Stranded in an unwelcome land

For Awolich, being warehoused through his teenage years meant sharing a hut with a cousin and 10 strangers who pooled food rations to make them last longer. Meals happened once a day, and always left him feeling hungry. Those who didn't ingest bacteria from food or water often breathed it in deadly dosages as Kenyan desert winds blew dried feces across the camp. Life was so restrictive that when his cousin broke his leg, police wouldn't let him leave to visit the hospital, and his joblessness meant he couldn't muster a bribe.

Aware of humanitarian needs, the United States and other developed nations continue to give millions of dollars each year to help refugees in emergencies get food, education, and healthcare through the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations. However, since the attacks of Sept. 11, Iraqi and Afghan refugees have required a larger share of the assistance, leaving less to help warehoused refugees become self-sufficient settlers in their host countries.

What's more, developed nations fearful of terrorist infiltration have heightened screening and reduced the number of refugees they absorb. The US, for instance, reduced its maximum refugee intake to 70,000 in 2002, down from 90,000 in 2000 and 142,000 in 1992. The European Union has also clamped down. Such reductions mean warehoused refugees have fewer options, even within the developing world, according to former UNHCR policy analyst Arafat Jamal.

"Nations that absorb the most refugees in Africa will often cite the EU or US tightening their policies as a rationale for them to tighten their own policies," Mr. Jamal said via phone late last month from Khartoum, Sudan, where Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia and Uganda were returning to a state still mired in war and persecution. "They sit in these meetings and hear the Americans and Europeans and say, 'Why should we keep our borders open [to new refugee arrivals] if they don't?' "

Similarly, some nations are tightening their grip on warehoused refugees to keep a closer eye on them in an age of rising terrorism. Kenya, for instance, has increased security around its Somali refugee camps, and Israel last month led terrorist-seeking incursions into Palestinian camps in Gaza.

In some cases, experts say, host countries see benefits in keeping a refugee population warehoused.

For example, a number of African nations - including Uganda, Algeria, and Kenya - have kept refugees near a border in order to keep up a standing, hostile presence against neighbors who made them refugees in the first place, says Merrill Smith, editor of World Refugee Survey 2004. This same phenomenon happened repeatedly during the cold war as anti-Communist nations funded militant refugees in Pakistan, Thailand, and Nicaragua, according to international security scholars Gilbert Loescher and James Milner.

In cases of collapsed states or warlord governments, "refugee camps are used as a base for guerrilla, insurgent, or terrorist activities," scholars Loescher and Milner write in the London-based journal "Conflict, Security and Development." "Armed groups hide behind the humanitarian character of refugee camps and settlements, and use these camps as an opportunity to recruit among the disaffected, displaced populations."

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