Transcript - Orphans of Conflict

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: When we would go to schools, we’d ask people, “What’s your favorite thing?” And they’d say, “This pencil is my favorite thing.” And they’re sitting on the ground. You know, there’s no chalkboard. The class is being taught by writing into the sand with a stick.

 

MARK SOMMER: From Kenya to the Congo, Palestine to New Orleans, we’ve all seen them on the nightly news, clutching their belongings in a plastic sack, queuing up for food, looking for a few feet of bare earth to lay their heads on for the night.

 

MARK MALAN: Two square meters per individual of living space, one latrine for four or five hundred people — the conditions are really, really poor. And the people are spooked.

 

MARK SOMMER: Their faces bear the emotional scars of searing uncertainty, like those stark black and white photos from the Depression era dustbowl, haunting expressions of dispossession and displacement, the bewildered gaze of the lost and abandoned. These are not refugees. They are, to use the coldly bureaucratic acronym, IDPs — internally displaced persons.

 

Since in their exodus from their homes they haven’t crossed an international border, they don’t qualify for international aid of the kind that refugees receive. Only now after decades of displacement is the predicament of these internal refugees gaining attention from the international aid and development community. The U.N. and international relief agencies are seeking ways to adapt their services to meet the special needs of these people, focusing their assistance where it’s most needed — physical security, food and shelter, basic education, job training, and employment.

 

Hi, I’m Mark Sommer. Join us this week on A World of Possibilities as we follow the path of a 15 year-old Columbia girl driven from her native village, and find out what’s being done to help millions like her worldwide.

 

Donald Steinberg, former U.S. ambassador to Angola, which has seen four million internally displaced persons, calls them orphans of conflict.

 

DONALD STEINBERG: And you just think to yourself that there’s no international watchdog there. There’s no international agency as there would be if these people had simply crossed international borders.

 

MARK SOMMER: He and our other guests this hour will explore the plight of such people in the course of this program, and some innovate solutions. But first we start with the true story of one such family driven from their rural home by the long running civil war in Columbia.

 

MILEINES: I was born in Lazabara(?) Catatumbo on April 20, 1991. My birth was registered in Preebu(?). And now I’m 15. I live with my mother and my three brothers. The oldest is 18. Then comes my sister who’s 16, then me, then my brother who’s 13. There’s nobody else.

 

I remember that when the arrijas(?) arrived, they showed my sister and me how to use pistols. And then my sister cried because we wouldn’t let her fire one. They told us that when we were grown up, we were around 14 years-old, they would take us with them. That’s what my mom said too.

 

Meanwhile, we spent time with a young...(inaudible) woman who showed us how to load the pistol and that kind of stuff. What I remember from Lazabara is that when we were playing and my mother was selling refrigerators, my mother was told that we have to leave town because she had been accused of being arrijas commander’s lover, or something like that. I don't remember. My mother finished selling the refrigerators, and we got ready. And my mother said, “Trust in god,” that if we awake alive, we will leave tomorrow. So we got everything ready. We put lots of underwear in a bag, but the bag was left behind on top of the stereo.

 

MARK SOMMER: This is the true story of Mileines, as told by an actor, because it would be too dangerous for her to tell it publicly herself or use her real name. But these are her words, spoken to interviewers who are also displaced persons, and took part in a project to let IDPs speak out and have their voices heard, both nationally and internationally.

 

MILEINES: It happened fast. At around 5:00, we got up to wash and leave. We left everything behind. We said, “Mom, but why? Nothing is happening.” And my mom said, “Because I’ve been told that they’re going to-- from house to house, killing family by family, and that we should leave before they kill us. So I’d rather leave before they kill me, because you are too little to stay here by yourself.”

 

We arrived in Cucuta(?) and then went to Santos(?) in Santa Mer(?) where my Nona lives. My mother went to speak to the mayor there so he would help us. She told him we were displaced. Then my grandfather gave us a room. That is what I remember from when I was eight or nine years-old.

 

MARK SOMMER: We’ll return to Mileines and her family in a moment. Her story, like those of others in similar circumstances, but far disparate locations around the world, is what researchers at the IDP Voices Projects in Geneva, who recorded this testimony, call hidden histories.

 

Fearing reprisals, few IDPs agree to tell their stories. And the painful nature of their experience makes it all the more difficult to reveal and reflect on what they’ve had to endure. Their very namelessness, both as individuals and as a category, make them among the most voiceless and invisible people on Earth.

 

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, based in New York, advocates on behalf of those uprooted in their own countries by war. Let’s turn to Jenny Pearlman-Robinson, a protection program officer at the Women’s Commission, for a better understanding of this nameless category of people.

 

Tell me, why have we not found an evocative term for 25 million people around the world who are caught in this situation of having no-- they’re essentially homeless and orphans of conflict, as Donald Steinberg said?

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: You’re right. It’s absolutely a challenge. I know for the Women’s Commission, we oftentimes, in our general publications, refer to displaced people as refugees. Because you’re right — people have an image of people living in camps and what refugees mean. I mean, even with Katrina, if you remember, they were referred to as refugees.

 

But in fact, that’s not correct. They were in The United States. It’s their country. It’s their government. They were internally displaced from the hurricane. They weren’t refugees.

 

MARK SOMMER: But it’s not as if it’s a new category. We’ve had-- World War II for example had huge numbers of internally displaced refugees, internally displaced persons. What is it? Does it speak to something broader about this giant hole in our consciousness, our awareness?

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: I think it’s also that, as you said, there’s a particular mandate for refugees. I mean, when people cross an international border, there’s a sense that they no longer have their own government to take care of them. And so I think perhaps there’s a sense of helplessness, and there’s a sense of, somebody needs to intervene. And the system, the international community I guess has a more defined role.

 

But when it comes to people who are displaced within their own country, it becomes extremely complicated because, for one, there’s issues of state sovereignty. I mean, they’re still in their own country. The government is presumably still responsible for them. Yet as we know in conflict situations, oftentimes the government is, at best, unable to provide for them, and oftentimes at war is unwilling to provide for them.

 

MARK SOMMER: Yes. And in addition, sometimes the government is actually one of the abusers of such people-- 

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Perpetrators.

 

MARK SOMMER: Perpetrators.

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. You have a situation like a Sudan where the government is-- exactly, has been perpetrating violence and has been-- and an obstacle to international assistance. And so it becomes extremely tricky in this case of state sovereignty and rights within its own borders, and international interventions. And then also the fact that there isn’t one agency in the U.N. system that has this responsibility that’s able to intervene on their behalf like we have with refugees.

 

So traditionally, it’s been more of an ad hoc response. And I think the U.N. system and the international community is really trying to move towards much more of a coordinated response and an accountable response where the buck actually will stop with someone, versus, you know, internally displaced people falling through the cracks.

 

MARK SOMMER: Now, many of these internally displaced persons are women and children. Is it-- What proportion is it? Because after all, many of the men have either been forced to go off to war or have volunteered. So many of them are gone from these communities during the war. Does that mean that in the end, a larger proportion are women and children?

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Yes. It’s estimated that seventy to eighty percent of people who are internally displaced are women, children, and young people. And for the reasons that you said, the men oftentimes are fighting in other places. And oftentimes, the men have been killed.

 

MILEINES: Then, we traveled to my aunt’s house in Labrica(?) beyond Los Santos(?). My aunt welcomed us in, but some of her daughters were terrible. They told us, “Go parthenon(?).” And my mom said, “But what’s that?” So my mom asked some woman, and the woman said, “A parthenon is where woman go to save themselves.” And my mom said, “I might just have to.” My mom didn’t give up. She talked to the president of the community action committee. And the committee found us a farm to stay on. We went there while my aunt stayed behind with her girls.

 

The farm was where the paramilitaries killed people and buried them. One day I was with my dog looking for a place to go to the bathroom when I saw a bone in a pile of dirt, face bone. And I ignored it. Then the air filled with a rotten smell. My mom said to some guy, “But it smells like something rotten over there.” And he said, “Of course. A few days ago, they killed some guy and buried him.”

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Oftentimes, they’re in urban areas where they are dispersed with relatives or extended family members. Or they’re living grouped together in squatter areas around urban areas. So they’re more difficult oftentimes to identify, and therefore for difficult to access and provide services.

 

MARK SOMMER: And when they are left in these cities or villages, and the men have gone away, how do they cope with that during these conflicts?

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: It’s extremely difficult, and it’s also extremely varied. Some internally displaced persons are living in camps where there is some international presence, there is some protection, and there are some services. But generally the services that are available are the very basic necessities. And that’s food, water, shelter, and health, which are critical needs. And in situations sometimes those are available.

 

But what oftentimes is not available and traditionally hasn’t been seen as a critical need is education. And that’s what children and women have a hard time accessing. And from our work on the ground, what we’ve heard from countless women and children in many different conflict situations is that that’s a priority for them.

 

MARK SOMMER: Take us into a particular situation that you’ve known well in one or another zone of conflict.

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Sure. Well, I was most recently in northern Uganda, which is in its 20th year of conflict, the 19th, 20th year of conflict. And in northern Uganda, you have an estimated 1.7 million people who are displaced and who right now are living in large internally displaced persons camps. So they are extremely crowded. They are basically plastic huts and thatched-roof huts that are just one on top of another. There’s no privacy. Disease is rampant. In fact, they find that more people die from disease and other conflict related causes than from the actual fighting.

 

And the young people there have very little access to programs and services and things to do. And it’s particularly the case for the older children, for the adolescents. An estimated 5% of young people have access to secondary school, to our equivalent of high school in northern Uganda.

 

MARK SOMMER: So what do they do with their days?

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: They’re honestly extremely idle. I mean, I met with so many young people who were hungry for an education. It made me think back to when I was in school or seeing children in school today and thinking, if they only knew how hungry these young people are to go to school. When we would go to schools, we’d ask people, “What’s your favorite thing?” And they’d say, “This pencil is my favorite thing.”

 

And they’re sitting on the ground. You know, there’s no chalkboard. The class is being taught by writing into the sand with a stick. There’s no benches. The classes for the younger children have as many as a hundred children or more in each class. And the teachers are teaching double shifts where they have groups in the morning, groups in the afternoon. And they’re not getting paid regularly and adequately. So there’s countless challenges.

 

When it comes to the older children, they’re looking for work. They’re looking for anything to do to survive. And oftentimes, this puts them in danger. Oftentimes they actually resort to situations that make them extremely vulnerable and risk exploitation. You know, I met with young women who said, “I’m trying so hard to get a job. And oftentimes I’m told, in order to get this job, I have to sleep with the big man.” And they say, “We know what that means. We know about HIV/AIDS. But we don’t know what to do. We have to survive. We have to feed our family.”

 

Because oftentimes, these young people are the heads of households. They are the breadwinners and they have younger siblings who are dependent upon them.

 

MARK SOMMER: In a moment, we’ll continue our conversation with Jenny Pearlman-Robinson of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. And we’ll hear more of Mileines’ story. I’m Mark Sommer and this is A World of Possibilities. Stay with us.

 

ANNOUNCER: This is A World of Possibilities. If you wish to contact us, please direct emails to info@AWorldOfPossibilities.com.

 

MILEINES: In 2004, the president of the republic announced that anyone with farms in Lazabara should return because everything is okay there now. My mom said to us, “Come everyone. They’re saying everything’s okay. Let’s go.” And we cried, “Yes! Yes!”

 

So bought tickets back and left as if we were going on vacation. It was July. Everything was abandoned. But when we arrived, people seemed unhappy as if we had been raised from the dead. The church was like a pigsty. People gave us everything — forks, spoons. One day the paramilitary commander gave us mattresses, lots of food and clothes. The parish(?) told my mother, “As long as you’re not mixed up in anything, it’s safe.”

 

Then two guys in uniform arrived and said something to my mom, like, “See? The house is falling apart. Marry Dimona(?) to Pallijo(?) or something like that, and have the dark-haired one marry me. Then we will fix up the house for you.” But my mother said, “No. I’d rather the house come tumbling down. I won’t marry off my daughters. If they get married, it will be because they want to get married, not because they’re forced.” My mom said, “Don’t talk to them anymore.”

 

When we went to play at the beach next to the school, we would only use half of it. You couldn’t play on the other half because there were mines there and it was fenced off with sticks.” We would be playing like normal and the Army watching that nobody crossed to the other side of the field. After that time, everyone knew people who were killed, assassinated around there. But mines? People began to say to each other, “Mines? Nah. That’s screwed up.”

 

MARK SOMMER: If you just joined us, we’re speaking with Jenny Pearlman‑Robinson, protection program officer for children and youth at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.

 

So you’ve focused in on education for people in these kinds of situations. Give us an example a fairly successful initiative in one place or another where you were able to establish schools. And tell us how it affected the community and the families.

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Well, ironically, the example that comes to mind is in Darfur of all places to give a success story or hopeful example. When I was there, the situation was actually that you had more children in school than ever before. And the reason why was because of the historical neglect, that so few children had access to school before the conflict. And now that you had more than two million people living in internally displaced persons camps, oftentimes they had access to school for the very first time. They had a school nearby when they didn’t before. Girls who traditionally had so many chores to do — tending the land, the livestock — that was no longer the situation, because they had to leave their land and they didn’t have the same chores and responsibilities.

 

So you actually had a situation where there was more children in school. And this was in 2006, so this statistic might be date, but it was 28% at that time. So, again, no cause for celebration, but more in school. And when we-- We met-- We visited a number of schools and different types of school settings. We visited the equivalent of preschools, early childhood, safe spaces. And children were there and they were learning about the importance of washing their hands and what that meant. And they were learning, you know, their basic ABCs.

 

And then we visited a teacher training center where older youth and adults were volunteering to be trained and to teach younger children. And we asked them, “With all of your responsibilities, with everything you need to be doing just to survive, why is it that you volunteer to teach?” And they said, “These children, they’re our brothers and our sisters. We have to help them. We have to ensure that there is some future for the next generation.”

 

We also visited adult literacy classes, where again, women, for the first time, were having access to basic, basic literacy and numeracy. And we asked the adults, “What do you think about education?” And they said, “If we had education, we would have been fighting with pencils and pens. We would not be in the situation we are today. We would not be fighting with guns.”

 

MARK SOMMER: There is a significant body of research that’s beginning to show that the best investment that can be made in sustainable development is to educate young girls.

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: You’re right. There is a wealth of research, including by The World Bank and others, that show that one of the best investments a country can make is educating women and girls, that educated women end up having healthier families, that they know how to care for their children, they know about good health and hygiene, that they’re more likely that their children are going to go to school, and therefore, opportunities are increased for employment. They find that HIV/AIDS rates are lower that-- when women are educated, that they know how to protect themselves, that they’re more empowered to either say no or that one must wear a condom. That there’s also been studies that shows that there’s better governance and less corruption when you have more educated women.

 

So the studies really do show an association with enormous benefits to the individuals, to the families, but also to the communities.

 

MILEINES: “Ma, we have to go to the soldiers barracks to do research for our homework.” And she said, “Okay.” At that time, my mother called me Dark One: “Dark One, take some home-laid eggs with you and sell them so we can buy some food for supper.” My brother waited for me in the house. Then along came Johnny, a man with a pick-up truck who was said to be a arrija fighter. I don't know. But I had always ridden with him as if it was no big deal.

 

We drove along and I said, “Johnny, stop here. I have to get out. I have to take the eggs and sell them for my mom. She will scold me because I didn’t sell them.” And he said, “Don’t get out Mileines. Don’t get out. Something will happen to you.” “What’s going to happen to me? Nothing’s going to happen.” And he said, “Don’t get out, because it’s going to be your mom who sorrows, your mom who suffers. No. Don’t get out.” But I said, “Stop or I’ll scream.” Then he said, “Okay, but remember I told you.”

 

Then I got out and he drove off. I stood there thinking, “What could happen to me?” I got the basket of eggs and I was looking for a place to go to the bathroom when I heard a car. I crossed over into a ...(inaudible) by the side of the road, climbed over the separating wires, put the eggs to one side, and squatted down to urinate. When the car had passed, I put my underwear up and on, turning around. Woo! An explosion.

 

What had happened? Was this a dream? I looked at myself and I’m wounded. I touch my face and it’s bloody. And I say to myself, “Oh, my feet.” I remember the soldier who had stepped on a mine and lost his foot. And when I looked down, I saw that I was missing the toes of my right foot. I was in the hole, all rigid, and I didn’t feel anything. I said to myself, “This is nothing but a dream.” I looked at the foot that was missing its toes and then I looked at the eggs. I wasn’t afraid or anything. And I began to laugh because not a single egg had cracked.

 

And that was the funniest thing for me. I said to myself, “Ooh, how’s that?” And I remember when I climbed over the wire again, I began to feel weird. I started to walk, to walk normally and didn’t feel anything, like when your foot’s asleep. It’s like somebody could stab you there and you wouldn’t feel anything. I prayed saying, “Uncle Juan(?), please don’t let me die. Look, I’m still young. I want to know how my future will be, how my children will be, my husband.” That’s how I began, how I prayed to my beautiful Virgin and to my god. I didn’t feel anything. I prayed and then I shouted, “Help! Help me, please. I don’t want to die.”

 

JENNY PEARLMAN-ROBINSON: Education, in fact, should be seen and can be a lifesaving intervention, a lifesaving strategy in these situations. Because if you think about it, if children are idle, if they have nothing to do, they’re more likely to be exploited, to be abused, to be recruited into a fighting force.

 

But if they’re at school, they actually have some type of adult supervision. They might also have some type of physical structure that keeps them somewhere and safe for a period of time. There’s also the emotional wellbeing. They’re in situations where their lives have been completely uprooted. They’ve witnessed horrific atrocities. And yet to be at school provides children with a sense of normalcy, that there’s this hope for the future, that, okay, things will get better.

 

I visited schools where you would see drawings by students. And the teachers would show me the drawings and they’d say, “These were the drawings at the beginning.” And there are pictures of bombs and people fighting and blood and people dying. And then you see over the course of the time, they would show me pictures. And these are the more recent pictures. And they’re pictures of flowers and houses and animals. And you really see how there has been some type of healing that has been taken-- that has taken place.

 

We’re not talking about displacement for a semester or displacement for a year. But actually for refugees, the average that refugees are displaced today are 17 years. So it’s a generation. We can’t wait till fighting ends and peace agreements are signed to start building schools and put children in schools.

 

MILEINES: When we arrive at the hospital in Cucuta, the doctors begin to talk to my mom and they begin to take off my clothes, telling me, “Mileines, we’re going to take your clothes off because we have to operate on you.” “Everything by my scarf, the scarf,” I told them. “Keep the scarf for me. Don’t throw my scarf away,” oh, because the scarf I have is a keepsake. So my mom didn’t throw the scarf away, but they threw everything else away.

 

Then my mom said, “My child, they are going to amputate your leg.” I said, “Yes, mom.” Then when my mom had gone, I lifted up my head a little and, like, 30 doctors were looking at my foot. And they began to say, “We’ll have to start from here.” “No, from here.” They all began to put their hands on my leg where they thought they should cut it.

 

So I said to myself, “Why so many doctors. It was only my foot. Why so many?” I was talking to myself like that when a nurse came and gave me an injection. And soon I was asleep.

 

MARK SOMMER: The true story of Mileines, the girl made homeless and then disabled by civil war in her native nation of Colombia. This program, Orphans of Conflict: The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons, is underwritten by the Compton Foundation. I’m Mark Sommer, and this is A World of Possibilities, distributed by the WFMT Radio Network.

 

ANNOUNCER: You’re listening to A World of Possibilities. For more information about this and other programs, and to access the full interviews with some of our guests, please visit our website at AWorldOfPossibilities.com.

 

MARK SOMMER: It’s A World of Possibilities, and I’m Mark Sommer. Today we’re focusing on the predicament of a certain category of refugees, some 25 million of them worldwide, who are so underserved and overlooked that they don’t even have a name, just a stunningly impersonal acronym that sounds like an Iraqi insurgent’s improvised explosive device. They’re called IDPs, or internally displaced persons.

 

Torn from their homes, largely by civil or international war, these dispossessed people move from relative to relative, if they’re lucky enough to have some. Or they live at the mercy of strangers, or simply huddle wherever they can find a vacant few feet of soil. Without resources, without a collective voice to represent them or an identity to call their own, they struggle just to return their families to a normal life in circumstances of extreme upheaval that can sometimes last for decades.

 

Mark Malan, a peace-building program officer at Refugees International, began his career as a soldier defending Apartheid in South Africa. But in a remarkable personal evolution, he’s since become a committed advocate for people displaced within their own countries. To describe the nature of his work and what he’s seen, Mark Malan joins us now from Washington, D.C.

 

MARK MALAN: People and families that are displaced return to a village which is not yet secure, or displaced yet again, or displaced from established IDP camps. And this is very typical of the situation. It’s ongoing in the North Kivu Province of DR Congo.

 

MARK SOMMER: Well, tell us a little bit about that region, what it’s like and how it happens to be a focus of so much concern around internally displaced people.

 

MARK MALAN: Well, I think the Congo came into focus by April of 2003. The International Rescue Committee were estimating the Congo-wide death toll since the beginning of 1999 at between 3.1 and 4.7 million people. This was war‑related deaths coming from the start of the conflict in late 1997, the incursion, the takeover of government from Mobutu by the forces of Laurent Kabila.

 

But an often overlooked statistic is the estimated 3.6 million Congolese that had been displaced by that stage. And while there’s been returns throughout the rest of the country such that there are no longer 3.6 million internally displaced Congolese, but just over 1.2 million, nearly a million of those are in the Kivus, North and South Kivu, which are geographically really small provinces.

 

And what is really disconcerting is the amount of displacement that’s happened over the past year after Congo went past the phase of having a transitional government, had nation-wide elections at the national and at the provincial level, had a president, Joseph Kabila, installed as a democratically elected government. But due to ongoing conflict, despite the presence of this huge U.N. mission, the largest peacekeeping force deployed in the world, people are becoming displaced. There were hostilities. The government launched a campaign against the recalcitrant forces of General Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu. And we saw displacement figures going up, about 170,000 forced to flee from August, 2007 to December, 60,000 people in the second week of December alone. So this is displacement on a huge scale within a country that is supposed to have been through a transitional process of war to peace.

 

MARK SOMMER: So bring this down to the scale of individual families so that listeners can gain a sense of how these mass movements actually affect individuals. In this Kivu region, I imagine that it’s extremely poor to begin with, and that people have very few possessions, but that they have been rooted there for a very long time, many generations. Is that right?

 

MARK MALAN: It’s extremely poor if we judge the area, the region, the eastern Congo in terms of developed world values and what we’re used to. But it is one of the most beautiful parts of Africa. It is mineral rich, potentially richer than many other areas of the world, certainly most countries in Western Europe. The agricultural potential is fantastic. It rains for half of the year, a very temperate climate. And actually those areas where there is security or stability, the FDLR, for example, and the rebellious forces of Nkunda, where they’ve taken over agricultural land, are producing food and exporting this to Rwanda to feed the burgeoning Rwandan population.

 

So potentially the area’s extremely rich. But having said that, yes, due to insecurity, due to massive displacement over more than a decade now, people are extremely poor. They are dependent on World Food Program and many other operational NGOs for the necessities of life, for food and for shelter. Many are living in abysmal conditions in what we call spontaneous IDP settlements with up to twenty, thirty thousand people, in and around Goma, for example, camped on volcanic rock with banana leaf shelters, two square meters per individual of living space, one latrine for four, five hundred people — the conditions are really, really poor.

 

And the people are spooked. Artillery fire, even from so-called friendly forces or the government forces that are supposed to protect them will(?) get(?) them(?) on(?) the(?) run(?) as happened November of last year when I was down in Goma. A couple of shots from mortar, few rounds of mortar fire, and you get 20,000 people leaving the camp and running towards the town. So the conditions are terrible. And there are no conditions for resettlement. Some people who are living in refugee camps or with hosts families in villages away from their homes try and return to their lands to grow their own food to supplement whatever rations they’re getting from World Food Program and other agencies. But increasingly they haven’t been able to return to their lands because of this ongoing conflict between the government forces and forces of Nkunda.

 

MARK SOMMER: So in some cases, are they returning to destroyed homes and ravaged crops?

 

MARK MALAN: I don't think there’s been so much wonton destruction of homes as structures, because the structures are pretty rudimentary. I witnessed in October returns in Liberia of people who had been similarly displaced, refugees in Guinea, and had returned after ten years. And there, the enemy was not the destruction by LURD and MODEL and other rebel forces, but the encroachment of the jungle on the agricultural space which they had cleared.

 

So if land is allowed to lie fallow for long enough, there’s a problem of clearing and planting again. And it’s about a two-year lead time before an individual person, farmer, can become self-sustaining in terms of food.

 

MARK SOMMER: I guess-- You alluded in the beginning to huge displacements that happened, say, during World War II, and for that matter, an enormous historic displacement when India split into two countries, India and Pakistan, and millions and millions of people migrating in new directions. And we know that eventually people resettled. But also we know by the instability in a place like Pakistan that it doesn’t necessarily mean that it settles down in a really stable way.

 

MARK MALAN: You know, there’s not many Marshall plans going around for Africa or Asia or anywhere else. But to me, it’s a no-brainer. Without basic security, the respect for human rights, the basis of rule of law, without prosecuting people for mass rape, when government forces are plundering their own people, the very displaced people in villages they’re supposed to protect, then we can’t really talk of innovative solutions. What we’re talking about is basic human decency.

 

MARK SOMMER: Donald Steinberg was once a deputy press secretary for President Clinton. He moved from the West Wing to a very different environment as U.S. ambassador to Angola, where he witnessed firsthand the aftermath of civil war and the plight of several million Angolans displaced within their own country.

 

DONALD STEINBERG: I was ambassador to Angola following the signature of a peace agreement that ended, we hoped permanently, a war that had gone on for about two decades, and had, in fact, driven about four million people from their homes. And we’re talking about a country with a population of only 12 million. So one out of every three people had been driven from their homes by the conflict. Most of them did not cross international borders. And so they were not entitled to the support that The United Nations and other international groups provide.

 

And in fact, they were remaining within Angolan territory, which means that they were technically internally displaced people. What that meant was that they had no legal right to support. They had very few international human rights laws to protect them. And even more importantly, they were viewed in part as the enemy by both the government of Angola and the rebel movement. Our principle efforts during that time was to try to provide relief and safety and education and housing to those individuals. But in reality, we’re talking about a very poor country that is just emerging from civil war. And the millions of people in those squatters camps on the outskirts of the capital cities or in forests basically got no assistance whatsoever.

 

And the other very strong difficulty is that the peace process itself didn’t really account for them. The peace process was largely a process that worked between the men with the guns on both sides. And the victims, or the survivors of the violence were the ones who really needed the peace process to work for them.

 

MARK SOMMER: You call it a cynical cancer at the heart of a peace process. Why did you exclude, deliberately exclude internally displaced persons from the Angolan peace process?

 

DONALD STEINBERG: Well, it wasn’t just internally displaced people who were excluded. It was women’s organizations. It was labor movements. It was academics. And again, the philosophy is, you bring them in with the guns to the process and you try to solve it through them. The difficulty again is that you’re creating a situation where justice and peace are juxtaposed against each other. Because indeed, to say to the population, “We’re going to forgive anybody who has committed any crime in the context of a war, even rape, even murder,” is creating a situation where the rule of law reestablishment is almost impossible.

 

We’re looking at a situation in Colombia where there have been two and a half million people driven from their homes for the past 40 years in the fight between the government and the FARC and the ELN. You know, this has been simply called La Violencia. And that situation also brings out another concept, which is that the individuals who are generally internally displaced are generally the marginalized parts of that society. They’re individuals who cannot exercise their rights. They’re individuals who come from small ethnic groups or from disadvantaged minorities. And then once you take away their identity by taking away their homes, taking away essentially their access to health and education facilities, you make them even more vulnerable.

 

ANNOUNCER: This is A World of Possibilities. If you wish to purchase a CD of this program, please write to info@worldofpossibilities.com. This program is distributed by the WFMT Radio Network.

 

MARK SOMMER: If you’re just joining us, we’re speaking with Donald Steinberg, vice president for Multilateral Affairs at the International Crisis Group.

 

You know, for example, there is the problem of ex-combatants and what to do about them when they come home from war. Because they have guns, are more likely to be-- their concerns are more likely to be addressed sooner.

 

DONALD STEINBERG: Well, it’s even worse than that, because you have situations, for example, where men are demobilized from both sides, the government sides, the rebel sides. And then they return to homes that, in fact, have learned to live without them. These men have been committed to their military forces for years and years. In many cases, they may have been kidnapped and forced into service. And they return to communities that are largely controlled by internally displaced people who have returned back to their homes without having committed the crimes of war, and primarily by women.

 

And then these men realize that they have no roles in that society. And so what we frequently see is an incredible situation of domestic violence, of rape, of alcohol and drug abuse. We have situations of massive amounts of divorce and social displacement. And it’s almost as if the end of a formal civil war brings new violence against those very victims of that conflict.

 

One other situation that was really horrendous in Angola — we decided that we needed, as quickly as possible, to get the internally displaced people back to their homes. And one of the problems was that there were about a million land mines planted by a dozen different armies throughout the context of the civil war. And so we decided we would bring in commercial de-miners to clear the roads and to get these people back to their homes. And we persuaded many of them to go home very quickly.

 

The problem was that we had never focused on the fact that in their villages, mines had been planted as well. And there were mines in the fields and there were mines around the water supplies and there were mines in the forests. And so essentially these people returned home. They then, in most cases, the men sent the women out to till the fields or collect the firewood or get the water. And we saw a rash of people blowing their legs off or even dying from land mines.

 

And the biggest problem there was that we hadn’t ever asked the internally displaced people themselves or the women themselves, you know, “What do you think you’re going to find when you return home?” Because they knew that these land mines were planted. And that sort of systematic exclusion of internally displaced people, women, civil society in general keeps so much valuable information out of the hands of the people who are trying to implement the peace process, that it’s simply counterproductive.

 

MARK SOMMER: You said you spent a year traveling around the world to visit with internally displaced communities in many nations. Did you come back from it with-- in despair or in determination that something could and should be done?

 

DONALD STEINBERG: A little of each, actually. The despair came when I realized that these people are indeed the orphans of conflict. And you just think to yourself that there’s no international watchdog there. There’s no international agency as there would be if these people had simply crossed international borders. Then you despair.

 

But when you see the courage of these individuals, the father who says, “All I want is a plot of land. I just want to raise my kids away from this place. All I need is a little bit of support,” and then you watch advocates within the international humanitarian community who are sacrificing everything to be in those communities to try to help these individuals, and then you see people within the United Nations systems and within The United States at our Agency For International Development or the Bureau of Populations, Refugees, and Migration who have dedicated their lives to trying to improve the stature of these individuals, and then you see U.N. negotiators who are finally getting it, who are finally realizing that unless you incorporate these individuals into these processes, the processes are going nowhere, then you start to say, “Well, maybe there’s a possibility that this is going to turn around.”

 

The difficulty is, we’re dealing with 25 million people who have been driven from their homes in these situations. And we can’t move quickly enough to solve them.

 

MILEINES: The most difficult thing for my family is that I lost my foot, though I’m as cheerful as if nothing had ever happened. My mom feels sad. She cries. And I tell her, “But mom, don’t cry. Thanks to god, I’m fine. It was just a foot. Just imagine that nothing ever happened. Mom, don’t cry.” Then we start talking normally, like I’m talking now. I cheer her up. Instead of her helping me, I help her. I help my family by being happy. I tell my god that I want to have a good husband. But I don’t want him to be like those guys who beat women these days, that he be good. Because with all our experience, I deserve a husband who’s good to me and treats me well. That’s what my mom says, too.

 

I imagine that in 20 years, I will have finished my studies, that we will have good jobs and a place in society, and that I will be married. I imagine me and my husband and my kids living well, and my brothers, too. That we don’t have to work on the street, that we don’t have to beg our neighbors for food, that with the jobs we have, we won’t have to ask anybody for anything. That’s what I imagine in 20 years time.

 

MARK SOMMER: Dreams of the dispossessed. What we’ve heard today, in both its individual agony and its collective calamity is another tragic outcome of the collateral damage inflicted by civil and international wars. An election goes awry in Kenya, the candidates refuse to settle. And within a few days, a quarter of a million people lose their homes to wander the ravaged landscape without refuge or sanctuary.

 

What makes this particular problem unusual is that it’s so ubiquitous and yet so invisible. We may think it’s confined to places like Africa and Latin America. But thousands of former residents of New Orleans remained bivouacked with family in FEMA trailers or elsewhere far from home, years after the flood. It’s our problem, not just theirs.

 

What then can we do about it? Perhaps the first step is to acknowledge that it’s there, that these 25 million people matter, that they deserve our attention and care as much as those refugees who happen to cross international borders in their flight from conflict. Give them a name that reflects their importance. And give them a voice a peace negotiations, where, as Donald Steinberg says, men with guns forgive other men with guns for crimes committed against powerless civilians. It’s the least we can do for people who, through no act of their own, end up in a purgatory of displacement and dispossession. For indeed, as the song goes, there but for fortune go you or I.

 

I’m Mark Sommer, and this has been A World of Possibilities. Thanks for listening.

 

ANNOUNCER: You’ve been listening to A World of Possibilities with host Mark Sommer. For more information about this and other programs, and to access the full interviews with some of our guests, please visit our website at AWorldOfPossibilities.com. The production engineers are “Tofu” Mike Schwartz and Matt Fiddler, associate producer Naima Didi(?), senior producer Greg--

 

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