Where is the justice and the moral responsibility of the international community?
Written on behalf of the refugees remaining in Choucha emergency refugee camp in Tunisia by Yagoub Adam Saadelnour, a Sudanese novelist.
Following the direct, rapid and sudden military intervention of the coalition countries against Libya, many of us have been compelled to flee from the hell of war in Libya to Tunisia, to an emergency refugee camp set up by UNHCR in Choucha. Others among us fled to another UNHCR emergency camp in Saloum, Egypt.
It seems that it is the moral responsibility of the coalition countries against Libya to be concerned with the refugees forced to flee Libya because of their direct action in that country. UNHCR began speeding up refugee resettlement operations and procedures, which were carried out with unprecedented speed in the history of UNHCR. However after the killing of Gaddafi, the resettlement operations for the remaining refugees in the UNHCR emergency camp in Choucha, Tunisia, were suddenly stopped.
Officials at the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha said that UNHCR had suspended resettlement procedures for the remaining refugees and issued a decision to close the emergency refugee camps in Choucha and Saloum. The remaining refugees in these two camps were told that they would have to enter cities in Tunisia and Egypt, respectively, to find assistance.
According to the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha, there is no resettlement for those refugees who remain in the emergency camp, because the European coalition countries that intervened militarily in Libya to change the regime, thereby causing the crisis there, have taken sufficient numbers of refugees and do not want more of them. So, these countries have left the remaining refugees in the desert to die.
But it is not clear to the refugees in Tunisia why the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha stopped the resettlement procedures, when the emergency office in Saloum did not do the same until the last refugee affected by the coalition countries was processed. There was a single UNHCR decision regarding the two camps, but this decision was implemented differently in Tunisia and Egypt. UNHCR has provided no explanation for this.
The refugees also wonder why none have been resettled in certain coalition countries, despite the fact that these governments have accepted moral, humanitarian and legal responsibility for the people whose lives they destroyed, and have publicly committed themselves to resettling these refugees in their own countries. They point to the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Not a single refugee has been resettled in any of these countries.
If there is international justice and respect for international humanitarian law, the world must take moral responsibility for the actions of these countries, i.e., the coalition countries that destroyed Libya. They must take action and oblige the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia to compensate the refugees who have not been resettled and the countries that have been taking them in following their exit from Libya. Perhaps this will deter them from irresponsible interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and prevent them from destroying the lives of people who have not sinned through their governments’ policies, as it is happening now in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
There is a legal precedent on the issue of compensation for refugees for acts of military intervention. Iraqis were compensated after the military intervention of the coalition against Iraq led by the United States.
Will the European countries and the US now immediately move to compel the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia to pay full compensation to those refugees who have fled Libya and remain in UNHCR emergency camps?
We, the registered refugees remaining in the UNHCR emergency office in Choucha, Tunisia, appeal to the European Union and American bar associations, as organisations concerned with human rights. We appeal to you to contact us, to collect our signatures and file lawsuits in our names in the European or American courts against the coalition countries that destroyed Libya. We demand that they pay us financial compensation to redress the damage inflicted upon us through the actions of these countries.