Issue No. 207

The suspension of aid and refugees in Gambella

Last week, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) detailed the deaths of dozens of refugees in the Gambella region since the suspension of international food aid to Ethiopia in June 2023. Most had died of starvation, but others were killed after being forced to “scavenge and steal” food outside their camps. The humanitarian situation is now reportedly rapidly deteriorating in the sprawling camps that host roughly 400,000 refugees from South Sudan. With malnutrition and hunger increasing across Ethiopia, and with little sign of international humanitarian agencies resuming widespread aid distribution, the situation is bleak.

 
The vast majority of these refugees are ethnic Nuer from South Sudan. Roughly equal in number to Gambella’s host population, they make up over 40% of Ethiopia’s total refugee population. Even before the suspension of aid to the country by the World Food Programme (WFP) and USAID in June, the refugee camps were over-populated and under-resourced. In the Jewi camp, a single health centre must serve over 60,000 refugees.
 
The suspension of food aid is further destabilising an already tense relationship between refugees and hosts. Like much of Ethiopia, Gambella’s internal politics are dominated by inter-ethnic tensions, particularly between the Nilotic groups of the Anuak and the Ethiopian Nuer. The Nuer are typically agro-pastoralists, while the Anuak are more settled in farming communities. Competition over land and resources regularly spills into violence, despite the relative abundance of natural resources in the region. Over 50 civilians were reportedly killed in escalating responses from Nuer and Anuak militia between May and July in the Anuak zone and Gambella city.
 
Many Anuak consider themselves the sole indigenous group in Gambella, with the other ethnic groups holding weaker territorial and political claims. The 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Agreement delineated the Ethiopia-Sudan border, placing most Anuak in Gambella and Nuer in Sudan. This agreement is still cited in rhetoric to depict the Nuer as ‘foreigners.’ The subsequent gradual migration of Nuer eastwards into Anuak territory was largely peaceful, however, and in the early 20th century, the Anuak-Nuer relationship was mainly characterised by trade and social cooperation.
 
The more recent often massive influxes of refugees from Sudan has changed this dynamic. The two communities have different forms of government, with Anuak typically maintaining a centralised leadership structure, while Nuer are more decentralised. The mass displacement of Nuer from Sudan’s civil wars into Ethiopia have hardened Gambella’s ethnic boundaries, as competition over land and political influence increase.
 
Ethiopia’s Derg regime (1987-1991) strongly preferred the Nuer, placing them in key positions in Gambella administrations, and supporting the presence of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the region. The Derg legacy of division between hosts and refugees has bled into Ethiopia today, where refugees face militia violence and other hostile actions when outside of camps. Several armed forces and diaspora groups have sprung up in recent years in protest of the Nuer population in Gambella, such as the ‘Gambella Nilotes United Movement/ Army.’
 
In addition, Gambella has been historically marginalised in Ethiopia; it reflects the highland-lowland divide that has seen the latter regularly excluded from influence and investment. The Derg forcibly relocated thousands of highlanders, largely Tigrayan, Amhara, and Oromo, into southern Ethiopia. Sixty thousand (60,000) were relocated to Gambella while northern Ethiopia was suffering drought in the mid-1980s. Anuak militia have also come in conflict with resettled Amhara and Tigrayan communities.
 
Militia from the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes raids go back years, with armed militia often stealing cattle in remote western Gambella. People are also regularly abducted. Between 2015 and 2022, 275 people were kidnapped by Murle militia, with 208 of them returned by Ethiopian National Defence Forces. In May 2023, Murle militia killed 10 civilians in the Nuer zone in the Gambella region and set several churches and homes ablaze. Such instability has driven frustration among many Anuak. In light of these tensions, the Federal Government of Ethiopia is now increasingly settling refugees in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of the country, instead of Gambella. But current and ongoing suspension of humanitarian aid has thrown ethnic divisions into stark relief in many parts of the country.
 
On 20 September, during his visit to Ethiopia, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi praised the country’s refugee policy. At one refugee camp on the Somali border, he said, “the host communities and refugees have also been remarkably open to work together in harmony.” But such praise must be set against the UN suspension of food aid to Ethiopia, which continues to drive violence between host communities and refugees on the other side of the country, and against country-wide starvation deaths and malnutrition. In Tigray this week, the Regional Health Bureau warned that mothers and children under 5 are dying at alarming levels, primarily due of starvation.
 
The EHRC has called on USAID and WFP to resume food assistance, warning that without it, more refugees will certainly die. Establishing a more secure and transparent form of aid delivery in Ethiopia is no doubt essential, and those responsible for the theft of humanitarian aid must be brought to justice. But refugees from Sudan are not the ones stealing aid and lining their pockets, they are the ones paying the highest price. And starvation is only the most horrific consequence of a wider, grimmer picture that leaves an indelible mark on many communities. Restoring humanitarian aid must happen immediately, but it will not alone undo the damage already done in Gambella.

By the Ethiopian Cable team