[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 108 (Monday, July 13, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1042-E1043]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       AFRICA'S DISPLACED PEOPLE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 13, 2015

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, last year, nearly 60 million 
people were displaced worldwide. In fact, one out of every 122 people 
on Earth today is either a refugee, internally displaced in their home 
country or seeking asylum in another country.
   In sub-Saharan Africa, there are more than 15 million displaced 
people. Of that total, 3.7 million are refugees and 11.4 million are 
internally displaced. These disruptions of normal life in Africa are 
caused by conflicts such as in Somalia, the Central African Republic, 
South Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, 
Burundi, Western Sahara and elsewhere. These disruptions not only 
affect those who are displaced, but also the people in whose 
communities these displaced people are relocated.
   African refugees and internally displaced people face numerous 
issues--from security in the places in which they seek refuge, to death 
and mayhem trying to reach places of refuge, to conflict with 
surrounding populations to warehousing that consigns generations to be 
born and live in foreign countries.
   A hearing I held yesterday examined the various issues displaced 
people face and the U.S. response to these conditions in order to 
determine the effectiveness of our government's efforts to help and to 
determine whether course corrections are necessary.
   The terrible plight of African refugees has been much in the news in 
recent months because of the death of thousands trying to reach Europe 
across the Mediterranean Sea and attacks on refugees in South Africa 
reportedly caused by xenophobia.
   On the South African case, I sent two members of my staff to 
southern Africa last month to look into the incidents of violence 
against refugees in South Africa. What they found was appalling. 
Despite a very generous set of laws and programs to enable immigration 
into South Africa, refugees were often refused medical service at 
hospitals that supposedly offer free medical care to all people.
   Apparently, no matter what the law in South Africa says, staff who 
screen patients often simply refuse to allow people they consider 
foreigners to receive medical care. According to refugees who spoke 
with my staff, this has meant that refugee women have had to give birth 
on the floor of hospitals while hospital staff refused to provide 
services.
   As for those refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean to seek 
sanctuary in Europe, more than 1,800 people have died making that trip 
this year as of early June. On the cover of the April 25th issue of The 
Economist magazine, the failure of the nations of Europe to devise a 
workable, humane policy toward those fleeing to their continent was 
described as ``a moral and political disgrace.''
   Many of the refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean are 
Eritreans, who also have fled persecution and repression at home 
through the Gulf of Aden and also through the Sinai Peninsula, where 
they are often at the mercy of ruthless Bedouin groups, who traffic 
them or hold them for ransom. Eritrea is a closed society, so our 
knowledge of conditions there comes mostly from refugees, but one has 
to ask how bad must conditions there be if so many Eritreans are 
willing to risk their lives and well-being to find refuge almost 
anywhere else?
   Unresolved conflicts have forced many refugees to experience 
protracted stays in foreign countries. For example, refugees have not 
only had children but also grandchildren in camps in Kenya and Algeria. 
After more than two decades, the situation in Somalia remains 
unresolved, and Somali refugees are unable to resume their lives in 
their homeland. Yet they face an increasingly hostile Kenyan 
environment in which the government is unwilling to allow Somalis to 
establish financial independence outside refugee camps.
   In Algeria, Sahrawis, refugees from the Western Sahara territory 
under the control of Morocco, have lived in camps in western Algeria 
since being chased out of the territory by the advance of hundreds of 
thousands of Moroccans in 1975. The Government of Algeria not only 
provides a home for the Sahrawis, but also supplies access to free 
education and health care. Still, income-generating activities by 
Sahrawis are discouraged to prevent competition with local Algerians.
   Internally displaced persons also face serious challenges. In 
Nigeria, for example, more than 1.5 million people from northeastern 
Nigeria have fled attacks by Boko Haram and resulting Nigerian military 
activities. However, Nigeria is a patchwork of 36 states whose creation 
over the years has inflamed ethnic and religious tensions as state 
majorities became minorities suddenly. The Nigerian IDPs are generally 
living in communities rather than camps. The longer they remain in 
their current areas, the greater the chance their presence will inflame 
new unrest as the ethnic and religious balance in their new areas is 
again changed abruptly.
   The United States and the rest of the international community face 
serious challenges in addressing the displacement of so many people. 
According to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, the 
``international response capacities are overstretched by the 
unprecedented rise in global forced displacement.'' We must carefully 
consider the U.S. role in meeting the increasing challenge of Africa's 
displaced people, taking into consideration our moral imperative to 
help those in need, as well as strategic interests in preventing the 
kind of neglect that makes terrorist recruitment among displaced people 
easier than it should be.

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