VZCZCXRO7787
RR RUEHGI RUEHMA RUEHROV
DE RUEHNJ #0358/01 1160937
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 260937Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY NDJAMENA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5189
RUEHGI/AMEMBASSY BANGUI 1351
RUEHYD/AMEMBASSY YAOUNDE 1517
RUEHRN/USMISSION UN ROME 0030
INFO RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 NDJAMENA 000358 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS, SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR AF/C, PRM/AFR:MLANGE,S/CRS:PNELSON-DOUVELIS/JVANCE/ JBEIK 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREF PGOV KCRS SU CD
SUBJECT: REFUGEE PROTECTION IN EASTERN CHAD - Part 2 
 
REF: NDJAMENA 257 
 
NDJAMENA 00000358  001.2 OF 005 
 
 
¶16.  (SBU)  Probably the most difficult challenge to child 
protection with respect to girls is the custom of early marriage 
in a polygamous setting where the economics of survival favor the 
custom.  Camp conditions add another hurdle for girls seeking to 
avoid a forced early marriage in that they cannot flee to a 
neighboring village to escape family pressures and start a new life 
 
as they might have done in Sudan.    Unconfirmed reports of an 
increase in attempted suicides or even infanticides bear watching 
and, if true, addressing via womenQs groups in the camps. 
 
¶17.  (SBU)  The most difficult challenge with respect to boys 
as ever Q is to avoid their recruitment into fighting forces 
(which is always forced from a legal standpoint where children 
are involved).  In addition to continually highlighting the issue 
in all of the camp sensitization meetings (e.g., with refugee 
leadership, in periodic training for gendarmes) and discussions 
with GOC authorities, UNHCR has tried to document and follow up 
on all reported cases of recruitment.  Documenters have sometimes 
been threatened.  UNHCR has provided funding to UNICEF to engage a 
consultant (formerly handling a  PRM-funded CARE refugee 
programming in Chad) to come up with a more systematic way of 
documenting/preventing recruitment.  While anecdotes abound about 
child soldiers in the ranks of Sudanese and Chadian rebels, and 
in the Chadian National Army (ANT) - particularly in recent 
months in/around the town of Guereda - there has been no 
systematic investigation into the practice and there are no 
programs for demobilizing child soldiers and reintegrating them 
into their refugee communities.  The ICRC, however, has been able 
to provide Red Cross messages to parents of children who were taken 
 
into the ranks of the FUC a couple of years ago and whose 
whereabouts had been previously unknown to the very grateful 
parents.  A recent strongly-worded letter from French DefMin 
Alliot-Marie about the presence of child soldiers in the ANT 
reportedly got the ChadiansQ attention, but little has actually 
changed.   Recommendation:  The USG should take an equally strong 
stand on the issue, insisting that dealing with child soldiers be 
a factor in any discussion of enhanced USG support for Deby and 
his armed forces.  Human rights advocates are sure to make child 
soldiers a public issue in any event. 
 
¶18.  (U)  Education (formal and informal) remains the primary 
point of entry for protection of refugee children.  All refugee 
leadership groups with whom the PRM QS/CRS team met (men and 
women separately in each of the camps visited) as well as UNHCR 
and NGO staff pleaded for post-primary school educational 
opportunities such as secondary school or vocational training. 
Such programs would mainly target teenage children who, once 
having completed primary school, have virtually no activity with 
which to occupy themselves, making them prime candidates for 
recruitment.    Refugees were aware of PRM-funded Refugee Education 
Trust activities but pointed out Q rightly Q that only a very few 
could benefit from the current level of programming.  As high- 
lighted in earlier PRM monitoring reports, the dearth of 
adequately trained secondary-level teachers remains an obstacle 
to providing adequate secondary education.   At the primary 
level, insufficient financing (including insufficient program 
budgeting) has limited the number of classrooms, provision of 
school materials and uniforms, and engagement of teachers. 
Established standards are not being met. 
 
¶19.  (U)  Demonstrating the inter-connections among assistance 
sectors and between assistance and protection, girls 
participation in school is also threatened by the overall lack 
of family income that leads families to send young girls out to 
work, e.g., as housemaids for local Chadian villagers.  There are 
no special programs to keep girl mothers in school since the 
custom is for teenaged girls to be married and thus keeping house 
rather than attending school.   Refugee women leaders in Touloum 
Camp questioned the CCF emphasis on particularly vulnerable 
children such as the handicapped as opposed to all young children. 
The same leaders offered that they might be helpful in addressing 
the issue of forced early marriage by creating a committee that 
could be a sounding board for girls unwilling to be wed and their 
parents.  They also liked the idea of a Qsafe houseQ at the camp 
for girls and women at risk of gender-based violence (GBV). 
Recommendation:  Despite the challenges of insecurity, 
programming for youth, while not necessarily life-saving, 
should be prioritized. 
 
Protecting Refugee Women Q The High CommissionerQs Five Commitments 
 
¶20.  (U)  Progress is lagging in meeting the five commitments 
refugee women in camp leadership positions through affirmative 
action, individual documentation for women (not just part of a 
 
NDJAMENA 00000358  002.2 OF 005 
 
 
husbandQs ID), womenQs involvement in the distribution of food 
aid, provision of sanitary materials, and addressing Gender Based 
Violence (GBV) (including traditional harmful practices such as 
genital cutting/mutilation).  Participation in camp leadership and 
food aid is good, though women do not speak up much in the 
presence of men.  As noted above, the issuance of ID cards has 
been held up by the GOC.  Sanitary materials have not been 
distributed in the last six months, owing in part to the theft 
of materials stocked in Abeche when the townspeople looted the 
UNHCR warehouse after the brief Chadian rebel occupation last 
November.   Recommendation:  Given that distribution of sanitary 
materials is a fairly straightforward task, UNHCR should without 
further delay import and distribute the necessary fabric to meet 
the established standard of at least three meters every six months 
for every woman/girl of reproductive age. 
 
¶21.  (U)  Insecurity has weakened efforts to combat GBV 
considerably as humanitarian staff have undergone several 
evacuations.  It has also weakened the coordination between 
involved organizations in such places as Iriba where the 
referral process (referral of women for medical care and for 
follow-up monitoring) is being handled differently by different 
NGOs.  (UNHCR/Iriba is fully aware of the issue and is trying 
to get all NGOs to cooperate.)  In Oure Cassoni, cultural 
resistance to discussing GBV and the lack of staff/an agency 
dedicated to GBV alone have meant that even getting refugees to 
acknowledge that there are GBV incidents is lagging.  UNHCR has 
recently carried out AGDM (age, gender, diversity mainstreaming) 
surveys with refugees who identified security for women refugees 
as a critical concern in every camp.  Programming will be needed 
to help meet those concerns.  The recent establishment of a sort 
of traveling traditional court could prove helpful in drawing out 
survivors of GBV. 
 
¶22.  (SBU)  HIV/AIDS work in the camps is essentially limited to 
preventive messages and some distribution/availability of condoms. 
 
There is no systematic voluntary testing/counseling, no aggressive 
prevention of mother to child transmission, and no drug treatments. 
 
Prevalence has not been determined as voluntary testing is not 
routine.  IMC reported, however, that of a group of 37 refugees 
in Kounoungou who did seek testing, 22% tested positive in the 
initial round; only three were thought to have gone to Abeche for 
follow-up testing. 
 
¶23.  (U)  Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is widely practiced 
among the refugees.  Some medical personnel in some camps reported 
some infrequent acts to move away from the practice such as women 
requesting not to be fully sewn up again after delivery of a child 
or traditional cutters suggesting that the younger generation of 
girls might not need such extensive cutting as has been done 
traditionally.  Beliefs in charms and traditional medicines are 
widespread and sometimes result in medical treatment being 
sought too late to be as effective as possible. 
 
Refugee Camp Security/Neutrality 
 
¶24.  (SBU)  Maintaining the exclusively civilian character of 
the refugee camps is becoming increasingly challenging as the 
Darfur crisis drags on.  Aggravating factors are increased refugee 
frustration and hence susceptibility to recruitment, the emergence 
of Chadian rebel groups, and increased Chadian government boldness 
in using/seeing the refugees used in the Chad-Sudan confrontation. 
 
Problems identified to date are recruiting (sometimes forced) and 
the presence of weapons and combatants in camps.  The most 
egregious known recruitment incident was in March 2006 when 
Sudanese rebels (JEM and NRF) Q with Chadian acquiescence/support 
Q forcibly took several thousand refugees from Breidjing/Treguine 
Camps.   Nothing on that scale has since been reported; however, 
S/CRS Wintermeyer heard a report that one person has been 
recruiting for the JEM and NRF in those camps, and the Chadian 
authorities have done nothing to stop him.  Wintermeyer also 
heard in Djabal Camp that JEM had openly recruited there from 
September to November 2006. 
 
¶25.  (SBU)  In Kounoungo Camp, Chadian FUC rebels allegedly 
distributed weapons to Tama refugees who were most likely 
Chadians who had fraudulently registered as refugees when the 
camp was originally opened.  According to the UNHCR Guereda 
Protection Officer, following the GOC-FUC accord in December 2006 
the FUC distributed weapons to many of the people in the Tama 
villages that surround the camp in a ploy to increase the number 
of FUC adherents qualified to be demobilized/reintegrated into 
the ANT as per the GOC-FUC accord.   Gendarme weapons sweeps in 
some of the camps (e.g., Goz Amer) have turned up weapons on 
occasion  and International Medical Corps reported seeing 
 
NDJAMENA 00000358  003.2 OF 005 
 
 
QtechnicalsQ in Am Nabak Camp when IMC staff happened to be in 
the camp on an unusual schedule.  JEM is also reported to have 
cached weapons in Am Nabak and in Oure Cassoni Q probably the 
two most problematic camps in terms of actual/potential 
militarization.  A UNHCR community services officer in Oure 
Cassoni who had learned of some weapons caches in/near the camp 
from refugee women was verbally threatened and subsequently moved 
by UNHCR.  One refugee watcher opined that the Sultan of Bahai, 
who is President DebyQs brother and with whom the PRM Q S/CRS team 
met, was involved in facilitating weapons movements to the JEM and 
NRF rebels who are based only about three kilometers from the Oure 
Cassoni Camp, on the Sudan border. 
 
¶26.  (SBU)  Potential camp security/neutrality risks that have 
NOT/NOT been clearly identified/verified to date, but to the 
possibility of which UNHCR et al should be alert, include diversion 
 
of supplies and food to combatants, rebel training within camp 
boundaries, taxing of refugees to fund arms procurements, 
intimidation of refugees to provide support for military 
activities, and use of refugee camps to shelter combatants from 
conflict.  Routine rebel visits to family members who are in 
refugee camps are generally not too problematic provided that 
weapons are left outside of camps and no military activities are 
undertaken inside the camps. 
 
¶27.  (SBU)  A number of refugee watchers have described Oure 
Cassoni as a Qrear baseQ for JEM/NRF rebels who, after the Darfur 
Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed, somehow supplanted the 
SLA/Minawi as the rebel group with which refugee sympathies lie. 
Staff of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which is the 
principal implementing agency in the camp, believe that claims of 
militarization of the camp are exaggerated and that use of the 
term Qrear baseQ, which means different things to different 
people, is potentially dangerous for IRC staff and operations in 
Darfur should it become Qconventional wisdomQ that IRC is running 
a base of Sudanese rebel military operations.  [Comment.  It would 
be prudent to avoid imprecise use of the term Qrear baseQ while 
taking all possible measures to assure that the camp not be 
militarized.  End comment.]  IRC community services staff, while 
acknowledging that security restrictions on contact hours within 
the camp make it more challenging than usual to ferret out what 
is happening, reported that refugee women have become more 
outspoken about the presence of rebels and the need for them to 
stay out of the camp and that recruitment of refugee youth has 
diminished in the last six months.  While the refugee camp market 
is often considered to be better than the one in Bahai town, IRC 
says that one sees rebels at Bahai market to a much greater extent 
than at Oure Cassoni market. 
 
¶28.  (SBU)  Refugee women leaders complained to the PRM-S/CRS team 
that they resented rebels entering the camp and drawing the 
attention of the SAF Antonov 26 bombers (Note.  The SAF had bombed 
in the area before, and, in the week previous to the PRM-S/CRS 
team visit, had injured several people with bombs, including 
several ACTED NGO employees.  End note.).  One male refugee 
pulled one team member aside to complain that armed men had 
threatened him one night when a victim of attempted rape sought 
shelter in his home, that rebel combatants had run into the camp 
for safety during the JEM-SAF skirmishing in November 2006, and 
that refugee leaders had used bull horns to incite the camp 
population to refuse any UNHCR plan to move the camp further away 
from the border.  In a meeting with male refugee leaders, S/CRS 
Emboff Wintermeyer briefed refugees on some points from the 
meeting SE Natsios had had with rebel leaders in Abeche on 19 
January - the USG wants the rebels to unite politically so they 
can negotiate from a stronger position; the DPA, which the rebels 
do not like, will at least remain as a starting point for further 
negotiations.  The leaders seemed to resent EmboffQs further 
statements that housing rebels and their arms was against UNHCR 
rules, and could jeopardize camp funding, as well as make the 
camp a legitimate military target for the Sudanese Air Force (SAF). 
 
They also told Emboff that they would refuse to move if UNHCR 
attempted to relocate the camp further away from the Sudanese 
border. 
 
¶29.  (SBU)  This protection issue is one of the thorniest to 
address given that the root cause of a refugee situation is 
also the driving factor in any militarization of refugee camps. 
UNHCR has been consistently stressing the need to maintain the 
exclusively civilian character of refugee camps in all of its 
dealings with the GOC and in sensitization sessions with all 
levels of refugee leadership.   In his March 25 speech to refugees 
and townspeople in Kounoungo (reftel), President Deby said all 
of the right things about no weapons, recruiting, or conflict 
within the refugee camp.  However, whether the GOC is committed to 
such principles when its own interests are at stake is unlikely. 
 
NDJAMENA 00000358  004.2 OF 005 
 
 
Recommendation:  The USG and other interested donors should lean 
on the GOC even more strongly to insist that it keep Sudanese 
rebels out of camps. 
 
¶30.  (SBU)  Relocation of the heretofore two most problematic 
camps in terms of their location close to the border Q Oure 
Cassoni and Am Nabak Q has been a priority for several years 
but has been consistently frustrated by the difficulty of finding 
adequate water in a place that the local population would accept 
the refugees.  A promising site near Biltine became a battlefield 
in a FUC-ANT clash late last year, and is now littered with 
unexploded ordnance, adding an additional challenge.  In addition, 
a UNHCR site search mission found two sites in Kanem that might 
work; one could potentially accommodate 25,000 refugees, but 
whether any would agree to move to the other side of Chad is 
unknown.   A recent water assessment mission may also have found 
water some 50 kms to the northwest of Bahai and while the site 
could probably not accommodate all of the Oure Cassoni refugees, 
it could be used to decongest the camp which would be good from 
a water standpoint as well as a protection one.  [Comment. 
While there is disagreement about the relative extent of the 
violations of the civilian character of the camp, Oure Cassoni 
definitely violates international guidelines.  The suggestion that 
if UNHCR could find a suitable alternative site it might 
deregister any refugees who refused to move was very controversial 
for NGO and UN interlocutors.  Though it might enhance UNHCRQs 
credibility in some quarters and deny the GoS an excuse or 
justification to bomb the Bahai area, it might end up cutting 
off large numbers of vulnerable women and children who are not 
currently able to dictate terms to rebels.  End comment.] 
Recommendation:  While camp relocation is clearly not going to 
happen this year given that the rainy season will be starting 
soon, UNHCR should accelerate measures to ready feasible sites 
such as arranging for the clearance of UXO from the Biltine site. 
 
¶31.  (SBU)  Camp relocation should be vigorously pursued.  Alone 
it will not prevent militarization.  Other possible measures to 
reinforce the civilian character of camps include empowerment 
of refugees to resist militarization Q through strengthening 
womenQs decision-making in the camps and by providing 
alternative educational/ vocational activities for youth Q and 
the fielding of a UN police-type force that would help protect 
the refugee camps in part by keeping rebels out.  In meetings 
with the PRM-S/CRS team, refugee women in Touloum and Oure Cassoni 
Camps specifically asked for Qblue helmetsQ as a way to improve 
security for women, with the Oure Cassoni refugees further 
specifying that Qblue helmetsQ would make sure that Sudanese 
rebels did not come into the camp.   [Comment.  While some 
humanitarians worry that any UN military force would be drawn 
into Chadian and/or Sudanese rebel politics and that the 
presence of military forces could compromise the desired neutrality 
 
of humanitarian operations, a UN force that reinforced law and 
order to ensure the security/neutrality of the camps would arguably 
 
be acceptable to most.  End comment.] 
 
¶32.  (SBU)  Last, but not least in the effort to prevent 
militarization, UNHCR needs to buttress its protection staffing 
in order to be able to closely monitor the camps.  Personnel 
limitations imposed by the Qphase fourQ security designation 
obviously have a negative impact on the number of staff hours that 
can be spent working with refugee groups and verifying the civilian 
 
character of camps.  In many of the UNHCR Field Offices, there is 
essentially one international protection officer that serves as 
the second in command and is often acting head of field office or 
is absent given the schedules of R&R and other needs to travel 
within eastern Chad.  At the time of the PRM-S/CRS team visit, 
for example, three of the four field offices visited had the 
protection officers as acting head of office. 
 
¶33.  (SBU)  Summary of Recommendations on Refugee Protection in 
Eastern Chad 
 
UNHCR needs to buttress its protection staffing in order to be 
able to closely monitor the camps. 
 
he USG and other interested donors should lean on the GOC even 
more strongly to insist that it keep Sudanese rebels out of camps. 
 
 
The USG should take a strong stand on the child soldier issue, 
insisting that dealing with child soldiers be a factor in any 
discussion of enhanced USG support for Deby and his armed forces. 
Human rights advocates are sure to make child soldiers a public 
issue in any event.   While camp relocation is clearly not going 
to happen this year given that the rainy season will be starting 
 
NDJAMENA 00000358  005.2 OF 005 
 
 
soon, UNHCR should accelerate measures to ready feasible sites 
such as arranging for the clearance of UXO from the Biltine site. 
 
Protecting our current investment in the gendarme force, ensuring 
that gendarmes charged with protecting refugees/camps and 
humanitarian operations have adequate weaponry to discharge 
their duties should be part of the bilateral USG-Chadian dialogue. 
 
Embassy/Ndjamena should track the gendarme stipend issue to 
ensure that it is resolved favorably and that gendarmes are paid 
as quickly as possible. 
 
The USG should weigh in with the GOC (in consultation with 
UNHCR) in getting the individual ID cards distributed soonest. 
 
Despite the challenges of insecurity, programming for youth, 
while not necessarily life-saving, should be prioritized. 
 
Given that distribution of sanitary materials is a fairly 
straightforward task, UNHCR should without further delay import 
and distribute the necessary fabric to meet the established 
standard of at least three meters every six months for every 
woman/girl of reproductive age. 
 
UNHCR at the Abeche and Ndjamena levels should address the 
firewood depletion issue much more aggressively from a business 
-minded perspective of pay-now-or-pay-more-later .   Pressure to 
follow up and to explain the financial requirements to donors 
should continue. 
 
¶34. (U) Tripoli minimize considered. 
TAMLYN