Spontaneous returnees facing difficult hurdles

Refugees coming back under a formal programme from the Republic of the Congo, and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and Namibia are aided by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But many more - the so-called spontaneous returnees - have struggled home on their own since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002. In recent months their passage has been hampered by the rainy season, which has rendered many roads impassable and increased the ever-present threat of landmines. Just crossing the border back to Angola can be the biggest challenge facing returning refugees. "They are harassed at the border, robbed of their limited possessions and often forced to pay a bribe to pass through. The bribe can be quite high - they have to leave behind money or livestock, or both. There have also been some reports of sexual harassment against women," said one senior humanitarian official. Once the spontaneous returnees arrive home - to places they may not have seen for decades - their lives rarely improve much, with many not signed up to organised reintegration programmes. "They arrive in Angola and they don't receive the same kind of benefits and assistance as those on the assisted voluntary repatriation programme. These are the people who are most difficult to assist – they are the most vulnerable," the official said. Almost three decades of civil conflict in Angola left around half a million refugees scattered through the region, and 4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Government figures show that around 3.5 million people, comprising the internally displaced persons, demobilised soldiers and their families, and former refugees, have already come back to their places of origin. The conflict devastated roads, schools and hospitals, and for those Angolans who chose to remain, life has been tough too. "When the hundreds of thousands of IDPs [internally displaced persons] and ex-combatants go back to their communities, they can often find people who stayed put, who are in a just as bad or even worse state of destitution than they are. That could create a potential for conflict," said Douglas Steinberg, the country director of the humanitarian NGO, CARE. Prior to the end of the war, around 70 percent of refugees and IDPs fell within the legal framework established for their assisted return. But that proportion has now changed, because many people are flooding back without waiting for the government or the humanitarian community to put mechanisms in place, according to the UN consolidated appeal to donors for 2004. The more difficult they are to locate, the harder it is to help them. "The problem only began after the peace agreement was signed and people started going home. We had to do identification, but we didn't have enough resources to serve everyone. We had to rely on the Soba [traditional community leader] to identify the beneficiaries. As a result, we left out a lot of people," Steinberg said. "There were threats, and probably a fair amount of witchcraft – which affects people here as seriously as pulling out a gun – between those who benefited and those who were excluded," he said. Already, there have been reports of returnees going back to their land, only to find that others are working it. In a country where land rights are not clearly defined or equitable, this could spark social conflict if it is not tightly controlled by the authorities. "There is a problem, in that the most productive lands in some provinces are controlled by powerful individuals who are fencing it off and using it for themselves, and preventing poorer people from cultivating it. There is some discrimination," said the humanitarian official. "The legal framework specifies that each family has the right to one hectare of land but, in some cases, that right has not been respected," the official added. Strategies to deal with jealousies and rivalries between returning and existing populations have been largely successful, aid workers say. Repairing the country's battered health and education systems is Angola's number one priority, and will improve the lives of both returnees and existing populations. Angola has also learned from experience that labelling people as returnees can be a recipe for disaster. CARE prefers to identify vulnerable populations: for example, female-headed households, families with so-called high-dependence ratios, such as many children or elderly people, a few people of working age, those looking after handicapped people, and landmine victims. "We work with the community to define the most vulnerable groups, defining them according to household characteristics... and not just labelling people," Steinberg explained. The UN agrees. "The strategy we've chosen for 2004 is to try to target not the specific beneficiary groups, but the community as a whole: that's precisely to try to avoid this kind of [conflict] situation," said one UN source. The World Food Programme (WFP), which feeds almost 2 million hungry Angolans, has also tried not to separate the two groups. "We are trying as much as we can, once they start resettling in their areas of origin, to stop the distinction between returnees and the rest. After they return, we provide food to all vulnerable people," the WFP acting director, Oscar Sarroca, told IRIN. UN repatriation operations have been suspended until April or May because of the rainy season, but providing enough food for the next batch of returnees could present the humanitarian community with a serious challenge. Sarroca said a funding shortage was threatening some of WFP's emergency food aid. "The situation right now seems to be very complicated, particularly starting in May, when we'll have a serious problem with cereals." He added: "We'll need to decide which categories get priority with our resources. Returnees are still in a very difficult situation compared to other segments of the population." Angola, which Kallu Kalumiya, the former regional coordinator for UNHCR's Angolan repatriation programme, recently described as "a country on the move", still faces huge obstacles as it rebuilds after the conflict. But it is making some progress. "There are problems, but to be honest, for a country in a post-conflict situation, the problems of banditry and discrimination are not as huge as I would have expected," he said.