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Ethiopia Refugees, Drought, and Famine
In Ethiopia, a predominantly rural society, the life of
peasants is rooted in the land, from which they eke out a
meager existence. Through the ages, they have faced frequent
natural disasters, armed conflict, and political repression,
and in the process they have suffered hunger, societal
disruption, and death.
Periodic crop failures and losses of livestock often occur
when seasonal rains fail or when unusually heavy storms
cause widespread flooding. Pastoral nomads, who move
seasonally in search of water and grazing, often are trapped
when drought inhibits rejuvenation of the denuded
grasslands, which their overgrazing produces. During such
times, a family's emergency food supplies diminish rapidly,
and hunger and starvation become commonplace until weather
conditions improve and livestock herds are subsequently
rejuvenated. For centuries, this has been the general
pattern of life for most Ethiopian peasants; the insurgent
movements in Eritrea, Tigray, and the Ogaden have only
served to exacerbate the effects of these natural calamities
(see
The Eritreans;
The Tigray;
The Somali, ch. 5).
A drought that began in 1969 continued as dry weather
brought disaster to the Sahel and swept eastward through the
Horn of Africa. By 1973 the attendant famine had threatened
the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian nomads, who
had to leave their home grounds and struggle into Somalia,
Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan, seeking relief from starvation.
By the end of 1973, famine had claimed the lives of about
300,000 peasants of Tigray and Welo, and thousands more had
sought relief in Ethiopian towns and villages.
After assuming power in 1974, the military regime embarked
on a program to improve the condition of peasants, but
famine and hunger continued despite this effort, which was
supplemented by substantial foreign assistance. Moreover,
the escalation of the military campaign against the
insurgent movements in Eritrea, Tigray, and the Ogaden
forced thousands of Ethiopians to flee into neighboring
countries.
The 1977-78 Ogaden War and the 1978 drought in eastern
Ethiopia forced large numbers of people across the
southeastern frontier into Somalia. After the defeat of
Somali forces in the Ogaden, the government launched a
counteroffensive against Eritrean guerrillas, and several
hundred thousand Ethiopians sought refuge in Sudan.
Meanwhile, in the Ogaden, international relief agencies
estimated the number of refugees entering Somali refugee
camps at more than 1,000 a day. Most were women and
children, and many suffered from dehydration, malnutrition,
and diseases such as dysentery, malaria, and tuberculosis.
There were more than 700,000 reported refugees scattered in
twenty-six makeshift camps, where the absence of sanitation
and inadequate medical assistance were compounding the
misery created by the food shortages.
By mid-1980 most observers considered the refugee crisis in
the Horn of Africa to be the world's worst. During the
1980s, the crisis intensified, as 2.5 million people in the
region abandoned their homes and sought asylum in
neighboring countries. Although drought, famine, government
repression, and conflict with insurgents were the principal
causes of large-scale refugee migrations, other factors such
as resettlement and villagization in Ethiopia and conflicts
in southern Sudan and northern Somalia also generated
refugees. Sudan's war against the Sudanese People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) forced many Sudanese into Ethiopia.
In northern Somalia, the Somali National Movement (SNM) had
been fighting Somali government forces, and in the process
hundreds of thousands of Somali fled into Ethiopia.
Several factors were responsible for the refugee crisis in
Ethiopia. The repressive Mengistu regime was ruthless in its
treatment of both real and imagined opponents (see
Human
Rights, ch. 5). During the so-called
Red
Terror (see
Glossary) of 1977-78, government security forces killed
thousands of students and urban professionals. Because human
rights violations characterized the government's policy
toward dissidents, there was a constant exodus of young and
educated people. The regime also found itself engaged in
continuous civil war with one or more of the insurgent
groups, which had a devastating impact on the people, the
land, and the economy. The fighting not only generated
hundreds of thousands of refugees but also displaced
thousands of other people from their farms and villages.
Forcible villagization and resettlement also generated
refugees. In Harerge alone, the forced imposition of
villagization prompted 33,000 people to flee to Somalia.
Famine also contributed to Ethiopia's refugee crises. The
1984-85 famine resulted in the death or displacement of
hundreds of thousands of people within Ethiopia and forced
about 100,000 into Somalia, 10,000 into Djibouti, and more
than 300,000 into Sudan.
In 1987 another drought threatened 5 million people in
Eritrea and Tigray. This time, however, the international
community was better prepared to get food to the affected
areas in time to prevent starvation and massive population
movements. However, insurgents belonging to the TPLF and the
Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) attacked convoys
carrying food supplies or denied them access to rebel-held
areas because they believed the government would use relief
convoys to cover the movement of military supplies. The
consequence was more deaths and more refugees.
International relief agencies considered the 1990 famine
more critical because of the scarcity of rain since 1987.
Mitsiwa was one of the Eritrean ports where ships unloaded
food and medical supplies for distribution to famine victims
in Eritrea. Following the EPLF's capture of Mitsiwa in
February 1990 and the government's bombing of the city in an
effort to dislodge the insurgents, the port was out of
action. A few months later, however, the EPLF and the
Ethiopian government reached an agreement that allowed the
port to reopen. In addition, the government lost control of
Tigray in early 1989 and was reluctant to allow food
shipments to go through rebel-held territory until May 1990,
when the rebels, the government, the UN, and donor officials
agreed to move grain supplies from Dese to Tigray. Food
could not be airlifted into Tigray because fighting had
destroyed the airport in Mekele, capital of Tigray. Sudan
was the only nation through which food shipments could come
to Tigray and Eritrea. Both the Relief Society of Tigray and
the Eritrean Relief Association--arms of the TPLF and EPLF,
respectively--operated food convoys from Sudan to Tigray and
Eritrea. But poor road conditions and the fact that convoys
had to operate at night to avoid Ethiopian air force attacks
prevented adequate supplies from reaching affected regions.
Consequently, about 3 million people were threatened with
death and starvation in Eritrea and Tigray.
Disagreements persist concerning the number of Ethiopian
refugees in Somalia in the late 1980s. A UN survey estimated
the number of Ethiopian refugees in Somalia at 450,000 to
620,000. The United States Catholic Relief Services (USCRS),
however, estimated that about 410,000 refugees had returned
to Ethiopia, leaving about 430,000 in Somali refugee camps.
At the same time, more than 350,000 Somali of the Isaaq
clan-family
(see Glossary) fled northern Somalia for
Ethiopia after mid-1988. Most of these people remained in
camps run by the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Djibouti was home to about 45,000 Ethiopian refugees from
the Ogaden by late 1978. These people had fled after
Somalia's defeat in the Ogaden War. In 1983 the UNHCR began
a repatriation program, which resulted in the departure of
15,000 former refugees by mid-1984. But the 1984 drought in
Ethiopia brought an additional influx of 10,000 refugees
into Djibouti. Slow, steady repatriation continued through
1989, by which time there were only 1,500 Ethiopian refugees
in Djibouti.
A large influx of Ethiopian refugees into Sudan occurred in
1978, during the escalation of the conflict between Eritrean
insurgents and the Mengistu regime. The influx continued
into 1983, when the refugees numbered about 132,500. The
1984 drought and famine forced 160,000 refugees into Sudan
in 1984 and more than 300,000 by April 1985. By June 1985,
in anticipation of summer rains in Tigray, about 55,000
Tigray left Sudan, followed by another 65,000 in 1986, but
only a small percentage of refugee Eritreans returned to
Ethiopia.
Ethiopia also had been host to refugees from southern Sudan
since 1983. As the conflict in southern Sudan between the
SPLA and the Sudanese regime intensified, more refugees fled
into western Ethiopia, where the Sudanese refugees numbered
about 250,000 in early 1988 and perhaps 400,000 by early
1991.
Data as of 1991
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