“This
is the moment we have all been working for. After weeks of battling
adverse conditions, we are finally ready to open.” Nervous
anticipation is palpable in the voice of Langdon Greenhalgh,
Red Cross manager of eastern Chad’s newest refugee camp,
at Tréguine.
A first group of refugees will arrive on Monday 27 September:
200 each day to begin with, rising to 400 or more as the process
gets smoother.
The camp will soon be home to old men too weak to walk, women
with young children, children without parents, and the odd healthy
young man who escaped with his life. Since the violence erupted
in their home province of Darfur in western Sudan, they have
undergone a terrifying ordeal.
Some have been assaulted and wounded as their villages and farms
were raided. Most have buried family members, or been separated
from them in the panic. Many have suffered from thirst, hunger,
exhaustion and disease.
All have had to trek across hundreds of kilometres of hostile,
semi-arid land to reach the unfamiliar shelter of a foreign
land. Many have lost all their possessions along the way.
Today, they are trying desperately to find normality in their
extraordinary conditions.
This has been particularly difficult for the refugees who have
massed in great numbers in Breijing camp, some 40 kilometres
from the border with Sudan. This site was initially planned
for 20,000 people and later expanded to 30,000, with sufficient
water and adequate facilities for all.
Today, nearly 47 000 refugees are struggling to survive on its
rocky plain, with an estimated 100 more arriving each day.
“Breijing has received thousands of spontaneous arrivals,
which could not be registered in the camp,” explains Christof
Hamm, who heads the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) office in the
town or Adre. “There is simply not enough capacity here
to accommodate all refugees present according to minimum international
standards.”
The pressure of such a large population on the basic infrastructure
of the camp – water, sanitation, food, health –
has made life very tough for the families who came to Chad in
the hope of receiving adequate aid.
It became urgent to find another place for them to settle. This
is the population which the Red Cross is committed to assist
in the camp at Tréguine, just a few kilometres down the
road. Expectations are high.
To meet them, the entire Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
has come together. The Chad Red Cross, which was on the ground
from the very early days of the crisis, has increased the number
of volunteers and resources dedicated to the operation.
To support them, the International Federation has deployed delegates
with specific technical expertise, as well as relief items and
equipment, ranging from tents to medical supplies to cooking
utensils.
Red Cross societies from France, Britain, Germany, Finland,
Austria, and Sweden have contributed to the effort by sending
their Emergency Response Units (ERUs). These specially-trained
rapid-deployment teams, with specific skills in health, telecommunications,
mass sanitation or logistics, have considerably accelerated
the difficult process of setting up the camp.
Twenty-three six-wheel-drive trucks donated by the Norwegian
Red Cross, which have spent the past six months transferring
refugees to other camps, have provided the much needed transport
capacity for the entire operation, moving people and materials
to the Tréguine site.
They will also be used to take the refugees and their luggage
along the three kilometre road from Breijing to Tréguine.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has launched
tracing activities to reunite families that have been separated
by the conflict, and is busily promoting International Humanitarian
Law to a wide range of officials, refugees and humanitarian
staff.
“The Chad operation is a great example of the Red Cross’s
different parts coming together with a strong purpose,”
remarks Greenhalgh. “Everyone is working together to overcome
the huge difficulties involved.”
The key to the success of the camp is and will continue to be
the strong partnerships that the Red Cross movement has forged
with other organisations involved. From the UNHCR and the Chad
government’s National Commission for Assistance to Refugees
(CNAR), which have identified the site and pre-registered its
future residents, to the World Food Programme (WFP) and Oxfam
which are supplying food and water respectively, all parties
have been working hand in hand to ensure the best quality of
humanitarian service.
Without this close cooperation, the camp would probably never
have emerged out of the ground. This is one of the most remote
regions of Chad. The dirt road that connects it to the rest
of the country is unusable during the rainy season, which has
plagued the operation for the past two months.
Moving the hundreds of tons of equipment and supplies necessary
to build a camp capable of accommodating 15,000 people has required
rather creative logistics.
The sandstorms and rainstorms that sweep the area regularly
have further complicated the work: halfway through construction,
several tents from the medical centre as well as a large warehouse
tent were ripped up and thrown hundreds of metres away by violent
gusts of wind. A succession of storms also destroyed the first
well to be drilled on the site.
Water has proved the last – and most difficult –
hurdle to overcome before the green light was given to open
Tréguine camp. According to international standards,
each refugee consumes up to 10 litres of water per day.
In this arid land, finding a sustainable source is a complex
and frustrating task. Oxfam experts have completed a number
of shallow wells which today provide enough water for the target
capacity. However, when the dry season sets in towards the end
of the year, these are expected to dry up. Only recently has
a long-term water source been discovered by drilling deeper
into the ground.
“It’s a strange feeling,” concludes Langdon.
“In just a few days, the camp will be bustling, full of
life, and hopefully the men, women and children who have been
through so much will be able to recover from their wounds.”
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A
woman walks to her temporary shelter in the unregistered
area of Breijing camp. As many as 14,000 refugees will
be transfered to Tréguine, where they will have
better access to humanitarian aid (p12035)
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A
crowd gathers in Breijing camp for a food distribution.
Most of the refugees who have fled from Darfur are women
and children (p12034)
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Camp
manager Langdon Greenhalgh and his team have held numerous
meetings with the community leaders of the future residents
of Tréguine to organise the transfers and different
aspects of life in the camp (p12032)
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The
main infrastructure of Tréguine camp is in place,
including the medical centre, logistical centre and hundreds
of latrines. Soon it will be bustling with people (p12038)
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