NIGER
I. How did I end up here?
I cannot remember what in 2012 took me on a mission to Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, but I was in Abuja, when my Regional Director, Valentin Tapsoba, would not entertain my request that he allow me to return to base in Freetown to collect a few clothes, and sent me flying forward to Niamey, to lead an emergency response team managing an influx of Mali refugees into Niger that was taking place. And so, I found myself in a refugee emergency situation characterized by:
A UNHCR presence that had been closed two years previously, and with a driver and a Protection Assistant attached to UNDP. The driver worked for me but in my short stay (8 months), I never set my eyes on the Protection Assistant who was on maternity leave.
A very structured and organized government with a humanitarian Unit in the Prime-Minister’s office (Brigi Rafini), a government worried about national security because of the absence of a government in Libya, and the proliferation of potent weapons in the region.
Existing UN organizations were already providing response to the emerging refugee situation, in the absence of UNHCR, with UNICEF in the lead and OCHA coordinating. These agencies resented an absentee mandate holder who flew in to take over. A poor relationship that lasted long.
It was a complex situation affecting Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, which quickly affected also Nigeria and Chad. I also served in both countries and I will describe in subsequent articles my views of this situation from those countries’ perspectives.
II. The emergency
My first tasks as Representative and head of the emergency team were:
to reopen a UNHCR presence
to rebuild a historical partnership with the government.
to take over the leadership and coordination of the refugee response, complicated by established mechanisms of coordination that needed to be disrupted delicately in order to maintain the emerging partnerships.
Still, occupying this space meant a lot of ideological and methodological battles. While I managed to reestablish the UNHCR coordination role, messy at the beginning, I needed to do that while understanding, and teaching my team also be sensitive to, the fact that refugees finally gave renewed legitimacy and credibility to the work of many organizations that otherwise had immense difficulties explaining their presence and the visibility of what they were doing in the country for so long.
Malian refugees could be distinguished into three categories:
Politically-motivated refugees (including some military officers allowed to stay in Niger), mostly urban and not really claiming humanitarian assistance but seeking military and political support, as Northern Mali had been occupied by an insurgency originating from the breakdown of law and order in Libya, after the assassination of President Kadafi.
A nomadic culture that made a good part of the refugees moving with their cattle and camels, security being their only limiting factor. I came to learn that these nomadic groups had the tradition of moving seasonally between Mali and Niger anyway and it became difficult to herd them into a camp away from the border.
Destitute refugees who nonetheless wanted to remain at the border, and who we tried to move away.
Bringing refugees away from the border, or selecting a site for a refugee camp in a very arid semi-desertic environment became a real challenge. Temperatures easily reached the 53 Celsius and sandstorms were a normal occurrence. We created one first camp that was never occupied, despite our objections to the choice of the site, based on our technical knowledge of such endeavours. Other organizations were eager to be more visible by forcing the government to force UNHCR to create a camp regardless of standards. Other camps, less visible, were more successful.
Coordination remained a battle of wits and influence between UNHCR, OCHA and a government that also wished to play its central role. In this environment, while being firm was necessary, I decided not to be aggressive, to a point where the visiting AHC, Janet Lim, asked whether I was up to the task. Did I need help? I thought that any help dropping from Geneva would just deepen the conflict. I could not represent the organization and be excessively confrontational because UNHCR came late onto the scene and I was still building a team with no UNHCR experience. That could not have been a fighting team with discernment on how to choose battles.
For instance, I managed to avoid a trap of exaggerated refugee numbers that many were pushing for: we were informed by a noisy coalition of partners of a new influx of some 30,000 refugees in Intekane. I dispatched a mission to a very difficult to reach place and a week later it came back, exhausted, with a figure of not more than 2,000 nomadic cattle-keepers who informed my team that that was their natural annual transhumance route, although this time they could not return to Mali. We were uncomfortably grilled by other UN organizations in the Prime Minister’s office. The registration team’s professional work and technical explanation saved the day with credible and provable figures. And it reminded me of 2008 when the organization faced a credibility disaster having declared an emergency of 200,000 refugees in Liberia, when in fact there were no more than 60,000 (and a well-funded appeal based on the higher figures), or another disaster in Burkina Faso, closer and linked to my operation, where UNHCR declared 80,000 refugees, when there were no more than 20,000! Panic induced by the humanitarian crowd.
The High Commissioner Mr Antonio Guterres, came visiting and we accompanied the WFP Executive Director to Eastern Ninger, to see food being distributed to famine victims, in the same way as the WF Executive Director accompanied the High Commissioner to Ouallam.
By the time I ended my emergency assignment, I left
an established office and a team of national staff that were already conversant with MSRP, warehousing modules and budgeting systems.
three refugee camps in remote areas such as Aballa, Ayourou and Ouallam near Tillabery, one roaming group of refugees in Intekane, where we did not do more than a few food distributions. I later visited Intekane, from Geneva, and my successor, Karl Steinacker, had managed to set up good water and health services for these nomads.
Coordination remained an issue over which I left no legacy or skills, because I was fighting for it, with no time to coach. And coordination was not my main skill, it just came with the territory.
In the meantime. The complex geopolitical consequences of the criminal killing of President Kadafi of Libya were just starting to unfold, of which the most important was the militarization of the entire Sahel region and an increase of foreign forces, including French and American soldiers in Niger, in particular at the Mali/Niger/Algeria triangle, and a deepening foreign dependence of Niger. But then, I was leaving the emerging operation to Kofi Adossi, and I was reassigned to Geneva, Switzerland.
III. Any lessons?
1. Niger was a very difficult working environment for a person not conversant with the Sahel. The weather was punishing and one can easily dehydrate. Travel through the semi-desert bordering with Mali and Burkina Faso was particularly punishing. One day, half way through a field monitoring trip with my supervisors, I was forced to cede my comfortable vehicle to a female colleague who was travelling alone to Aballa, in exchanged for her hardtop. And I took out of that comfort my two Directors, George Okoth-Obbo from Geneva and Valentin Tapsoba from Dakar. I was trying in my small way to offer better working conditions to a colleague I was sending on mission in the sandy desert on her own.
2. I learned to measure the extent of my team’s capacity to claim the organization’s space. In the process, interagency relations were fraying, but I managed to keep these rivalries from detracting from our core mission of supporting a government in need.
Jose, 24 July 2023
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