Eritrea: Uncertain future for thousands of returning IDPs

June 13, 2006 - (reliefweb) The vast majority of the 1.1 million people displaced by the 1998-2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea have long gone home. But Ethiopia's refusal to accept the decision of an international arbitration commission has left some 40,000 Eritrean internally displaced people (IDPs) still unable to return. Discussions between the two countries and the Ethiopia-Eritrea Border Commission (EEBC) in May 2006 ended without result, apart from the UN Security Council’s decision to further reduce the border monitoring presence of the UN Mission to Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE). Precise IDP figures are unavailable, but the total was expected to fall throughout 2006 from the 2005 total of 45,000. The Eritrean government gave a figure of 8,900 households as of March 2006.

In an attempt to boost self-reliance and to reduce its dependency on the international community which it feels to be too lenient towards Ethiopia’s rejection of the EEBC’s 2002 border ruling, the Eritrean government has since mid-2005 been curtailing the activities of international agencies active in the country. It blocked UNMEE’s monitoring operations and expelled a large number of international NGOs. In a situation of great humanitarian need due to the drought affecting the entire Horn of Africa, the Eritrean government confiscated several tonnes of food supplies. It has so far not followed up on its declaration to integrate them into its new cash-for-work policy which was to replace free distribution of relief assistance. At the same time, the government has stepped up its efforts to resettle tens of thousands of IDPs to their home villages in the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) along the disputed border with Ethiopia. In doing so, the government hopes to boost self-sufficiency because the areas of return are some of the most fertile in the country. However, there is no information on the living conditions awaiting the returnees, and on their physical safety in these mine-infested areas.

The interaction between the government and the remaining international agencies and NGOs has become very difficult. Improving this relationship and decreasing border tensions with Ethiopia are currently the two most important factors to be resolved in order to ensure safe return and sustainable livelihoods for Eritrea’s displaced.

Background: Eritrean IDP crisis is a result of border conflict
Eritrea’s formal annexation by Ethiopia in 1962 was followed by a 30-year armed struggle for independence. The end of Ethiopian rule in 1991 was followed by a referendum and Eritrea became an independent state in 1993. The border was that established by the Italian colonial power in the early 20th century. But Ethiopia and Eritrea differed over where the colonial frontier lay and in 1998-2000 fought a bloody war over the border demarcation (HRW, 30 January 2003).

Internal displacement in Eritrea started in May 1998, when fighting broke out between the two countries over a disputed border zone in Gash-Barka region. Out of a population of 3.8 million, some 19,000 fighters and an unknown number of civilians were killed during the ferocious conflict, while more than one million were forced to flee their homes.

A large number of the displaced quickly returned to their villages in the affected regions following a ceasefire in June 2000, the partial withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from border areas, and the Algiers Peace Agreement six months later. By the end of 2000, the total number of IDPs had fallen from 1.1 million at the height of the crisis, to about 210,000 (USCR 2001, p.77). It continued to fall and by 2005 was estimated to be around 45,000.

A demilitarised Temporary Security Zone was established along the 1,000-km Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier in April 2001, and 4,200 peacekeeping troops were deployed under the auspices of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) to monitor the ceasefire. An independent Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission (EEBC), mandated to delineate and demarcate the border between the two countries, released its legally-binding decision in April 2002. Ethiopia, however, promptly rejected it, contesting elements such as the decision to place the symbolic town of Badme – where the conflict originally flared up – in Eritrea. The physical demarcation, which was first due to start in May 2003, has repeatedly been postponed ever since.

In November 2004 Ethiopia put forward a new peace plan but Eritrea rejected it, demanding Ethiopia’s immediate withdrawal from the territory awarded to it by the EEBC ruling. Tensions between the two countries increased towards the end of 2005, leading to almost tangible fears that the war would break out again. The Eritrean government, angered by the lack of progress in resolving the border dispute and believing that the international community was siding with Ethiopia, restricted UN peacekeepers patrolling the border and expelled Western members of the UNMEE staff (IRIN, 23 March 2006). In the wake of these border tensions, the EEBC, which had closed its field offices in May 2005 because of the stalemate in the physical border demarcation, has decided to reopen them (UN SG report, 6 March 2006). Meetings in London in May 2006 between the two countries and the EEBC over the border demarcation ended in deadlock, with no decision. The United Nations Security Council reacted on 31 May by extending UNMEE's mandate to the end of September 2006, but reducing the force from 3,373 to 2,300 troops. It demanded that both countries fully comply with a UN resolution calling on Ethiopia to accept the EEBC border ruling and on Eritrea to lift restrictions on UNMEE’s movements (IRIN, 1 June 2006).

From: http://www.reliefweb.int