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Refugees:
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[BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD.] available. I should like to see us giving as much help as we possibly can to the refugees through the voluntary agencies. I am sure that that is the way in which we really would be able to conquer some of these problems. It is a very depressing fact that these problems continue to increase when, 25 years ago, we hoped very much that we had done something to eliminate the problem of refugees for ever. Alas, we did not realise what the wars, the quarrels and the political difficulties were going to be. We are now faced with something far worse than in 1960. I only hope that we shall all encourage everyone to do what they can to meet the existing problems in a new way; in the way suggested by many speakers in this debate.
4 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, not only am I very grateful to the noble Viscount for the subject of this debate this afternoon but I am most thankful that he won the ballot for this particular Wednesday, as it coincides with my return from a 10-day visit to the Sudan. Therefore, I feel better equipped to join in this debate. I visited the Sudan in my capacity as president of UNICEF in the United Kingdom. Not only did I go to see the health and water projects designed to focus effort on self-reliance and self-help, but I was able to see also something of the refugee camps both within the country and outside it. I will confine my remarks purely to the crisis within the Sudan.
At the outset, one should make a distinction between the refugees who are on the borders of the Sudan and those refugees from the drought areas within the Sudan who are now collected together in camps for displaced persons, usually in the urban areas. As regards the border camps, the latest estimate I have and I know that figures vary according to their source, and mine are not the same as those of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford-comes from UNICEF in Khartoum, and shows that on the eastern border of the Sudan, the camps contain 350,000 Ethiopians; in the west, 300,000 Chadians; and in the north, 124,000 Ugandans. The Sudanese Government anticipate that a further 150,000 Ethiopians will come to the border in the coming months. This means that the Sudanese Government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, assisted by the other relief agencies working in the Sudan, are attempting to keep alive well over 900,000 refugees on their borders.
So far as the crisis within the Sudan is concerned, it is estimated that as many as 4 million Sudanese people are affected by the drought and the failure of their last four harvests. Of these, the most seriously affected are those who mainly come from the nomadic tribes and who have left their traditional grazing areas in the Red Sea, Darfur and Kordofan provinces. They have congregated in camps, large and small, mainly situated around the urban areas, in their search for food and water and for fodder for their remaining livestock.
Although it is obviously very difficult to estimate the precise numbers of these people because they are constantly on the move, it is thought that in the official camps for displaced persons within the Sudan there are probably 500,000 people—but more like 1 million actually on the move within the country. The cruel
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irony, as has already been pointed out, is that however miserable the conditions may be in the border refugee camps, sometimes the people there are better off than the displaced Sudanese who are receiving help from local authorities and from the international relief workers, which in some cases is less good than that which the UNHCR is able to offer refugees on the borders.
I visited two camps for displaced persons. One was in the Omdurman area on the outskirts of Khartoum. It will be difficult for me ever to forget the pitiful sight of families congregated there and which their terrible destitution presented. They started arriving towards the end of last year, and a peak figure of 80,000 people was reported. They had lost their livestock on the way, either because they died or because they were sold. The selling prices of all livestock were absolutely rock bottom. A horse was worth only two Sudanese pounds at the time I was there. The women have sold their last pieces of silver jewellery and these people had virtually nothing.
Moreover, many of these people-especially the children and babies-were in a very weakened physical condition as a result of prolonged malnutrition and from the long journey many of them had made by road, by truck, or on foot to get to the camps. There is no doubt that the sight of destitute people who are bereft even of their own natural environment is the most poignant sight of all. These people had erected miserable shelters in the waste land on the outskirts of Khartoum and were left with absolutely nothing. A rescue operation to maintain for them even the most basic structure of life had been mounted by a great network of international relief agencies. On the day I was there, UNICEF had drilled a bore hole to provide a water supply; French women doctors from Médecins sans frontières were there distributing EEC food; and the Islamic African Relief Agency, which is very active in the Sudan, had set up their centre. One volunteer Sudanese doctor had set up his medical camp and treated nearly 5,000 children since they arrived. Despite all this, very many people, naturally, had died of starvation.
At another camp I visited outside the tiny Nile Province town of Atbara, there were many members of the Baja tribe who had been particularly affected by the drought in their usual grazing areas. They had congregated round the town and, again, were dependent on international relief and on the help and generosity of the people of the town. This, I found very surprising; that although the services of the town were under very great strain in terms of food, water and medical services, the generosity and welcome extended by the people of the town to the interlopers was a great lesson to us all.
Finally, I will say a few words about the rescue operation that is being mounted by relief and aid agencies in response to the crisis purely in the Sudan. There is very close co-operation between the local authorities and all the agencies, who have created a structure in which they try to keep themselves informed about the areas of greatest need within the country, so that they may give help there. But from the point of view of the work done by UNICEF, about which I am most authorised to speak, they are attempting to help in camps both on the borders and
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