STOP PRESS
The crisis in the Horn of Africa has continued to command world attention. This month
e British government has announced a grant of £5.2 million for famine relief work being undertaken by voluntary agencies in the Sudan.
The size of emergency needs has seriously strained the resources of international agencies working in the area. For the first time in its history UNHCR is facing a financial crisis and has embarked on a cost cutting exercise. The axe has fallen particularly heavily on programmes of educational assistance to refugees.
In Sudan UNHCR's support for secondary level education is now limited to vocational and technical training and, with the exception of the refugee school in Kassala, no more students will be sponsored at academic secondary schools.
Assistance for higher education has virtually ceased. In 1985 only 22 new awards were made to Ugandan and Ethiopian refugee students in the Sudan, although UNHCR's Education Officer in Khartoum reports a caseload of 450 applications pending.
UNHCR has been the major provider of scholarship assistance to Ethiopian refugees, and the present cutback has dramatically increased the number of candidates seeking help from WUS.
The counselling workload of the WUS (Nairobi) Office has grown substantially. WUS (UK) has received a sudden spate of enquiries from Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan. More applications were received in November alone than in the whole of the period from January to October 1985, and an even larger number of requests for help arrived in December. Figures at mid-January confirm the upward trend in numbers seeking educational assistance elsewhere now that sources in the Sudan have dried up. qualifications of applicants range from those with the Ethiopian School Leaving Certificate to graduates seeking further training in health, agriculture and management studies.
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It has been impossible for WUS to respond to this flood of new requests, or to know where to refer candidates for assistance. Few agencies have a mandate to provide educational assistance, and all are over-subscribed.
The future of WUS' own small scholarship programme for Ethiopian refugees, funded by ODA since it began in 1977, is uncertain, and if the cuts proposed by the ODA for 1986/87 are implemented it will be impossible to make any new awards at all.
It is the view of WUS that this is not the appropriate moment to being winding down the programme. At the very least the present level of support should be maintained, and in view of the new needs described, it can be argued that the programme should be expanded to meet them and ODA support increased correspondingly.
The international community has responded with great generosity to the immediate every day needs of refugees in the Sudan. Long term assistance is also required to create a future.
January 1986