Sea port of Assab and the city of Asmara where they lived. Many, as Ethiopians, were suspected by guerrilla groups of being loyal to former president Colonel Mengistu Hailemariam, whose grip on power finally ended in 1991. Entire families walked hundreds of kilometres through some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world - such as the Danakil Depression, where temperatures often rise above 50 C - to reach the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Some made the journey with little water or food, and with the possessions they could carry, only to see their children die on arrival at their destination. After arriving in the capital they were housed in transit camps before being moved to camps like Kaliti, which had originally been built by the UN to house Sudanese refugees. But now the inmates have been told to depart. AFRAID TO LEAVE "We are frightened to go," said 50-year-old Fufa Bedada, a former lorry driver who used to earn 200 Ethiopian birr (US$24) a week in Eritrea. Now he is happy if he earns one tenth of that doing odd jobs. Two of his three children made the journey with him. His youngest son, eight-year-old Donsa, only knows Kaliti. During the June to September rainy season, water runs through the holes in the roof of the house, which Fufa's family shares with another. The children complain of the cold, while mud renders the alleys criss-crossing the camp impassable. "This is not a good place to bring up my son, but we have little option," Fufa said. According to a recent academic study on the people of Kaliti, the trauma they have suffered is extreme. Some 70 percent almost died of thirst on the long march from Eritrea. Nine out of 10 lost all their possessions. One-third saw a member of their family die. But Lewis Aptekar, an American who led the research and spent 18 months in Kaliti, said that despite the suffocating poverty and trauma they had endured, they were showing remarkable resilience. Fufa, like many of his counterparts, now struggles by on what meagre rations he can find. When the displaced people first arrived, each of them were receiving 500 grammes of grain a day -a quantity worth $50 over a period of a year. Everyday discarded objects become their precious personal possessions. Tariku Dejene, 18, wears rubber seals from oilcans as jewellery around her left wrist. Newspapers are pinned to the walls of her shack for decoration. Seven people share the hut she lives in. There are two beds. "Better to live here than on the streets," said Tariku, the mother of an 11-month old baby. She earns four birr (50 US cents) for an eight-hour day at a nearby coffee factory. Like many other inmates of the camp, she is fiercely protective of her home. "We have no alternative to this, so it is good to have something." Although Ethiopia’s emergency relief agency is providing money for families under a rehabilitation scheme, many believe it is not working. Under the scheme, run by the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), each family is provided with a one-off cash payment of up to $300 to help it find a new home. So far some 3,090 of the 17,000 IDPs have received the grant with just over a month and a half to go before they are thrown out. But many of the families leaving Kaliti – some 20 km from the city centre - who have been rehabilitated, return to the camp. Those in Kaliti estimate that half of those who received their rehabilitation are now back in the camp. COMMUNITY SPIRIT Often they are too embarrassed to admit receiving the help and then returning to the squalor. But it is clear that in the last decade Kaliti has become their home. A strong community has developed. Families help each other, and committees have been set up to effectively organise Kaliti and liaise with the DPPC. It is often the sense of community that drives them back. "We are fearful to leave," said Fufa, who sits on the three-member Kaliti committee. "The money they give us will run out and we will end up on the streets with nothing. What we have here is not much, but we are safe. It saddens me to bring my son up here, but I am concerned about what will happen to us when we are told to leave." The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) has condemned the decision to close down the camps. "Their future lives are at stake and quite uncertain," it said. "The government has taken such a measure without making any preparations and without taking the rainy season into consideration." "Inasmuch as the government shoulders the responsibility to safeguard the welfare and wellbeing of its citizens, it has the obligation to facilitate conditions under which these displaced people would get permanent shelters and be in a position to lead their own lives," EHRCO added.