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As many as 28 million people across East Africa at risk of extreme hunger if rains fail again

As many as 28 million people across East Africa at risk of extreme hunger if rains fail again

Global food and commodity prices spiking in reaction to Ukraine crisis set to worsen hunger for 21 million people already today in severe food insecurity 

As many as 28 million people across East Africa face severe hunger if the March rains fail. With the unfolding crisis in Ukraine taking their attention, there is a real danger that the international community will not respond adequately to the escalating hunger crisis in East Africa until it is too late, Oxfam warned today.

A massive “no regrets” mobilization of international humanitarian aid is needed now to avert destitution and to help the 21 million people already facing severe levels of hunger in the midst of conflict, flooding, and a massive two-year drought – unprecedented in 40 years – in countries across East Africa.

“East Africa faces a profoundly alarming hunger crisis. Areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and beyond are experiencing an unfolding full-scale catastrophe. Even if the rains do arrive this month, full recovery will be near impossible unless urgent action is taken today,” said Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam Executive Director.

“The repercussions of the Ukrainian conflict on the global food system will reverberate around the globe, but it is the poorest and most vulnerable people who will be among those hit hardest and fastest. Rising food prices are a hammer blow to millions of people who are already suffering multiple crises, and make the huge shortfall in aid potentially lethal.” said Bucher.

Covid-related hikes in global food and commodity prices were already undermining the options available to heavily indebted African governments to resolve the mass hunger facing their people. However, the crisis in Ukraine will have catastrophic new consequences as it already pushes up food and commodity prices beyond what East African governments can afford.

Countries in East Africa import up to 90% of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia. As disruptions begin to affect the global trade in grains, oil, transport and fertilizer, food prices are beginning to skyrocket. They hit an all-time high last week. In Somalia, the prices for staple grains were more than double those of the previous year.

In 2010-11, similar spikes in food prices pushed 44 million more people worldwide into extreme poverty, and indications are that the food-price inflation happening now will be even worse.

Ahmed Mohamud Omar (70), a pastoralist from Wajir County in Kenya, told Oxfam: “Due to the droughts our donkeys have perished and the ones remaining are too weak to pull carts. My only tuktuk is now parked idle because I can’t afford its fuel. I no longer have my camels or goats, I think about what will my family eat, where will their next meal come from, whether I will get the daily jerrican of water.”

Nyadang Martha, from Akobo in South Sudan said: “All the 40 years of my life, I have never seen anything like what is happening here in Akobo. For the past four years, it is either flood, drought, famine, violence, or COVID-19. This is just too much. I am tired of living. If it continues like this, I doubt if my girls will become full adults.”

“The world cannot again talk itself into inertia as people are pushed into extreme food insecurity. To not act now would be immoral and a dereliction of the humanitarian imperative,” said Bucher.

  • Over 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have been displaced in search of water and pasture, just in the first quarter of 2022. Millions of others had to flee their farmlands and homes by conflicts especially around Ethiopia – where 9.4m people now need urgent humanitarian aid.
  • The region has suffered from the worst plague of locusts in 70 years and flash flooding that have affected nearly a million people in South Sudan.
  • Kenya has suffered a 70 percent drop in crop production and has declared a national disaster with 3.1m people in acute hunger, now in need of aid. Nearly half of all households in Kenya are having to borrow food or buy it on credit.
  • Ethiopia is facing its highest level of food insecurity since 2016, in Somali region alone 3.5m people experience critical water and food shortage. Almost a million livestock animals have died, leaving pastoralists who entirely depend on herding for survival with nothing. Women tell us heart-breaking stories about having to skip meals so that they can feed their children.
  • More than 671,000 people have recently migrated away from their homes in Somalia because nearly 90% of the country is in severe drought. This will likely leave almost half of Somali children under five acutely malnourished.
  • In South Sudan, an estimated 8.3 million people will face severe food insecurity this lean season (May-July) as climatic and economic shocks intensify.

Despite alarming need, the humanitarian response is woefully underfunded. Only 3% of the total $6bn UN 2022 humanitarian appeal for Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan, has been funded to date. Kenya has only secured 11% of its UN flash appeal to date.

Idris Akhdar from WASDA a 21-year Kenyan partner with Oxfam, from Wajir County, North Eastern Kenya said: “Our team have met desperate people. People who are hungry, who are thirsty, and who are about to lose hope. In the last few days, I have seen across the region – Somali region in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya – the same hunger and destitution all over. We appeal to the international community to help.”

Jilo Roba, Coordinator at the Department for Children’s Services in Kenya, one of Oxfam partners, said: “There’s a family I visited two days ago, they married off their young daughter. The father was sick so he borrowed money to go to hospital and, when he couldn’t repay it, they had to let their daughter go.” 

Diyaara Ibrahim Gulie, from Wajir County in Kenya who has received food and cash assistance via Oxfam says: “We now have to skip meals and resort to one meal a day. And at times we have to prioritize the children`s eating and starve the grown-ups in order to sustain what little food we have.”

Oxfam together with local partners, is redoubling its support for those impacted by the East African hunger crisis, aiming to reach over 1.5 million people most in need with lifesaving water, cash, shelter and sanitation facilities. Oxfam will help people to build rebuild their lives from these climatic shocks.

“East Africa cannot wait. The hunger crisis, fuelled by changes in our climate and COVID-19, is worsening by the day. Oxfam is calling on all donors to urgently fill the UN humanitarian appeal funding gap, and to get funds as quickly as possible to local humanitarian organisations. The governments and warring parties in conflict zones need to ensure humanitarian agencies like Oxfam can safely reach the most vulnerable people,” said Bucher. 

“We call upon the governments especially from grain exporting countries to do all they can to find suitable alternatives to the imminent disruption in the supply chain from Ukraine towards low-income, food-import dependent countries. And – as we witness the tremors triggered by the failure in international efforts to tackle the climate crisis – we underscore the need to ramp up action on climate adaptation and mitigation,” said Bucher.

Notes

Oxfam response in East Africa:

  • In South Sudan: Oxfam has provided support to over 400,000 people and aims to reach and additional 240,000 people with safe water, sanitation and hygiene services and promotion, cash grants for families to buy food and other essentials, and livelihood support like seeds, tools, fishing kits.
  • In Somalia, Oxfam aims to reach 420,000 people this year with lifesaving water, sanitation and health support, including drilling boreholes in water insecure areas, distributing hygiene kits, providing materials to help protect communities from water borne diseases, and distributing cash, seeds tools, and training farmers in small scale greenhouse farming. Oxfam will also support livestock treatment and vaccination campaigns together with the Ministry of Livestock, train community protection volunteers on gender-based violence issues, and distribute solar lamps to protect women and girls at night. To date we have reached over 260,000 people.
  • In Kenya, Oxfam is currently supporting 40,000 people and planning to expand the support to approximately 240,000 people with cash transfers for food and other essential items and water, sanitation and hygiene activities such as repairing water points and boreholes to provide access to clean, safe water and hygiene promotion campaigns.
  • In Ethiopia, Oxfam has supported 170,000 people in Northern Ethiopia with lifesaving clean water, food, and cash assistance, particularly in conflict affected areas in South Tigray, Central Tigray, Amhara and Afar. Oxfam aims to reach an additional 750,000 women, men and children in Northern Ethiopia with emergency food packages, livelihoods assistance, clean water, sanitation and hygiene kits and protection until March 2023. Together with our partners, we are also scaling up response in the Somali Region to respond to the effects of the drought.

Civil society groups celebrate IFC’s divestment from profit-driven school chain Bridge International Academies

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has quietly divested from New Globe Schools, better known as Bridge International Academies (BIA), a for-profit school chain operating in four African countries and India. The IFC has invested  a total of $13.5 million in BIA since 2014, with the intention of supporting the company’s expansion to other countries. 

In response, Anderson Miamen, National Coordinator of the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE) in Liberia, said: “We applaud the IFC and World Bank for this bold step, which is long overdue. This is an extremely welcome development and a win for ongoing efforts by right-to-education campaigners and others to push for more investment in public education by governments and development partners across the world, especially in Africa. We call on the World Bank to work directly with governments to increase the quality, inclusiveness, and gender sensitivity of public education and schools.” 

Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC office, said: “This is a clear signal that the IFC is distancing itself further from investments that pose risks to children, families, and teachers, and undermine public education systems. The IFC should also make permanent its freeze on investments in for-profit private education. This divestment should be a wake-up call to other financiers of profit-driven schools targeting lower-income communities. The message is clear: the model is broken and harmful.”

Salima Namusobya, Executive Director of Uganda’s Initiative for Economic and Social Rights (ISER), said: “The BIA model and its implementation undermined the right to education and the rule of law in Uganda. The IFC divestiture comes at a time when a majority of BIA schools have closed down since their for-profit model was unsustainable, particularly in the wake of COVID-19. We hope other investors will follow suit.”

The divestment, which is unusual for the IFC, was confirmed through a note published on 9 March. It comes after a number of scandals surrounding BIA and a series of serious complaints to the IFC’s independent accountability mechanism, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) regarding the IFC’s investment in the company. Allegations in the complaints range from violations of labour rights, child sexual abuse involving BIA staff and students, and inadequate health and safety measures that led to the tragic death of one child and the injury of another.

This divestment also follows the IFC’s landmark 2020 announcement that it would freeze all direct and indirect investments in private, fee-charging K-12 schools “in response to concerns by external stakeholders about the impact of private schools on education quality and access”. A number of organizations, academics and UN Special Rapporteurs have demonstrated how these schools deepen inequalities and exclude the poorest children and girls.

Civil society organizations are calling on other BIA investors to follow the IFC’s lead. They are also calling for a speedy resolution to the CAO complaints filed by communities in Kenya, and for the IFC to ensure it exits from this investment in a responsible way. Its duty to affected families and communities in Kenya does not end with this divestment, and the IFC must work to provide effective remedy as needed. The World Bank’s public sector arm must also step up and expand its support to the countries affected by the investment — Kenya, Liberia, Uganda, Nigeria and India — to fulfil their constitutional obligations to provide free and quality public education for all children, particularly in underserved areas.

Notes to editors

In 2018, civil society groups published an open letter to investors in BIA, outlining concerns and urging them to cease support. Since then, additional concerns and scandals have been highlighted in the media, including the reported electrocution death of a child in a BIA school in Kenya, major teacher pay cuts in Liberia and Kenya during COVID-19, and charges of fraud and theft brought against a former Bridge director in a previous role.   

In 2019, more than 170 civil society organizations from 64 countries called on the World Bank Group to end support to for-profit private education (2019)

In 2020, the IFC committed to freeze investments in for-profit K-12 schools, responding to concerns from civil society and leadership from U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters. 

Similar recent policy shifts have included the Global Partnership for Education’s decision in its 2019 Private Sector Strategy to prohibit funding to for-profit provision of core education services, and a 2018 resolution by the European Parliament that declared the European Union and its Member States must not use development aid money to fund commercial private schools.

Summary of CAO cases on IFC’s investment in BIA:

  • BIA-01/Kenya case: In April 2018, 10 parents and former and current teachers at BIA submitted a complaint highlighting BIA’s negative impacts, especially on the right to education, health and safety, and on labour rights. In its Appraisal Report published in October 2019, the CAO announced its decision to carry out a full compliance investigation into the adequacy of the IFC’s due diligence and supervision of its investee. The compliance investigation is ongoing.
  • BIA-02/Kenya and BIA 03/Kenya cases: In June 2020, the CAO confirmed acceptance of two new cases on BIA, filed by the parents of two children who were electrocuted while in a BIA school in Nairobi, Kenya. The electrocution caused the death of one child and injuries to the other. The Complainants and the Company agreed to engage in dispute resolution to try to arrive at a mediated settlement. The dispute resolution process is still ongoing.
  • BIA-04/Kenya case: In the course of the BIA-01/Kenya investigation, CAO staff and experts travelled to Nairobi in February 2020. The investigation team spoke to community members who raised concerns regarding instances of child sexual abuse at Bridge schools. In December 2020, the CAO concluded in its appraisal report that there are “substantial concerns regarding the child safeguarding and protection outcomes of IFC’s investment in Bridge considering: (a) specific allegations of child sexual abuse involving Bridge staff and students; (b) the child safeguarding and protection risks of the schools in light of their number, their student body (coming from low-income families), and the young age of students.” The compliance investigation is ongoing.

Contacts

Salima Namusobya in Kampala (ISER) | [email protected] | +256 772 473929

Anderson Miamen in Monrovia (COTAE) | [email protected] | +231 88 681 8855

Annie Thériault in Washington (Oxfam) | [email protected] | +51 936 307 990

 

Endorsed by:

  1. ActionAid
  2. Brazilian Campaign for the Right to Education
  3. Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (Liberia)
  4. Coalition Education (France)
  5. Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (Nigeria)
  6. École ensemble (Canada)
  7. Education for All Coalition Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone)
  8. Eurodad
  9. Global Campaign for Education
  10. Global Campaign for Education-US
  11. Global Justice Now
  12. Global Initiative for Economic Social and Cultural Rights
  13. Hakijamii – Economic and Social Rights Centre (Kenya)
  14. Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (Uganda)
  15. Justice & Empowerment Initiatives (Nigeria)
  16. National Education Union (UK)
  17. Oxfam
  18. RESULTS
  19. Right to Education Initiative
  20. RTE Forum (India)
  21. World Organisation for Early Childhood Education-OMEP
  22. Solidarité Laïque (France)

Oxfam reacts to reports of a compromise on vaccines TRIPS waiver

In response to reports of a potential compromise agreed by the EU, South Africa, India and the US for a waiver of intellectual property rules for COVID vaccines, Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy for Oxfam and co-chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:

“After almost 18 months of stalling and millions of deaths, the EU has climbed down and finally admitted that intellectual property rules and pharmaceutical monopolies are a barrier to vaccinating the world. This is a tribute to millions of campaigners across the world who have demanded a Peoples Vaccine, but this leaked proposal is not the comprehensive TRIPS waiver demanded by over 100 governments. Unless it is significantly improved it will not do enough to bring an end to vaccine apartheid and ensure access for all.

“As it stands, this proposal seems to do little to address patents beyond the existing flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement. It ignores other intellectual property barriers like trade secrets that stand in the way of vaccine manufacturers. And by focusing only on vaccines and kicking the issue of COVID-19 treatments into the long grass, it will leave lifesaving treatments out of reach for millions.

“In a crisis, half measures are not acceptable. Every barrier to accessing these crucial vaccines and treatments must be cleared away. We urge member states to return to the negotiating table and come back with a comprehensive waiver that will work to cut short this pandemic and guarantee everyone is protected.”

“Before we feared dying of war, now we fear dying of hunger”: Ukraine crisis propelling hunger in Syria

Eleven years after the Syrian conflict began, six in ten Syrians do not know where their next meal is coming from, said Oxfam today. It warned that reliance on imports from Russia means the current crisis in Europe could ripple into Syria, exacerbating food shortages and causing food prices to soar. In the last year, food prices in Syria have doubled.

Oxfam spoke to 300 Syrians in government-held areas of the country. Nearly 90 percent said they could only afford to eat bread, rice and, occasionally, some vegetables. After ten years of conflict, the shockwaves of Covid-19, and the Lebanese banking crisis coupled with the Ukrainian crisis are having serious repercussions for the floundering economy, disrupting food and fuel imports and causing the Syrian pound to plummet at breakneck speed.

Moutaz Adham, Country Director for Oxfam in Syria, said: “People have been pushed to the brink by a collapsing economy. Around Damascus, people queue for hours to get subsidised bread at state bakeries, while young children rifle through garbage trying to find scraps of food. Struggling to put food on the table means many families are turning to extreme ways to cope: going into debt to buy food, taking children out of school to work and reducing the number of meals each day. Marrying off young daughters has become another negative coping strategy as it is one less mouth to feed. This is against a backdrop of 90 percent of Syrians living in poverty, unemployment rate at 60 percent and a monthly minimum wage in the public sector of approximately 26 US dollars.”

He added: “Syria relies heavily on Russia for imports of wheat. The crisis in Ukraine has seen the Syrian government starting to ration food reserves, including wheat, sugar, oil, and rice amid fears of shortages and price surges, and this could be just the beginning.”

Hala from Deir-ez-Zor told Oxfam: “It makes no sense for us to think about tomorrow, if we cannot even figure out what to put on our table today to feed our children.”

Majed from Rural Damascus told Oxfam: “I work 13 hours a day to feed my children, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. Sometimes I wish there is more than 24 hours a day, so I can do more work. I’m exhausted and don’t know how I will survive this harsh life with my family.”

Moutaz Adham added: “An average income only covers half of basic expenses.”

 

Notes:

Oxfam has been working in Syria since 2013 to provide humanitarian assistance to those affected by the conflict. In the last year, Oxfam’s work reached 1.2 million people. We provide clean drinking water to people, emergency cash assistance, and soap, hygiene and other materials. We help farmers get back to farming, and bakers back to baking. We run Covid-19 awareness raising campaigns. Oxfam is calling on international donors to focus on funding early recovery and social protection while also keep focusing on emergency needs and responses, including hunger response activities to save lives now.

12.4 million people in Syria are food insecure, child labour occurs in 84% of communities and child marriage for adolescent girls in 71% of communities, according to the latest figures from the Humanitarian Needs Overview. 

The price of the World Food Program (WFP) standard food basket (a group of essential food items) has increased by 97% in the past year. 

Last year, the Syrian government reportedly had to import 1.5 million tons of wheat, mainly from Russia.

As part of its Emergency and Food Security response, Oxfam interviewed 300 beneficiaries in government held areas of Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor and Rural Damascus governorates, 100 beneficiaries in each governorate and found that 88 percent eat only bread, rice and occasionally vegetables. Additionally, 60 percent of people Oxfam spoke to say they earn less than what they need to cover their food needs. 10 percent said they rely only on bread and tea to survive. Since subsidised bread provides approximately 840 kcal per day, this amounts to only 40 percent of calories needed to survive (an average family of 5 can buy 12 bundles of subsidised bread, each consisting of 7 loaves, this leaves 2.4 loaves per person per day, having no more than 350 kcal). Strikingly, only 1.5 percent said they can afford to buy meat and only on rare occasions.

Contact details:

David Bull | Oxfam Aotearoa | [email protected] | mobile +64 274179724

Burkina Faso: Second biggest spike in displacement since crisis began

The military coup in Burkina Faso late January made headlines. The registration that same month of over 160,000 newly displaced Burkinabé, a near-record high figure, did not. The jump marks the second biggest monthly increase since the humanitarian crisis started in the country over three years ago, say the Norwegian Refugee Council, Action Against Hunger, Médecins du Monde France and Oxfam.

“Flashing around big figures at high-level meetings doesn’t mean anything to people who lack decent shelter, clean water, and can’t feed their children three meals a day. We call on donor countries to make good on the promises made at the Central Sahel Conference in October 2020,” says Hassane Hamadou, Country Director for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Burkina Faso. “The crisis in this region should not be addressed only when strategically convenient, or when a Sahel country is in the media limelight. The international community has a duty to alleviate human suffering, whether they hit close to home or not.”

Since January 2019, the displaced population in Burkina Faso has grown by 2,000%, with over 1.7 million people now uprooted. More than two out of three are children. While a growing portion of this generation gets raised away from home and with little access to schools, education funding remains harrowingly low. Overall funding for the humanitarian response is less than half of what is needed. It is vital the crisis in Ukraine does not divert funds and attention away from the Sahel region this year, warn the signatories.

“Some donors have already indicated that they would proceed to a 70% cut of our funding to support operations in Ukraine. We are very concerned that this will become a trend, making access to healthcare and other basic services even scarcer for displaced people in Burkina Faso,” says Safia Torche, General Director for Médecins du Monde in Burkina Faso.

“The crisis in Ukraine is also likely to impact soaring grain prices, making an already bad situation worse,” says Grégoire Brou, Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Burkina Faso. “An estimated 3 million people are facing food insecurity in Burkina Faso and this number is likely to increase significantly this year during the lean season. Now is the time for the mobilization of all, not disengagement.”

As part of this step-up in effort, the newly-formed government must urgently respond to the humanitarian emergency in the country, not just the military and security dimensions of the crisis. We hope the appointment of the former Secretary General of the Burkinabé Red Cross as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs will mark a renewed and robust cooperation with all humanitarian partners.

 

Notes

  • As of January 31, 2022, 1,741,655 IDPs were registered in Burkina Faso according to 1,579,976 IDPs were registered as of December 31, 2021 (Source: CONASUR)
  • In January 2019, the country counted a total of 87,000 displaced people (Source: OCHA)
  • September 2019 was the only month that recorded a bigger increase in new displacements (+197,366), with a total of 288,994 IDPs registered as of September 6, 2019 (Source: UNHCR) and 486,360 registered by October 4, 2019 (Source: WFP/CONASUR)
  • 44% of the Humanitarian Response Plan was funded in 2021. Only 6.5% of the education needs were covered (Source: OCHA, FTS)
  • More than US$1.7 billion was pledged by donor countries to scale up lifesaving humanitarian aid in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger at the Ministerial Round Table for Central Sahel in October 2020 (Source: MRT Press Release). Last year, the three countries combined received US$708 million according to the FTS
  • 5 million people in Burkina Faso are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2022 according to the Humanitarian Response Plan (Source: OCHA)
  • 155 health facilities in the country do not operate due to insecurity and violence (Source: Health Cluster January 2022). 43 reported incidents of violence or threat of violence against health care in 2021 (Source: Insecurity Insight)

New Oxfam report uncovers stories from “prison-like” EU funded refugee center

New report from the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) and Oxfam sheds light on the inside of the new 43-million-euro migration center on the Greek island of Samos. The report comes ahead of the 6-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal, and in the midst of already more than a million people fleeing conflict in Ukraine to seek asylum in EU countries. If ever there was a time to learn from the failures made in Greece, it is now.

The report found:

  • Approximately 1 in 5 people have been in de facto detention for two months. This is despite a Greek court finding this practice illegal in the ruling on a case of an Afghan resident in the Samos center last December. The Greek administration continues to deny this illegal practice. Yet, testimonies gathered by the Greek Council for Refugees and Oxfam show this practice remains very much a reality.
  • The use of “revenge tactics” in response to NGO reports, media coverage, and legal action by asylum seekers on illegal detention measures. This has included early morning raids, unexplained transfers to the police station, and oral eviction notices to residents appealing a negative asylum decision.
  • The excessive use of security. There is constant CCTV monitoring of all residents and an 8pm curfew. To exit and enter the camp, residents need an “asylum applicant” card. Some people – like the newly arrived, those who can’t afford the second subsequent asylum application fee, or those waiting for the Greek authorities to examine their subsequent asylum application – do not have this card. In the future, not having these cards may keep people from getting food and clothes.

Testimony from T., a young Afghan man, trapped on Samos since 2019:

“I just want to go outside. They don’t let me. They are keeping me here as a prisoner. If I had to choose, I would say that I would prefer the previous camp – at least, there, I was free. I was not living in a cage. At least, I had my freedom to go somewhere.”

This reception center in Samos will serve as the blueprint for the EU’s rollout of centers across the Greek islands. Costing the EU 276 million euros, they are a “new chapter in migration management” according to EU officials, and have the explicit aim to “discourage them from coming in the first place” according to the Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum. The EU has already invested in building two new centers on the islands of Kos and Leros and has plans to build two new centers on Chios and Lesvos.

Alkistis Agrafioti, Advocacy Officer at the Greek Council for Refugees:

“Going to the center, you have only one question: how is this suitable for people? It feels like visiting a prison located in the middle of nowhere. To enter and exit, people must go through a whole array of security measures with turnstiles, magnetic gates, x-rays, scanning cards and fingerprints. Body and bag searches as well. According to testimonies, even children going to school do not escape this daily procedure.

“What we saw when visiting the new Samos center and what people told us is that their previous degrading living conditions at the old Vathy camp just turned into prison like conditions in the new facility. The security guards are all over and you feel followed at every step. One resident we talked to told us how it felt like there were three security guards to one person. We met with an Afghan young man, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, that has turned to self-harm several times as he is trapped on the island for the last 3 years. For two months, he could not even exit the new facility due to an illegal exit ban. Many asked ‘what are we being punished for, when all we want is to rebuild our lives and be safe in Europe?’”

Evelien van Roemburg, Head of Oxfam EU Office:

“Over half a million people have already crossed Ukraine’s border fleeing a conflict that, according to the UN, could displace 4 million Ukrainians. Now more than ever, the EU must show their lessons learned from its migration response in Greece. As countries bordering Ukraine are receiving most asylum seekers, we cannot risk a repetition of another scraped together European response. The EU and all governments must come together and share collective responsibility to ensure the right of all people, no matter the country they came from, to find a safe refuge.

“This month marks six years since the EU-Turkey deal. And yet, what has the EU done? There is no agreement on migration and asylum rules. The decisions the EU does take, such as this one on closed centers, are taken with little thought to the people they will affect. The EU is hellbent on following its policy of deterrence, a policy that promotes ‘prison’ like conditions, de facto detention and human rights violations. This is not normal, nor is it necessary.

“Alternatives exist. The EU should invest in accommodation that fosters integration and allows people to prosper. It should not be located on the fringes of society, but instead allow people to take part in daily life and have access to basic services like going to the doctor.”

 

Notes:

Read the Lesbos Bulletin and our Stories from Samos publication.

Names of persons in testimonies changes to protect anonymity.

In December 2021, a GCR and Oxfam delegation visited the Samos CCAC and met with residents, the administration, and civil society organisations operating on the island which provide legal, medical and psychosocial aid to migrants.

In September 2021, the Greek government opened the first Closed Controlled Access Center (CCAC) on the island of Samos built with 43 million euro in EU funds.

In March 2016, EU and Turkish leaders struck a deal which stated that people arriving to the Greek islands irregularly will be returned to Turkey. In exchange, the EU promised 6 billion euros in EU funding to Turkey to support refugee integration and agreed to resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every Syrian returned. 

Asylum seekers submitting a second subsequent asylum application must pay a fee of 100 euros. This means that a couple with two children must pay 400 euros. This Greek provision is against EU (Asylum Procedures Directive) and international law. Asylum seekers whose circumstances may have changed since their initial application and now have a much higher chance of receiving a positive asylum decision, still are required to pay this fee e.g. people from Afghanistan. Yet many cannot afford it. 

In December, the number of people banned from exiting the camp was around 100, out of the 450 residents.

Οn 17 December 2021, the Administrative Court of Syros, ruling in the case of an Afghan resident of the facility and represented by GCR, confirmed that the prohibition of exit from the Samos CCAC imposed by the Greek state was unlawful.

Residents in Samos CCAC have limited access to healthcare. There is no doctor or medical staff based inside the camp, and residents must rely on the sporadic visits of a military doctor.

For updates, please follow @OxfamEU.  

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Oxfam is a worldwide development organisation that mobilises the power of people against injustice. Oxfam Aotearoa is a registered charity with the New Zealand Charities Register (registration CC24641). Donations are tax refundable.

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