GUINEA-BISSAU: Falling through the assistance cracks?

Photo: Anna Jefferys/IRIN

Safietou Sanya, resident of 'Three Kilometres', a village outside of San Domingos, says she could not get by without outside assistance

SAN DOMINGOS, 21 October 2009 (IRIN) - The International Committee of the Red Cross might seem out of place running agricultural diversification projects in northern Guinea-Bissau, given its mandate to help people in times of conflict and violence. But ICRC staff said the region is falling between the assistance cracks and aid to farmers is crucial.

Given Guinea-Bissau’s troubled history and the north’s proximity to Senegal’s volatile Casamance region, people in the town of San Domingos - refugees from Casamance and the locals - live on the edge, aid workers said.

“It is a neither peace nor war situation, neither development nor humanitarian…It is not clear,” Ilda Pina, ICRC’s economic security programme coordinator told IRIN.

Most refugees are surviving by subsistence farming or by selling cashews, whose price has been erratic, dropping from 56 US cents to 28 cents per kilogram over the past few months.

Refugees in the north are vulnerable because they rely on plots of land lent by host communities, said refugee representative Yuba Sanya, in Umbaim village just south of San Domingos. But as village populations grow so does the pressure for plots and this is causing tension in some areas.

Despite this, many refugees remain too frightened to return to their villages, many of which were looted and burned in the 1990s and remain abandoned, Sanya said.

Unrest from a 27-year-old rebellion in Senegal’s southern Casamance region has intermittently spilled into Guinea-Bissau’s north in the past. 

Casamance has seen at least 20 violent carjackings and lootings by armed groups since 1 May, according to German development organization GTZ. “You never know what’s going to happen” in Guinea-Bissau, said Nicholas Olivier, head of ICRC in the country, though he noted Guinea-Bissau has experienced little conflict-related violence in recent years. 

Christophe Martin, head of ICRC for West Africa, told IRIN: “It is not a humanitarian emergency per se, but people [refugees and locals alike] suffer sporadic regional violence and crop failure; they cannot access health services and many still cannot access their fields due to mines.”

“There is an absence of state partners and too little international support, which obliges us to retain our presence,” he added.

Insecurity or capacity

ICRC says the perception of insecurity could have put off development agencies from intervening in the north.

Photo: Anna Jefferys/IRIN

Yuba Sanya, Senegalese refugee representative in northern Guinea-Bissau says with no land of their own and no

A UN official who requested anonymity said rather than insecurity it is poor logistics, weak government capacity and a concentration of NGOs in more heavily populated areas of Gabu, Bafata and the capital Bissau, that limit programming in remote areas.

ICRC’s Olivier said international donors are focused on ambitious long-term development projects in Guinea-Bissau such as building up infrastructure or reforming the security sector; while these are vital, he said, this focus means problems such as acute poverty or chronic malnutrition in pockets of the country risk being overlooked.

“There are gaps everywhere – linked to the government’s lack of means”, said Olivier, who has previously worked in crises in Indonesia, Sudan and Chad.

Local authorities in San Domingos run on a budget of less than US$1,500 a month to run basic services and improve infrastructure, prefect Gonzales Cardoso, told IRIN. “We are very weak in the government, so there is not much we can do….If we can’t do anything, we wait for exterior aid.”

Guinea-Bissau ranks 173rd of 182 countries in the UN human development index.  Roughly one-fifth of the northern provinces’ inhabitants are moderately malnourished, according to 2006 government statistics, confirmed by the World Food Programme (WFP).

Presence

WFP provides food to 1,300 women and children in the extreme north of the Cacheu region, encompassing San Domingos, Susana and Varela. WFP also provides meals in 50 schools, according to programme assistant Formoso Vaz. UN Children's Fund has helped build wells and latrines in parts of the north.

Sister Ruti Araujo runs a Catholic mission in Susana near the northern border, providing free healthcare to people within a 20km radius. And San Domingos-based Portuguese NGO Vida has been supporting the government’s maternal health services and vaccination campaigns. But the NGO might have to leave because of lack of funding, Vida health adviser Pozzi Morena said.

UN resident coordinator in Guinea-Bissau, Giuseppina Mazza, said the limited capacity of the NGOs operating in the country restricts their reach. Were more large international NGOs to open up in Guinea-Bissau, this could change, she said.

Mazza said the focus should be on quality programming rather than on numbers. “We need to reinforce the coordination of those agencies that are working; and build up government partners’ ability to respond to needs throughout the country.”

The ICRC is appealing for $7.9 million to fund its programmes in Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal in 2010. “As long as the situation stays volatile, we’ll stay,” Martin told IRIN.

aj/np