2002
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Approximately 90,000 Eritreans were internally displaced at year’s end. Some 33,000 refugees repatriated during the year, primarily from Sudan.
Eritrea hosted more than 1,000 refugees from Somalia and about 1,000 from Sudan.
Pre-2001 Events Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after three decades of deadly conflict. While Eritrea immediately received international recognition as a sovereign nation, the demarcation of its border with Ethiopia remained a matter of disagreement.
Between 1998 and 2000, war raged between Eritrea and Ethiopia over the 620-mile (1,000 km) frontier between the two countries, displacing hundreds of thousands of citizens from both nations.
In June 2000, after Ethiopia launched a military offensive into Eritrea and achieved a clear military advantage, the governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a cease-fire agreement. The two countries signed a formal peace accord in December, officially ending the bloody two-year war. Analysts estimated that the war killed more than 100,000 Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers and an untold number of civilians, and left more than 1 million persons uprooted on both sides of the border.
The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) deployed 3,000 of its mandated 4,200 peacekeepers and military observers to Eritrea by late 2000 to monitor the establishment a Temporary Security Zone, extending 15 miles (25 km) into Eritrea along the two countries’ shared border. Ethiopian and Eritrean troops, however, still occupied large areas of Eritrea within the buffer zone, impeding the return of uprooted Eritreans and creating “an unstable situation for peacekeepers,” according to the UN secretary-general.
At the end of 2000, approximately 300,000 Eritreans were refugees and some 300,000 remained internally displaced.
Eritrean Repatriation The peace agreement remained in effect during 2001, creating conditions that enabled large numbers of refugees and internally displaced Eritreans to return home. Nearly 33,000 refugees officially repatriated to Eritrea from Sudan during 2001.
A fourth Tripartite Agreement between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the governments of Eritrea and Sudan in March 2001 updated the legal framework for the repatriation of Eritrean refugees. UNHCR launched the repatriation operation in May.
An estimated 21,000 Eritrean refugees voluntarily returned from Sudan during the first phase. UNHCR utilized more than 150 trucks, ambulances, and buses to transport home more than 11,000 long-term refugees who had fled Eritrea during its 30-year war for independence, and more than 9,000 short-term refugees uprooted during the recent border war with Ethiopia. More than 95 percent of the returnees resettled in southwest Eritrea’s Gash Barka Zone.
After heavy seasonal rains suspended the repatriation program in July, UNHCR resumed the operation in October. An additional 10,000 Eritreans voluntarily returned during the last two months of 2001, including approximately 1,000 persons who returned by sea on UNHCR-organized boats from Port Sudan to the Eritrean port city of Massawa.
UNHCR expected more refugees to repatriate during 2001, “but the beginning of Ramadan (a Muslim holy month) and the fact that many refugees waited to harvest crops they had planted in Sudan contributed to the reduced number of prospective returnees,” the refugee agency reported.
Returnees received a one-year food supply from the World Food Program (WFP). UNHCR provided blankets, mosquito nets, a cooking stove, basic kitchen essentials, soap, and a water barrel to each returnee family. UNHCR also issued agricultural tools, material to construct traditional homes, and a cash grant equivalent to $200 per family. Returnees received medical exams and information on the danger of landmines before reaching their chosen final destination. Eritrean authorities reportedly provided land to returnees to construct their homes and cultivate new crops.
Following a site visit to Eritrea during 2001, the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) issued a report, Getting Home is Only Half the Challenge: Refugee Reintegration in War-Ravaged Eritrea, which examined the many challenges facing Eritrea’s returning refugee and internally displaced populations in a country devastated by war and impoverishment.
The USCR report noted that many refugees had waited as long as 34 years to return home, and recommended that “rapid voluntary repatriation of Eritrean refugees can—if properly conducted—actually help the country’s reconstruction.” The report also noted that more international and indigenous humanitarian agencies operated in Eritrea during 2001 than ever before, providing refugees an opportunity for community-based relief and rehabilitation.
USCR urged international donors to commit multi-year funding for reintegration and reconstruction projects in Eritrea and warned that without such programs, substantial population migrations would be inevitable in the future. USCR also urged the Eritrean government to develop clearly defined polices to improve its working relationships with international humanitarian agencies.
UNHCR received about $20 million of the $23 million it requested from international donors to support reintegration programs.
Internally Displaced Eritreans Approximately 90,000 war-uprooted Eritreans remained displaced throughout the country at year’s end.
As 2001 began, Eritrea’s 300,000 internally displaced people included an estimated 210,000 civilians living in more than 20 camps in the zones of Gash Barka, Debub, and Southern Red Sea. An additional 75,000 lived in makeshift camps and host communities.
Improved border security in April enabled Eritrean authorities to begin restoring basic government services in the border region, and preparing for the return and reintegration of tens of thousands of uprooted Eritreans. UNHCR and the government’s Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission (ERREC) urged uprooted Eritreans to delay their return until areas along the border were deemed fully safe and capable of receiving returnees.
By year’s end, approximately 200,000 internally displaced Eritreans returned to their villages on the border, where they found widespread destruction of businesses, places of worship, homes, schools, and the region’s water and transportation infrastructure.
Tens of thousands of others could not return to their areas of origin near the border because of lingering danger, including the presence of an estimated 1 million landmines. The absence of basic health care and education services also hindered their return.
Eritreans who remained displaced by the war—including some 10,000 encamped in caves and open fields—relied exclusively on relief organizations for their daily needs.
UNHCR provided soap and blankets to some 50,000 internally displaced persons, and hygiene materials to more than 17,000 internally displaced women during 2001. Budget constraints forced the refugee agency to terminate its assistance to internally displaced persons at year’s end.
Ethiopian authorities deported approximately 75,000 persons to Eritrea during the two-year border war. The majority of the deportees integrated into communities throughout Eritrea. At least 15,000 persons of Eritrean descent remained internally displaced at year’s end, primarily in camps in Gash Barka Zone.
“Eritrea’s displaced populations are in dire need of the support of the international community to resettle and resume food production,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in November.
Humanitarian Conditions Eritrea continued to struggle to recover from destruction caused by two years of warfare with Ethiopia. Amid severe drought in most of the country and unexpected heavy seasonal rains in the southwest, humanitarian conditions for returnees and internally displaced persons were often grim. Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans left their homes because of drought.
The tens of thousands of returnees who settled in the fertile but heavily damaged border zones of Debub and Gash Barka outnumbered existing residents, placing enormous stress on already limited resources in many villages and towns. UNHCR rehabilitated water infrastructures, constructed schools, and established health-care facilities in some returnee areas.
Residents of Debub and Gash Barka Zones had traditionally generated more than 70 percent of Eritrea’s annual food production, but the aftermath of war and fear of landmines severely hampered food production in 2001. Low crop yields forced some 1 million Eritreans to rely on humanitarian agencies for food. “The country is agriculturally crippled,” WFP reported in June.
UN relief agencies appealed to international donors for $133 million to assist Eritreans during 2001, but had received only half that amount by late in the year.
UN relief agencies and the Eritrean government launched a landmine awareness education campaign for all returnees. Lack of funds slowed the removal of thousands of landmines from Eritrea’s prime agricultural and returnee areas, however.
