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V. PROBLEMS IN THE SPONTANEOUS RETURN OF ANGOLAN REFUGEES

On the border, Zambian soldiers tried to harass me. I was afraid but I managed to pass. They asked me to give them one can of salt. They said it was for the government. There is no police, only military near the border. I had some doubts and fear but decided to come here to see things for myself. We have goats, some have cows, pigs, but we don’t know if we can bring these things. I asked the Refugee Office in Maheba but they told us that they don’t know. I plan to stay here for a week but I have no hope… There are still war mines, the roads are still bad, and the bridges are still bad. I don’t know if authorities will be able to feed everyone who is currently in Maheba and the people that are already here.

- Victor C., 28, Angolan spontaneous returnee in interview with Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2003.

About 240,000, out of a total of approximately 436,000 Angolan refugees in neighboring countries are expected to return in 2003 and 2004.⁶⁶ Approximately 130,000 have returned as of July 2003. Because the official repatriation program took over a year to be implemented, a significant number of “spontaneous returnees” have already returned. Refugees have gone back to Angola on their own, with their own limited resources. This situation has generated and continues to generate additional risk to the returnees.

Human Rights Watch has documented some of the problems present during the spontaneous return of Angolan refugees including lack of security and basic infrastructure, extortion at crossing points, violence against women and girls, and the failure to provide identity documents for Angolan refugee children.

Angola and UNHCR signed two tripartite agreements to regulate the repatriation process with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The March agreements resulted from the second round of meetings among the different governments; the first accords were signed in November and December.⁶⁷ Both documents establish that the official repatriation process should be implemented starting in May-June 2003.

While recognizing that the problems present during the spontaneous return may be addressed by the formal repatriation process, Human Rights Watch hopes that its concerns regarding difficulties to date may enable Angolan Government and UNHCR to address these specific issues and ensure that the official repatriation process guarantees basic humanitarian conditions for return.

Unsafe Conditions and Insufficient Infrastructure to Receive Returnees

As of April 2003, hundreds of Angolans refugees had returned to Angola spontaneously without waiting for international assistance. As a result, they have received almost no assistance.⁶⁸ Although the Government’s Standard Operational Procedures for the enforcement of the Norms for the Resettlement of Internally Displaced Populations sets the provisions to be applied during the return of refugees, including those who return spontaneously,⁶⁹ Human Rights Watch found that authorities have failed to implement these procedures.

Notwithstanding its pledge to ensure the security of returnees the government had not taken necessary means to protect returnees from grave, foreseeable danger.⁷⁰ Spontaneous returnees often face extortion and intimidation while crossing borders and checkpoints.⁷¹ At bordering areas, especially with DRC, Angolan returnees faced instances of physical violence. In January 2003, Congolese authorities stabbed and killed one returnee and in June 2002, these authorities tossed four Angolan returnees into a river. The men drowned and died.⁷² Throughout Angola and at border areas, refugees are returning to areas where police are not present, and in the rare case in which they are present, they are poorly trained. Worse still, one UNHCR official told Human Rights Watch that some returning refugees have complained that they have been beaten and extorted by the National Police. These cases have not been investigated carefully largely due to the limited monitoring capacity of the weak civilian state administration.⁷³ In general, the local police too have very limited resources and are not trained to work in the context of refugee return. Paulo Kaumba, head of the police of the Alto Zambeze in Moxico explained to Human Rights Watch his department’s needs in the following manner:

What we need is more personnel and we need computers. That would help in our job of registering people. We have an electrical generator but we don’t have vehicles. We need vehicles in our job too.⁷⁴

The Standard Operational Procedures are quite vague on the necessary level of administration in resettlement areas. The document states in Point 1 of Article 10 that resettlement may only take place in an area in which the local civilian administration is “represented.” Because the term “represented” is not explained in greater detail, the presence of a single person may arguably meet this requirement. In practice, therefore, returnees may be relocated to areas where authorities are not present, exposing them to situations of lawlessness and impunity.⁷⁵

When returnees finally reach their destinations, they have encountered serious humanitarian crises and have been prevented from receiving assistance due to the lack of access. This was the case for returnees that settled in Louva, Moxico province.

Some people that left Maheba are already in Louva. I found my brother there. They don’t have any food. Some of them are very ill. The children have no clothes. The roads are destroyed and they can’t receive any food. The only thing there is to eat is some pumpkin. I found some watermelon too but there is not enough for everyone.⁷⁶

- Victor C., twenty-eight, Angolan returnee from Zambia told Human Rights Watch about the conditions in Louva.

Based on field research in Angola in March and April 2003, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the basic conditions necessary to receive returning Angolan refugees in the provinces bordering DRC and Zambia are not in place. No transit centers or temporary centers had been established. Existing infrastructure was being used to assist former combatants and, to some extent, internally displaced persons. The returning areas (entry points) in the border provinces were neither safe nor accessible to humanitarian agencies. For example, in the province of Moxico as of April 2003, no transit area or temporary camps had been built and the de-mining survey had only recently started. Local authorities and builders told Human Rights Watch that they would need at least three months to complete the de-mining security procedures and construction of facilities.⁷⁷ As UNHCR begins to implement its assisted return program, it must take steps to address these issues.

Problems of Violence Against Returning Refugee Women and Girls

The border provinces through which all returning refugees must pass are heavily militarized areas. Military personnel have engaged in violent acts, sometimes targeting returnees.⁷⁸ Military personnel have intimidated local authorities and even humanitarian agency field officers.⁷⁹ In Cazombo, in the province of Moxico, three soldiers raped a woman in January and also beat at least four men in the same incident,⁸⁰ as described below.

On January 14, 2003, J.L., a nineteen year-old Angolan refugee, was returning from Zambia to Louva, Moxico. Since the access to Louva was difficult, J.L. and her husband as well as some seventy other returnees, decided to spend a few days in Cazombo. The group of returnees slept in an abandoned school that had no doors or windows. According to the UNHCR field officer that assisted the returnees, three uniformed soldiers appeared and threatened the group. They beat the men with a wood stick and took J.L. to the bushes. The UNHCR staff found her at 4:00 a.m. the next day. UNHCR staff took J.L. to a medical center that provided her with medical care. According to the doctors that examined J.L., more than one man had raped her. The UNHCR staff filed a report with the police but was not aware of any progress in the investigation.⁸¹

The case of J.L. is one of few incidents of sexual abuse during the resettlement process to have been documented, due to the presence of UNHCR. However, as one representative of that organization told Human Rights Watch, “We think that similar instances of sexual abuse have happened in other centers but have gone unreported.”⁸² Given the stigma attached to rape and the scarcity of UNHCR representatives, only a small percentage of such cases are likely to be reported.⁸³

Notwithstanding their limited infrastructure, Angolan police and judicial authorities are required by international human rights instruments (ICCPR, Articles 2 (1) and 7) to investigate vigorously and prosecute those responsible for grave abuses of women’s right to physical and sexual integrity.

Deprivation of Identity Documents for Angolan Children

Many of the most recent refugees never reached the refugee camps in neighboring countries. Instead, they wandered around the border areas, sometimes settling in areas that crossed international borders yet were culturally and ethnically similar to their areas of origin on the Angolan side of the border. As a result, many of these Angolans do not have documents to prove their refugee status nor their Angolan nationality.⁸⁴ These families have not been formally assisted and their children, born in countries of refuge, are often seen as non-Angolan even though they are children of Angolan parents.⁸⁵

The right to a nationality is a fundamental human right. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regarded as customary international law, states that "[e]veryone has the right to a nationality." The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) guarantees the right of every child to acquire a nationality,⁸⁶ and requires states to "undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality."⁸⁷ Furthermore, "[w]here a child is illegally deprived of some or all elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to speedily reestablishing his or her identity."⁸⁸ However, government authorities have thus far failed to do this for refugee children returning to Angola on their own or with their Angolan parents.

In addition, Angolan authorities routinely require identity documents from children as a prerequisite to registration in school, in accordance with national policies. By not prioritizing identification documents for this group of refugee children, these authorities effectively violate the right of these children to education without distinction or discrimination.⁸⁹

Responsibility to Protect and Assist Returning Refugees

Under the Standard Operational Procedures for the Enforcement of the Norms for the Resettlement of the Internally Displaced Populations, the government of Angola extended the provisions first designed to assist the internally displaced to include Angolan refugees returning to the country. These include the responsibility to address the security and structural problems faced by spontaneously returning Angolan refugees identified by Human Rights Watch in this short report. Under the international standards for voluntary repatriation, the Angolan government is responsible for ensuring the return of its nationals “in safety and with dignity without any fear of harassment, discrimination, arbitrary detention, physical threat or prosecution on account of having left or remained outside the country, and should provide guarantees and/or amnesties to this effect. [The government] should also take all measures to ensure the restoration of full national protection”.⁹⁰

As noted above, despite the fact that the repatriation is not officially organized by UNHCR, the agency is still responsible to exercise its protection mandate “to the extent possible” even for spontaneous returnees.⁹¹ The agency is limited by resource and personnel constraints, and has an insufficient presence at border crossing points where violence and extortion has occurred. However, where personnel have been available, for example in the case of the returning refugee who was raped, discussed above, some appropriate assistance was delivered.

The advent of a formal repatriation process of Angolans returning from Zambia and DRC under the provisions of the Tripartite agreements make possible the collaboration of two important parties: the government of the country of asylum (Zambia and DRC) and UNHCR. As part of the repatriation process, UNHCR should exercise its international protection functions and take steps to ensure that Angolan refugees may return with safety, dignity and security, and in particular strive to prevent the problems that Human Rights Watch has documented in this report for spontaneously returning refugees.