Ethiopia: The Biggest African Refugee Camp No One Talks About

[Jefferson23]

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Nov 29 2015 (IPS) - On a sunny November day in Addis Ababa the courtyard of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) centre is packed with people—some attend a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reception clinic, others get essential supplies, while students attend classes, and many simply play volleyball, table football or dominoes to pass the time.

Benyamin told IPS he came to Ethiopia from Yemen because practising his religion freely just wasn’t an option. After converting from Islam to the Jewish faith, he was put in a psychiatric hospital. “If I’d been sent to court I could have been put to death,” Benyamin adds phlegmatically.

Guilain, 35, from Guinea in West Africa, has lived in Ethiopia for 11 years, while two years ago his wife and daughter managed to enter the United States, where he hopes to join them—eventually.

“I miss them but I must keep my heart intact, so I can’t think about it too much,” Guilain told IPS. While he remains in Ethiopia, Guilain has formed a seven-member band of fellow Guineans who practise in the JRS’s small music room. “The music gives me hope. I am happy when I come here; you see people enjoying themselves—it helps you to forget.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/11/ethiopia-the-biggest-african-refugee-camp-no-one-talks-about/

[KoKo]

1. Thanks..Interesting and informative read...

There's little focus on Africa these days in US MSM about the dislocation, impoverishment and ongoing unemployment hardships of the people caught up in wars and famine due not only to climate change issues but corrupt governments and multinational corporation control.

From the article which is information many of us don't know about:

The Distinctions between Refugees and Economic Migrants are Blurred:

Such is the scale and diversity of challenges faced by many countries’ populations, that distinctions between refugees and economic migrants become blurred. Hence the argument for a new terminology of “survival migrant”, someone falling outside the internationally recognized definition of a refugee but, nevertheless, fleeing very serious socio-economic rights deprivations.

For now, many of these individuals, having no passport and coming from countries often labeled high risk for illegal migration, find themselves cut off from obtaining study visas and work permits for developed countries, and condemned by strict national migration rules to remain as refugees for years in the likes of Ethiopia.

Hence so many risk so much, with every February seeing an exodus of refugees, especially Eritreans, from Addis Ababa heading to Sudan in the hope of continuing northwest and eventually reaching Europe. March is the right month, according to popular wisdom here, to start the journey from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, to Libya. The Sahara desert is not too hot and the waters of the Mediterranean Sea will be calmer by April than during the winter.

But there’s no mitigating the dangers of dealing with human traffickers, rickety boats and the simple capriciousness of the elements. Eritreans accounted for the majority of the 3,000 people who drowned in the Mediterranean this year, humanitarian agencies estimate.

[Jefferson23]

2. For you, anytime. It is too sad, they want what everyone wants. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Yemen and Guinea are relatively unusual countries of origin for Ethopia, though

The main ones are Eritrea (131,660), South Sudan (350,000) and Somalia (265,010), with 74,530 from elsewhere: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/page?page=49e483986&submit=GO