The regional director of UNICEF met refugees, relief workers and local public officials on Wednesday to access emergency response to the humanitarian crises affecting thousands who have fled armed conflict in the Central African Republic to seek safety in eastern Cameroon.
Manuel Fontain will also meet government officials and donor representatives later in the week as more and more people continue to come across the border, most of them famished, malnourished and dehydrated from weeks of starvation or even months, of trekking and hiding in the bushes.
Relief efforts have been stepped up in the region over the past weeks, with UN agencies and NGOs deploying more staff than before. But lack of funds to meet growing needs such as widespread malnutrition, poor sanitation, insecurity and lack of education is holding back meaningful progress.
At least 106,000 Central African refugees are believed to have arrived at camps and border communities in the East region this year alone. Previously, they came by truck accompanied by security forces, but more recently they have trooped in on foot, often walking for three to five months.
Fontain visited the Gado Badzere refugee camp, where more than 13,000 fleeing Central Africans have settled since mid-February. Each week, the camp receives about 300 new arrivals. Most of them, about 40% are malnourished, said relief workers. “We are facing an important emergency because of the arrival of about a hundred thousand refugees in this part of the country, which is already stretched and has difficulties in terms of basic services,” said Fontain. He also visited sites and hospitals at Garoua-Bulai, the main entry point.
“I have seen some good things. The camp in Gado [Badzere] seems to be fairly well-managed by HCR and other partners. But I have seen also basic services really run down, very overwhelmed by the arrival of so many refugees. Actually there are more refugees than local populations and that obviously creates a very huge strain.”
Gado Badzere has the largest concentration of refugees and reflects the problems facing other sites in the rest of the region. The camp is a sprawling collection of white tents. Open spaces have been turned into open air kitchens. And there seems to be more children than adults.
Since it was opened in mid-February, UNICEF has partnered with governmental and non-governmental organizations to provide ready-to-use-food, sanitation training and facilities as well as child training and recreational services.
On Tuesday, as Fontain moved from one section of the camp to the other, about 60 children squeezed themselves into one of three huts serving and child-friendly zones to sing songs and recite rhymes.
The services were introduced to help children “learn by playing” through activities like music, arts, handicraft, and recitations. The child friendly-zones where also carved out to create an area children can be safe and heal from the trauma they have experienced.
Another local NGO helps UNICEF to meet the camp’s sanitation needs. Over the past months, latrines fitted with hand-washing stations have been built throughout the camp. UNICEF also supplies about 200,000 liters of treated water to the site daily and has built water points in the camp.
Whether it’s Gado Bazere or Garoua-Bulai, children and their mothers are clearly the main victims of the humanitarian crisis. According to the UNHCR, they make up about 75% of the refugee population, half of which are children under the age of 18.
