SOUTHERN AFRICA: Child refugees suffer rejection and abuse

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 22 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - A startling new study on the experiences of refugee and returnee children living in Southern Africa has uncovered a litany of abuse, often leading to further alienation of the most vulnerable of population groups.

Research commissioned by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) between February and March 2005 in South Africa, Zambia and Angola found that refugee and returnee children in all three countries faced high levels of aggression, in particular sexual and gender-based violence.

The 66-page report, 'Refugee and returnee children in Southern Africa: Perceptions and experience of violence', raised specific concerns about the welfare of older girls, many of whom had been subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, often by local police and the military.

Refugee children returning from Zambia to Moxico Province in eastern Angola singled out residents of the local town as the main perpetrators of discrimination.

An estimated 300,000 Angolan refugees have come home since the peace agreement was signed on 4 April 2002. However, many still complain that living conditions in the areas of return fall far short of their expectations, forcing them to compete with local residents for scarce resources.

Researchers found various levels of discrimination against the children, from being denied access to schools and water sources to verbal abuse.

"We go with our buckets to the well and the owners of those wells say, 'this is my grandmother's well', and if you try to disagree with them they beat us. We try to go very early, but otherwise we wait and wait until they have collected water. Yesterday, I waited from 05:00 until 12:00 - we wait until other people have got water. These people live in areas next to us and they say they own the wells because they have been here longer," one of the girls told an interviewer.

Girls and boys of all ages recounted stories of soldiers coming into their homes to rape older girls and women.

"The FAA [Angolan army] come into our house and say, 'you must marry us [have sex with us], and if you don't marry us, we will kill you'. They say they want to marry me and my sister," another confided.

Returnee children felt equally threatened on the streets, often having to endure jeers and physical harassment by locals. "They call you 'Zambiano' and beat you when you walk on that road."

Just across the border, refugee children at Mayukwayukwa Camp in Zambia were similarly confronted by prejudice. The camp - the oldest in Africa - is some 500 km from the capital, Lusaka, and home to around 7,000 refugees, mainly Angolans. Around 4,000 children reside in the settlement and attend school there.

A common anxiety among the children was the fear of running into 'bandits' while on their way to collect firewood or to neighbouring villages to do farm work. Researchers noted that although it was difficult to confirm the children's accounts, it was important to acknowledge that the "fear of these bandits dominates children's lives".

Rape in open spaces was also reported and girls were seen to be most at risk at night or in deserted areas. When quizzed as to who the perpetrators were the children pointed to local Zambian residents and fellow refugee men.

Young refugee girls were also engaged in 'transactional sex' with older men in the camp as a desperate measure to earn money. Girls reported that transactional sex often led to pregnancy, which in turn led to forced marriages.

Even without transactional sex, older girls who participated in the research said forced marriage to an older man was common and one of the things they were most afraid of. They reported that parents often arranged marriages for them with older men who had money.

When asked how the girls in such marriages were treated, the respondents were ambivalent. "Some beat them but some look after them - but they are old men."

Refugee children in South Africa's urban centres most feared encounters with the police and claimed they often resulted in violence. According to the report, the country has about 27,600 recognised refugees and about 143,000 asylum seekers from across the continent.

Such children were acutely aware of their status as 'outsiders', as this was constantly reinforced by the local population and police officers. In the context of high levels of crime in South Africa, refugee children said they were often falsely accused of misdemeanours.

Most of the 24 children interviewed in Johannesburg said they felt unsafe in public spaces, having either witnessed criminal activities or inadvertently been caught up in them. At school many children felt ostracised by their peers, but said a greater fear was falling victim to violent behaviour, including rape on school premises.

"I don't go to the toilet at school," said one, while another agreed, saying, "Neither do I - I sometimes go to teachers' toilets if I can't really keep my pee."

"Sometimes they rape the children in the toilet. A boy rapes a boy in the toilet - a big boy rapes a small boy in the toilet. Usually it is after school," a third child explained.

Discrimination because they were foreigners dominated the lives of all the children in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Younger children in Johannesburg told stories of being bullied at school because they were 'makwerekwere' - the derogatory word that black South Africans use for foreigners.

"At school the children shout at you and swear. They say, 'go home makwerekwere'. When I first went to my school it was bad because I did not know how to speak English. They said, 'You come here and steal our jobs and steal our schools," recounted one girl.

The six older boys who participated in the Cape Town leg of the study had all been arrested at some time, even though most of them were carrying valid refugee papers.

An overarching concern raised by researchers was that sustained discrimination led to the loss of identity.

"Sometimes we don't feel good because some of us, we don't know where we come from, and you don't know when you will go back and what will you do. That doesn't make you feel good - when they keep reminding us that we are foreigners," explained one girl.

[ENDS]