As Sudan Instability Mounts, Sudanese Congregate in Egypt

by Sybella Wilkes

Venansio Kidega was desperate to leave Sudan. An American friend helped him to escape an arrest warrant by giving Kidega his car. He escaped to Egypt, where he faced a life of hardship in a country where work is difficult to come by, rents high, and schools overcrowded. Now the American government is helping him to escape again, this time to the United States.

Kidega is realizing the dream that many of his compatriots in Egypt hope for—another escape. If you go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cairo on any working day, you probably will find around 200 people, mostly Sudanese from both the north and the south, queuing outside. All want to prove that they left Sudan because they feared persecution.

If they succeed they will be given financial assistance from UNHCR. But many hope for the jackpot—resettlement to a Western country.

Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo, sees nothing unusual in the Sudanese dream of living elsewhere. “Exiles are never content to settle,” he says. “They are always looking for the next best place.”

Somit Esman Somit, a southern Sudanese, does not want to settle in Egypt and is an example of how the “exile” mentality can paralyze a person’s life. He has given up looking for work and whiles away the time waiting for an interview with UNHCR.

The hope of a better place to live has made him give up on Egypt, which according to Egyptian law is supposed to be a second home to the Sudanese. They only need an entry visa, which is offered free of charge by the Egyptian government. Once in Egypt they do not need a work permit or a residence visa. They can live in Egypt for the rest of their lives. They are even eligible to work for the government.

The special rights given to the Sudanese by the Egyptian government have a trade-off. In return for the right to live and work freely in Egypt, the Sudanese are the only nationality that does not have the right to refugee status in Egypt.

Everyone from top officials in the Egyptian government to the man on the street recognizes that many of the Egyptian laws relating to the Sudanese no longer make much sense. The Wadi El Nile agreement, the most important treaty between the two countries, still exists, but none of the ideas and projects have been continued since relations between Egypt and Sudan started deteriorating in the 1980s. For example, the Wadi El Nile agreement included plans for centers to oversee the agreement in both countries. This never went further than the words on the page.

It was the difference between the law and the reality of the situation that prompted the American government to start accepting Sudanese living in Egypt for resettlement in 1994. A few other Western countries also accept a limited number of Sudanese. All have very strict guidelines.

The Sudanese can live in Egypt for the rest of their lives.

All must first qualify for refugee assistance from UNHCR, which means proving they have individual reasons for fearing persecution in Sudan. Only a fraction of those given financial help are recommended for resettlement.

One reason so many Sudanese are trying to leave Egypt is that they face the same economic struggles they left behind in Sudan. Egypt may be a second home, but it has some, if not all, of the same Third World problems they experienced at home. By Third World standards, the Egyptian apartments they live in are adequate. In some instances, families share flats due to the high rents.

Nobody, including the Sudanese, starves in Egypt because of government subsidies for food staples such as bread and beans. Life may be difficult, but not impossible.

In fact a large number of the Sudanese came to Egypt in the hope of finding a better life as economic refugees. If they had gone to Kenya or Uganda, they would have been given refugee assistance due to the prima facie recognition by those countries of the civil war and political instability in Sudan. But because the Egyptian government does not recognize the Sudanese as refugees, UNHCR can only help those who can prove they have faced persecution personally.

Nor are all the Sudanese in Egypt desperate to get out. Those who came 20 or 30 years ago are fully integrated into Egyptian society. Many have been given Egyptian nationality. Dr. Ibrahim thinks that it is easier for the northern Sudanese to integrate into Egypt because they share some of Egypt’s customs and, in many cases, look Egyptian.

White Onje is a southern Sudanese who has found work at All Saints Cathedral in Cairo. He recently fled the same persecution that many of his compatriots fled in the 1980s. He is not applying for financial aid or asylum to another country. He says that he started feeling happy and settled when he started earning money. He rents an apartment where he supports a family and four friends who cannot find work.

Unemployed and Disillusioned

But those who do not find jobs become disillusioned quickly. Madit Buot, a Sudanese lawyer, says the Sudanese are treated as foreigners who are trying to steal jobs from Egyptians.

Many employers do not realize that the Sudanese have the same work rights as Egyptians. For their part, many Sudanese fear that they will be returned to Sudan forcibly if they get into trouble with the authorities. According to both U.S. Embassy and Egyptian government sources, this never has happened.

The lack of clear information about the rights of the Sudanese community means that rumors take on the appearance of facts when they are repeated frequently enough. Kidega claims that a man from the Egyptian security said that the Sudanese should not go out after 11 p.m. Buot is worried because a man from Egyptian security asked about him after he had been in the country for three weeks.

Some southern Sudanese say they do not feel able to settle in Egypt because they do not feel comfortable as Christians living in a Muslim country. Regardless of faith, many Sudanese claim that the deteriorating relations between Sudan and Egypt have affected the attitude of the Egyptians toward them. In July 1995 a hit team tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa. The finger of blame was pointed at Sudan, and within days, the regulations for Sudanese entering Egypt changed.

For the first time, all Sudanese were required to get a visa to enter Egypt. Some Sudanese claimed that the abuse on the streets from Egyptians increased during this period. At the same time security checks on the Sudanese in Cairo were stepped up. This sent panic through the Sudanese community, and more started joining the lines at UNHCR.

Most Sudanese waiting for an interview at UNHCR would not even consider returning to Sudan at present. It is considered too risky. For the southerners, the choice would be to return to areas at war or to go to displaced persons camps near Khartoum.

George Oromo, a southern Sudanese, explained, “[In Sudan] we live in a situation where we can’t ask ‘why?’ And if we do, we [risk going] to jail without even being heard in court. How can we return to that situation?”

So, for some, the only source of hope is to dream about going to another country. If they are not recommended for resettlement by UNHCR, their options are limited. If they can raise the air fare they can go to Uganda or Kenya, where they are recognized as refugees and are entitled to live in refugee camps.

But in both these countries the economic situation facing the refugees is worse than in Egypt. In Kenya all the Sudanese go to a refugee camp in the north. Set in semi-arid land, with no major town for hundreds of kilometers, the refugees rely on food rations from the United Nations. There is no chance of finding work there.

Buot is at the end of a long queue of people waiting to tell their story to UNHCR. He has been waiting for a year and a half for an interview and, when he finally gets it, one of the UNHCR protection officers will spend up to two hours with him to hear his story and decide whether he is eligible for help. According to Panos Moumtzis of UNHCR, protection officers have a hard time working out who is telling the truth. “If one person is successful then we often hear the same story several times again,” he says. “As if it is the winning formula.”

If the interview at UNHCR does not work out, the only other way out of Egypt is to trick the system. A man who did not want to be identified described in hushed tones how he planned to get political asylum in the Netherlands. The plan took on an outrageous tone as he described the technique of gaining a student visa for Armenia and flying to Armenia via Amsterdam, where he would leave the airport and claim political asylum. Apparently a number of Sudanese have been successful with that ploy.

Ibrahim admits that life is difficult for some of the Sudanese in Egypt but argues, “Whoever said the life of an exile should be a picnic?”

Buot argues that he does not expect life to be a picnic, but he wants to have the same rights every other nationality has in Egypt. He claims the lack of refugee status for the Sudanese in Egypt makes their situation untenable.

“We have profound reasons for [fearing] persecution. In every other country we have the right to refugee status. This gives us security in a very real sense. No one can send us back to Sudan if we have refugee status.”

A No-Win Situation

It is a no-win situation. For the Sudanese who are settled in Egypt, the last thing they want is refugee status because this would withdraw their right to work.

Elizabeth Elo, a counselor with All Saints Cathedral, is trying to help some southern Sudanese face life in Egypt. “In reality most will never migrate to Australia or anywhere else, and we try to face this reality,” she says. But at the same time she recognizes the value of dreams: “Sometimes maintaining hope is the most important thing.”

Ibrahim believes that the Sudanese, like all exiles, will always long to go to another country. He sees it as a case of “the grass is always greener on the other side.”

Kidega is one of the lucky ones. He will leave for the United States by the end of the year. You would expect him to be excited, but he is reticent. “I just want to go somewhere and wait until my country is safe, and then I will go back,” he insists.

For Kidega, like his compatriots in Egypt, the grass will never be green enough until he can return home safely.