Vulnerable Populations and accomodation Strategy: The Delwendé Development Association and the Touaregs refugees (1993-1996)
Résumé
The Association for Development Delwendé and the Touaregs refugees (1993-1996). In 1995, the world officially had 14.4 million refugees; Africa counted almost half of that number, that is to say 6.8 million. The conflicts in the Great Lakes area and in the horn of Africa used to cause most of these forced displacements. West Africa was not spared, especially Burkina Faso that counted about 50,000 of them. The consequence is a high vulnerability of the populations forced to displacement. It is the distress of people who lost the main thing, their residence, and who wanders in the bush, in the villages and the cities in quest of an uncertain refuge. Which answer was given to that situation of population's forced displacement? Usually, the issue of refugees directly comes under the competence of public authorities, the United Nations' System institutions and of international NGO. Now, the main victims invited a local Non Governmental Organization of Burkina Faso, for a straight out response. What is to be done? That is the subject of this communication, which highlights the logical conditions in which this relief was offered initially in a spontaneous way, and thereafter in a way transformed into a strategy, consisting in setting up a coherent and effective relief program. The process analysis, which consisted in installing a population in a country or in a foreign area with its usual environment, requires fundamental questionings and which answers build the first part of the research, namely what are the major causes of this situation. Thus, is it necessary to attribute these causes to the absence of permanent accommodation facilities or is it necessary to go up to the deepest origins of tensions caused by the disturbance of an old order? If these two interrogations are right, it would be interesting for better clarifying our judgement, to go back in history to see the remote reasons which caused the tensions that paid the way to an open regional crisis; and also see which were the first reactions - particularly those of the accommodation facility -, which led thereafter to the organization of a massive installation. The second part tackles the subject itself, namely the organization, the human and material means gathered to accommodate the refugees. That consisted primarily in negotiating means of subsistence for people that have become extremely vulnerable, therefore in finding partners. The relief offering consisted in giving food, infrastructures of accommodation (housing), health and school facilities, implementing income generating activities, etc. At the same time, the analysis of the undertaken actions relates to the consecutive difficulties, that is a draft of the advantages and difficulties both for the refugees and the accommodation site, in this case the village of Sag Niogo. Finally, the objective of this research is not to exhaustively deal with responses brought to the issues of the refugees in Burkina Faso; it is rather to highlight the effort of a modest local structure, resulting from the civilian society called "Association pour le Développement Delwendé ", which officially worked in providing relief to the people moved between 1993-1996. It acted in response to the problems generated by a type of forced displacement: that of Touaregs, native of Mali and Niger which made this migratory wave. The research is based on the Association files, and especially on actors and witnesses' testimonies.
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