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Reports Volume 6, 2002 35MURJ
On the Refugee
Problem in Eritrea
Selam Daniel
Introduction
B
y the end of 2000, at least 34.5 million people—refugees and internally displaced—had
fled their homes because of war, persecution, and human rights abuses. 1 Combined, the
number of people that have been uprooted roughly equals the sum of the populations of
Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and Greece.2
Of these, an estimated 25 million people are internally dis-
placed in at le ast 40 countries. 3 These people live in Kosovo,
Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Colombia, and many other
countries. Afghanistan hosts th e second largest community of
internally-displaced persons (IDPs), after Eritrea.4
The United States Committee on Refugees estimates that there
are over 14 million refugees worldwide 5—an increase of 4 per-
cent from last ye ar, with Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Sudan,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, and
Vietnam as the top 10 countries.6
The following analyzes the refugee crisis of Eritrea as a case
study to better understand the plight of refugees and the inter-
nally displaced worldwide, and to identify ways that the interna-
tional community can help.
Eritrea: A Brief History
At the end of th e nineteenth century, Italians colonized
Eritrea, joining together loosely related people from nine ethnic groups. The original ratio of 50
percent Orthodox Christians and 50 percent Sunni Muslims still exists today. Their forced colo-
nization disrupted already existing economic, social, and legal systems in these communities. The
Italians developed Eritrea as a settler colony, setting up roads, plantations, seaports, and an army
of 65,000 Eritreans who would fight in Italy’s other colonies, Libya and Somalia.
In 1952, the UN combined Eritrea with neighboring Ethiopia under a federation, giving Eritrea
two official languages and its own flag, constitution, and parliament. The United States, interested
Selam Daniel
IDP camp in Gash
Barka, Eritrea.

Reports36 Volume 6, 2002MURJ Selam Daniel
in the strategic Red Sea
access from Eritrea, backed
this pact, gaining several
military and communica-
tion bases in Eritrea as a pay-
back for the arrangement.
No poll was ever taken ask-
ing the Eritrean people to
vote on the matter.
Immediately after this
federation was formed, the
emperor of Ethiopia, Haile
Selassie, completely stripped
Eritreans of all rights and
autonomy, as had been
agreed upon in the pact, and
banned all forms of public
protest. Eritreans were met
with silence when they peti-
tioned the UN to at least
uphold the terms of the fed-
eration pact. Further,
Emperor Haile Selassie dis-
banded the Eritrean national
assembly and annexed the
territory, triggering a 30-
year liberation war by
Eritreans. It is widely
believed among Eritreans
and non-Eritreans alike that
these events and the failure
of the international co mmunity to act justly
without underlying interests are th e sources of
the current suffering in Eritrea.
The next 30 years of the liberation war were
critical in defining the Eritrean government’s
growing distrust with international agencies.
Although Eritrea and Ethiopia share roughly the
same geography and demographics, Eritrea was
left to fend for itself in gaining its freedom and
keeping its population from starving to death.
Meanwhile, many of the world’s great powers
looked upon Ethiopia with mainly political moti-
vation and contributed billions and billions of
dollars in food and military aid. In fact, from
1952–1976 more than half of all U.S. aid to
Africa’s 54 countries went to Ethiopia.7
In the 1950s, in the midst of a war fought by
civilians in rubber sandals with rifles, the United
States introduced the first jet fighters to appear
on the African continent. Their mission was to
fight for Ethiopia to conquer Eritrea in return for
prime land on the Red Sea’s coast for communi-
cation and spy bases to monitor Europe and Asia.
The jet fighters raised the level of military sophis-
tication with U.S.-supplied F-86 Sabre Jets and
counterinsurgency tactics borrowed from the
Vietnam War. Israel also sent military advisers
and arms. When the reinforced Ethiopian army
invaded Keren, a market center in the heart of the
country, the first flow of Eritreans fled to Sudan.
When a military junt a overthrew Emperor
Haile Selassie in 1974, the Soviet Union became
aligned with Ethiopia. The war escalated quickly
when $11 billion in new arms from Moscow were
sent to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The sec-
ond wave of refugees fled to Sudan. Fighting had
reached the heart of the Eritrean capital, Asmara,
which changed the demographics of the refugees
to also include urban as well as rural dwellers.
In 1978, fighting almost entirely with captured
weapons, the Eritreans were able to secure the
Sahil Mountains of Eritrea, occupying this area as
a base for the next 10 years.
A massive famine in 1984 posed an even
larger problem. T ens ofthousands of Eritreans
were forced to cros s the border into Sudan in
search of food and safety. It is estimated that the
number ofEritrean refugees in Sudan had
peaked at about 500,000.8
For the next 13 years, thousands of Eritreans
and Ethiopians died as the war continued. In May
1991 Eritrea overthrew Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile
Mariam, finally obtaining its freedom.
Current Refugee Situation
Over the last 30 years, more than one million
Eritrean refugees languished in exile abroad,
more than half ofthem in urban slums and rural
refugee camps in Sudan.9 Although several hun-
dred thousand people have returned to Eritrea,
there are still an estimated 142,000 Eritreans in
Kassala and Gedaref in Sudan.10 The U.N. High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has worked
in collaboration with UNMEE (UN Mission in
Eritrea and Ethiopia) to repatriate a total of
36,500 Eritrean refugees from Sudan.11 An over-
whelming majority of th ese refugees originally
come from Gash-Barka, the western region of
Eritrea.
Within Eritrea, another 50,000 are currently
internally displaced.12 These IDPs have fled three
times in the last  10 years, each time because of
renewed military conflict.T h e y  l i v ed in relatives’
homes when lucky enough, but mostly they fled
to the mountains, where they at tempted to do
what Eritreans do best: survive. Right now there
is no Ethiopian occupation in Eritrea, but land
mines prevent the IDPs from finally going home.
Eritreans that lived in  Ethiopia were also
expelled in 1998 when full-scale fighting broke
out again. In 2000, when Ethiopia captured about
one thir d of Eritrea’s sands (the Gash Barka
Zone), one million Eritreans fled, including tens
To p : E r i t r e a n  w o m an in Senafe IDP
camp. Bottom: Festivities in Gherset
celebrating the fourth day of a baby’s
life.

Reports Volume 6, 2002 37MURJSelam Daniel
of thousands of new refugees to Sudan. T ens of
thousands of Eritreans had been permanently
disabled, hundreds of thousands dead. A third of
the population was displaced, a third of those
people being children. It is estimated that every
Eritrean family lost two or three members to the
war. It is this deepest sacrifice of flesh and blood
that makes the reality of the current emergency
situation even more painful for Eritreans world-
wide. The male population has been decreased
dramatically, affecting the most fundamental
socioeconomic systems in the country. Among
the refugee population, an overwhelming major-
ity of families are female-headed, severely affect-
ing agricultural production. For IDPs in particu-
lar, 80 percent of households are female-headed.13
Field Research
The meaning of the title of Dan Connell’s
Getting Home Is Only Half the Challengereally hit
home in my rece nt trip to  Eritrea. Over the
course of three weeks I attempted to experience
and photograph the refugee experience of the
IDPs and repatriates of Eritrea. It was one thing to
read reports and statistics,i t  w a s  a n  e n t i r e l y  d i f -
ferent thing to see the crisis through their eyes.
Education
One woman told me that she had chosen to
settle in Gherset because it offered better schools
for her children than the other resettlement
camps in Gash Barka. Her three children
attended school at the UNESCO funded facili-
ties. (See photo.) In most areas, school is available
until the 5th grade in both Tigrinia, the national
language, and Arabic, a language spoken by most
Eritrean Muslims, especially those returning
from camps in Sudan.When possible, the schools
are integrated to facilita te the full inclusion of
refugees into society. The teacher of the school
pictured estimated about 80 students per class.
School is held six days a week, from 7a.m. to
noon. At the beginning ofeach school year, each
pupil receives five exercise books to write in. The
schools lack ot her educational supplies to
enhance the lessons, such as maps and charts.
In other resettlement villages, especially in areas
where IDPs have fled, s chool is being held in
abandoned buildings, and under trees.
Health
I visited Gherset on a very special day. It was
the fourth day of a child’s life, and the celebra-
tions had just begun. She was born to a 27-year-
old woman who had lived in a refugee camp in
Sudan since the age of 3. She had grown up, mar-
ried, and given birth to her three other children
in a refugee camp. She had lived in Gherset for
seven months with her
mother, aunt, husband, and
children. The birth was her
fourth. Each time her moth-
er had been the midwife; the
floor of the tent had been
their maternity ward. I asked
what would have happened
if there had been complica-
tions with the birth. The
aunt stared at me blankly.
The mother looked at the
ground. The grandmother
looked at her hands in her
lap. I shifted uncomfortably.
Outside, the translator/guide
told me that there was
absolutely no transportation
to or from the camp. Since
there was also no on-site
health clinic, refugees could
not take advantage of the
free health care that their refugee I.D. cards grant-
ed them at any health clinic in the region. I asked
the local guide when he had last seen a doctor. He
said it had been a few years—since the day he had
left Sudan.
Every repatriate unde rgoes a basic health
screening for sicknesses that would allow him or
her to sit in a bus rather than stand in a truck.
There are not enough medical supplies to afford
a follow-up visit for the thousands of war-injured
refugees. Malaria and polio are the most com-
mon sicknesses reported in the clinics.
That afternoon, my host family prepared a
very sp ecial dinner— ghat,a  m e a l  made from
flour roasted on an open fire and mixed with
boiling water and salt. As the women stirred the
flour, they made loud, high-pitched jubilations,
signaling the great miracle for the entire neigh-
borhood to hear.Another child had been born in
Gherset.
Food Aid
Food is distributed once a month in Senafe 
to the 11,000 IDPs who reside in the area.
Representatives from each family make the trip
to the distribution site, sometimes walking for
more than a day. Each person receives wheat, oil,
salt, and kerosene.
For repatriates, a two-month ration is given
upon entry to Eritrea as well as a metal and can-
vas family shelter kit. The UNHCR also distrib-
utes hand tools for farming, or a cash equivalent
for those who wish to resettle in the cities. No
training is provided, however, as part of the aid
package. In some areas, distribution of two
To p : G h e rset school and teacher.
Bottom: Festivities in Gherset celebrat-
ing the fourth day of a baby’s life.

Reports38 Volume 6, 2002MURJ Selam Daniel
hectares of farmland pe r refugee family has
begun. After their first two months, they receive
monthly food rations for one year. After that, they
are expected to have found means to survive.
For both groups, high- calorie biscuits are
given, when available, to malnutritioned children
and pregnant or lactating mothers, but recent
shortages have made this difficult.
Shelter
Each fa mily receives a rhonda structure (a
domelike metal frame of about 10 feet by 6 feet)
and the mats needed to cover it—straw mats for
summer, plastic mats for the rainy season. The
locals say that even in the rainy season, it is often
too hot to use the plasti c mats, so they do their
best to improvise with mud and straw, bending
and shaping the rhonda structure to better suit
their needs. (See photo.) In the early 1990s cor-
rugated metal was often donated by international
agencies, but has since been abandoned as the
heat makes the metal an unsuitable roof.
Occasionally, fire breaks out in one hut, and sev-
eral homes can quickly burn to the ground at
once.
Currently,there is a shortage of rhonda struc-
tures all over the country, leaving families to live
in plastic tents held up by branches and ropes.
Often, a tent of about 200 square feet, partitioned
by a cloth to make separate rooms, houses a fam-
ily of seven. If the family keeps livestock such as
feed chickens, they must also share the space, as
there are no permanent materials with which to
make sturdy fences. UN volunteers say it won’t be
long until the tents run out.
Wa t e r
Drought has affected water supplies for both
agriculture and drinking for the last 17 years. At
the camps, water is either available by pump or
delivered by trucks once a month. Diseases are
rampant, especially in those camps where water
is kept in large storage tanks for extended periods
of time. Widespread chlorination will not be pos-
sible until an organized water system is devel-
oped for the entire country. Even in the capital
city, residents are being forced to turn to bottled
water as the Italian-built pipes are beginning to
rust, releasing dangerous chemicals into the
water supply. For the poorer residents, there is no
way to avoid the risk of drinking these poisons.
Sanitation is a concern, as these refugees have
inhabited temporary housing for years. Long-
term human waste systems have not been devel-
oped. In some camps, makeshift latrines have
been set up on the outskirts of town, but many
people simply head to the mountains. For the
stalls, there are sanitation workers who empty the
large tanks of human waste when they are com-
pletely filled. Combine this lack of proper latrines
with a poor water supply and poor handling at
the household level, and you have the potential
for severe diarrhea outbreaks, especially among
children.14
Land Mines
Four teenage boys were killed and three others
seriously injured in a mine accident outside
Senafe during my last week in Eritrea. According
to the UN Mine Action Coordination Center
(UNMACC), inhabitants of that area had been
educated about land mine safety procedures, and
the demarcations had been made.15 In the last few
years, over 70 people have died in mine accidents,
and over 150 more have been injured. Clearly,
deactivation of land mines is a key factor in
determining when many of the IDPs can return
home safely.
Solutions
While there is no defi nitive answer for the
refugee problem in Eritrea, or any other part of
the world, there are a number of potential solu-
tions worth investigating.The key to any sustain-
able solution is that it is designed especially for
these refugees given their exact circumstances; a
cookie-cutter approach certainly will not work.
The problems are multitiered. There is the imme-
diate concern for the basic human needs such as
food and shelter, but there is also the need for
organization of health care and water systems
and a long-term strategy for reintegrating these
refugees into society.Among the many needs in
Eritrea:
• Training for repatriates on making an
income. 
• Supplies for elementary and secondary
schools in camps.
• Medical supplies including land mine kits,
malaria, and polio vaccinations.
• Improved structures built to better suit
Eritrea’s geography and climate. Also, a mate-
rial alternative to the traditional wood and
thatch, which is used to build homes but is
currently in short supply.
• Water sanitation systems suitable for either
individual homes or entire camps, but also
separate systems for agriculture and livestock.
• Land mind clearance teams to mark danger-
ous zones, and deactivation of the more than
2 million mines16 that exist in Eritrea.
• Family reunification programs to address the
separation of families in the aftermath of the
Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict. 
References
1. Refugee Reports, V ol. 22, No. #5
(2001). U.S. Committee for
Refugees.
2. Population Reference Bureau. 2002.
3. Specific Groups and Individuals:
Mass Exoduses and Displaced
Persons. UN Economic and Social
Council. 25 Jan 1999.
4. UNHCR 2001. http://www.unhcr.ch
5. Refugee Reports, V ol. 22, No. #5
(2001). U.S. Committee for
Refugees.
6. UNHCR 2001. http://www.unhcr.ch
7. Connell, Dan.Getting Home Is Only
Half the Battle. 2001.
8. Background Note on Eritrean
Refugees in Sudan by the UNHCR,
29 Jan 2002.
9. Connell, Dan.Getting Home Is Only
Half the Battle. 2001.
10. Background Note on Eritrean
Refugees in Sudan by the UNHCR,
29 Jan. 2002.
11. UNHCR Briefing Notes:
Afghanistan, Liberia/Sierra Leone,
Sudan/Eritrea, Russian Fed. Georgia,
18 Jan 2002.
12. ICC Humanitarian Update, 28 Dec
2001
13. Interview with Rosso
Gebrefitzahasion, Director of
Refugee Affairs at the Eritrean Relief
& Refugee Commission, Jan 4, 2002.
14. ICC Humanitarian Update, 28 Dec
2001.
15. Edited T ranscript of UNMEE press
briefing, 25 Jan 2002.
16. ICC Humanitarian Update, 28 Dec
2001.