Friday, May 21, 1999

Relief Camps for Africans, Kosovars Worlds Apart

Aid workers are struck by contrasts in food, shelter and health care. They
cite culture, race as reasons. International aid workers see an enormous
difference in the conditions at newly sprouted refugee camps in the Balkans
and existing facilities in Africa. Humanitarian groups say a complex mix of
logistics, culture and race contributes to the disparities.

By: T. CHRISTIAN MILLER and ANN M. SIMMONS
Copyright: Los Angeles Times

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"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 pingpong tables. One camp
has a children's center with two theaters showing films like "The
Neverending Story."

At Stankovac, the third-largest camp in the Balkans, 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 during the
Rwandan crisis earlier this decade. Provisions Based on Living Standards.
The primary explanation for the stark contrasts, according to U.N. and aid
groups, is the difference between the backgrounds of the refugees on the
two continents.

In Africa, where many refugees eke out an existence in seminomadic tribes,
the bare provisions of shelter and health care offered by the refugee camps
are a step up in life for many.  But in Europe, where many of the refugees
from Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, had
two cars, a city apartment and their own business, 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 Macedonian camps are just off the main
highway that leads north from Athens to such European capitals as Vienna
and Berlin. The crisis is far more immediate and tangible.

People can directly see and feel the impacts of the refugee crisis, and
they respond accordingly, aid workers say.  "This is the middle of Europe.
It's so close to home," said Paula Ghedini, a spokeswoman for the U.N.
refugee agency who has worked in Africa and the Balkans. "This is not so
foreign."

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."

Ross, a CARE worker who came to the Balkans from Sierra Leone, said race
plays a big role. It's easier for Europeans and Americans to identify with
the Kosovo refugees they see on television than with those in remote parts
of Africa, he said.  "I may be cynical, but personally I think people see
the television and say, 'It's just a bunch of blacks over there,' " he
said.

The media--and people's response to coverage--also play a big role in
determining the conditions during a particular refugee crisis. In Macedonia
alone, there are more than 1,000 reporters, according to government
figures.

The steady television presence attracts scores of charities, for which the
media visibility is free advertising to raise money.  "You can't walk in
the camps here for tripping over the television cables," said Miller, the
food worker.

As a result, eight to 10 charities labor in some camps, dividing the work
of running the facilities into highly specialized areas.  In the medical
field, for instance, the large number of volunteer groups has created a
mini-HMO system, with primary-care doctors from some humanitarian groups
referring refugees to specialist clinics run by other groups that offer
sites for dentistry, minor surgery and gynecology.

"I'm always asking, why are these things not a problem for my Somalis?"
said Miller, the World Food Program worker. Pledges to Africa Not Keeping
Pace.  All the attention focused on the Balkans has frightened refugee
officials and charity groups in Africa, who fear that the continent's
already meager resources will be further drained by the Balkan crisis.

For instance, the World Food Program has a fund-raising goal this year of
$98.5 million for the area around Africa's Great Lakes--Rwanda, Burundi,
Tanzania, Uganda--where long-simmering, though often ignored, conflicts
have created hundreds of thousands of refugees. So far, the food agency has
received 22% of that amount.

In Liberia, the situation is even worse. The agency made an appeal for
$71.6 million. It received $500,000.  That compares with the situation
around Kosovo, for which the agency has requested $97.4 million and
received more than 70% of that amount already, with a "large number of
commitments" now under negotiation, Davies said.

"Africa is just being eclipsed by this," said Fitzgerald of Refugees
International.  Refugees in Eritrea "are just being ignored for the large
part because of Kosovo," she said. "Everybody is focused on Kosovo, because
it's a serious situation, and because of peer pressure."  Miller reported
from Skopje and Simmons from Nairobi. Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren
and Marc Lacey in Macedonia contributed to this report.