>REFUGEE CAMPS IN AFRICA AND EUROPE ARE A WORLD APART
>By T. Christian Miller and Ann M. Simmons
>SKOPJE, Macedonia When veteran refugee worker Lynne Miller arrived here
>from Africa earlier this month, she stepped into a different world. After
>three years monitoring food supplies at a remote refugee camp in Somalia,
>one of her first crises in Macedonia was an urgent request from a medical
>team. A diabetic refugee had just crossed the border. Could she provide a
>special diet?
>She could not believe what she was hearing, much less that she was able to
>fulfill the request. "In Africa, we don't have special food or diets. There
>are no diabetics in the camps," she said. "They just die." The outpouring
>of aid in recent weeks for ethnic Albanians ripped from their homes in
>Kosovo has stunned humanitarian groups, which continuously fight for
>dollars for refugees in Africa.
>For many of these workers, the response to the Balkans crisis has
>highlighted the enormous difference between the newly sprouted camps in
>Europe and existing facilities in Africa. And that difference, in turn, has
>raised uncomfortable questions about the reasons for it a complex mix,
>according to humanitarian groups, of logistics, culture and race. While
>nothing compares to a permanent home and a stable life, refugee workers
>say, the camps in Africa and Europe are a world apart.
>Consider:
>-- The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is spending about 11 cents per
>day per refugee in Africa. In the Balkans, the figure is $1.23 per refugee
>per day, more than 10 times greater.
>-- Some refugee camps in Africa have one doctor for every 100,000 refugees.
>In Macedonia, camps have as many as one doctor per 700 refugees.
>-- Refugees at most camps in Albania have clean, readily available water.
>In Eritrea, families as large as 10 are given about 3-1/2 gallons of water
>to last three days, according to Mary Anne Fitzgerald, a Nairobi,
>Kenya-based spokeswoman for Refugees International.
>-- The camps in Africa hold as many as 500,000 people. Up to 6,000 a day
>die from cholera and other public health disease. In Macedonia, the largest
>camp holds 33,000 people. There have been no deaths from public health
>emergencies such as epidemic or starvation so far.
>The immense flow of aid to Europe has alarmed some aid agencies, who worry
>whether the attention now focused on the Balkans will cut into the food and
>supplies going to places like Eritrea and Somalia. The most common
>explanation for the gap in resources is culture. U.N. officials and aid
>workers say they must give European refugees used to cappuccino and CNN a
>higher standard of living to maintain a sense of dignity and stability.
>Others offer a blunter assessment: They say wealthy, first- world donors
>and the aid agencies they support feel more sympathy -- and reach deeper in
>their pockets -- for those with similar skin color and background.
>Andrew Ross, a refugee worker who came from Africa to the Balkans last
>month, called the camps in Macedonia "far superior" to those in Africa.
>"What's the difference?" Ross asked. "There's white people here."
>Nezir Gashi's life is by no means comfortable. His family of 13 lives in a
>150-square-foot tent. Every day, Gashi or one of his four children stand in
>line four hours for food. They haven't had a hot meal in weeks. Water is a
>few hundred feet away at a communal spigot.
>Still, the meager shelter and supplies are far better than those provided
>to Gashi's fellow refugees in Africa.
>Typically, African refugees sleep out in the open, or under makeshift
>shelters made from branches, leaves, mud or plastic sheeting provided by an
>aid agency. They rarely have canvas tents or prefabricated housing. For
>example, most of the 300,000 or so Eritreans deported from Ethiopia back to
>Eritrea in early February make their homes under trees, in riverbeds or
>simply by the roadside without any kind of shelter, said Fitzgerald, who
>recently visited the refugees.
>Stranded in a semi-desert terrain, where the afternoons are blazing hot and
>the nights freezing cold, there are 1,200 tents available for some 16,000
>families, Fitzgerald said.
>Another major difference is in the type of food supplied. World Food
>Program officials say both Europeans and African refugees are getting about
>2,100 calories per day of food rations. But for the Kosovo Albanians, those
>calories come in the form of tins of chicken pate, foil-wrapped cheeses,
>fresh oranges and milk. In some ready-made meals, there's even coffee and
>fruit tarts.
>Water is plentiful in most of the camps in the Balkans. At one camp in
>Macedonia, German officials have even installed a fully functioning sewer
>treatment system. That contrasts with Africa, where refugees are far less
>likely to receive ready-made meals and have to make most of their food from
>scratch -- a practice reflecting the simpler lifestyles of the area, say
>U.N. officials. Instead of meals, they are given basic grains such as
>sorghum or wheat.
>"Here in Africa, we see people who have walked naked, without a thread on
>their back, who don't have a grain of rice," said Nina Galbe, a
>Nairobi-based spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
>"With all due respect to the horrors the people of Kosovo have suffered,
>they are dressed in their winter clothes; the babies are kept in their
>blankets. They are not malnourished."
>Beyond such basics as shelter and food, the differences become even more
>stark. The camps in the Balkans have mobile phones that refugees can use.
>There are soccer fields, basketball courts and Ping-Pong tables. One camp
>has a children's center with two theaters showing films.
>At Stankovac, a camp of about 21,000, hot showers, communal kitchens and
>street lighting are planned. Such extras are nonexistent in Africa,
>according to those who have worked in both areas.
>"Compared to the refugee camps in Africa, Stankovac is a five-star hotel,"
>said Marion Droz, a Red Cross field worker who also worked on the Rwanda
>crisis earlier this decade.
>The primary explanation for the stark contrasts, according to U.N. and aid
>groups, are the differences between the backgrounds of the refugees in the
>camps. In Africa, where many refugees eke out existence in semi-nomadic
>tribes, the bare provisions of shelter and health care offered by the
>refugee camp there are a step up in life for many. But in Europe, where
>many of the refugees from Kosovo had two cars, a city apartment and their
>own businesses, a night in a canvas tent with cold food is misery. "You've
>got to maintain people's dignity," said Bob Allen, a camp manager who has
>worked in both Africa and Europe for the relief agency CARE.
>"The life in Africa is far more simple. To maintain the dignity and
>lifestyle of Europeans is far more difficult."
>Another issue is that Yugoslavia is in Europe's backyard. Albania is a
>ferry trip from Italy. Two of the Macedonia camps are just off the main
>highway that leads north from Athens to European capitals like Vienna and
>Berlin. The crisis is far more immediate and tangible.
>People can directly see and feel the impacts, and they respond accordingly,
>refugee workers said. Still, many wonder whether such distinctions are
>valid. While some extras are just that, shelter, food and water should be
>the same everywhere, they say.
>"I don't know if (the help) should be different," said Lindsey Davies,
>spokeswoman for the World Food Program, a U.N. agency. "People are people
>all over the world."