Women Bear Brunt of Suffering Caused by Angola War

[Diane Monaco <dmonaco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

INTERNATIONAL
Women Bear Brunt of Suffering Caused by Angola War

By Nicole Itano - WEnews correspondent

Displaced women at a refugee camp in Angola's eastern province of Moxico,
April 2002. Thousands have been forced to flee their homes as a result of
the country's civil war. (Photo courtesy of the Women's Commission for
Refugee Women and Children.)

HUAMBO, Angola (WOMENSENEWS)--The Mess Hall of the Officers is a dark,
barren building that reeks of smoke and urine, but the more than 300 people
taking shelter here have no where else to go. Ask anyone why they live
here, and they will respond with the same, simple answer: because of the war.

Pushed a little harder to explain, a few, like 78-year-old Emelia Nascente,
will talk about the fighting that took place at night in the fields around
her village and the landmines strewn in her fields.

"You cannot cultivate your fields, so you cannot get food," she says,
explaining why she came to Huambo, Angola's second largest city deep in the
country's central highlands. "We came here because we were starving."

In the last four years alone, nearly 4 million Angolans have been
displaced, two-thirds of them women and children. The 300-plus people at
the Mess Hall, a government-run transit center where the displaced wait to
be relocated to more permanent settlement camps in the countryside, are
among the last driven from their homes in the fighting, which ended last month.

The government and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, a
rebel group backed by the United States, signed a ceasefire in April,
ending a 27-year conflict that began as a Cold War proxy battle.

'You Get By By Selling Things'

The human costs of that peace were high. International aid organizations
say during the last, intense months of the war, during which government
forces killed rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, the government starved out the
rebel group, known as UNITA, by burning the crops of villagers suspected of
supporting the rebels. The United Nations says that more than 50,000 people
per month have been displaced from their homes since November, more than
usually seen in a year.

(Photo courtesy of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.)

Many of the displaced made their way on their own along the relatively safe
areas on the coast, and walked treacherous roads at night. In the past 15
years, the population of capital Luanda has more than doubled to almost 4
million, a third of the country's total population. With a 70 percent
unemployment rate in the city, many women enter the informal market,
selling bread, fruit or even themselves.

The story of 21-year-old Nelda, who came to Luanda four years ago, is like
that of many of the women who haunt the city's markets and slums. Dressed
in a black shirt advertising some long-gone American cartoon, she uses a
cloth to swat at the flies that swarm around the basket of bread she sells
at the San Paulo market. On a good day, Nelda, who declined to give her
last name, makes $6, on which she supports her husband and a young child.

"If you are a poor person coming to Luanda, you get by by selling things,"
said Paul Robson, a researcher at the Development Workshop, a group that
works in Luanda's slums and informal settlements. "Women tend to dominate
the informal market, in part because families have found that they're good
at the negotiation and bargaining."

Other displaced people, such as Nascente, are brought to government transit
centers and camps where they live in squalid conditions, dependent on
international food aid. More than 1 million Angolans, 70 percent of them
women, receive food aid from the World Food Programme.

A recently passed Angolan law, which is based on United Nations standards
for refugees, sets a minimum standard for conditions in transit centers and
relocation camps, but many, like the Mess Hall of the Officers, fall short
of these guidelines.

'It's Never Enough, But It's Better Than Where We Came From'

Even in the well-run camps where food and housing are adequate, life is
particularly difficult for women. Women continue to be responsible for the
bulk of child care and food production, without the traditional support
networks of their villages.

Violence against women is also rampant. A U.N. survey found that one-third
of displaced women in Angola suffered physical or domestic abuse.

At the Lomanada II camp about 15 miles outside Huambo, a long line of women
holding tattered bags and plastic buckets snakes through a dirt field
around rectangular mud huts, waiting for the government's monthly food
distribution. A handful of men, mostly elderly and separated from their
families, are also in the line. They are looked down upon by the other men,
who stand milling around with little to occupy their time, because here, as
in Angola's traditional villages, collecting and preparing food is
considered women's work.

Marianne Chipita, 38, is among the women examining her monthly handout. She
has lived here for a year with her husband and five children. Each month
she waits in line for her small bag of beans and corn, wondering how she
will stretch it to the next distribution.

"It's never enough," she says. "But it's better than where we came from
because at least here there is some food and no violence."

Like Nascente and Nelda, Chipita and her family are hoping to return to
their home in the countryside now that the war is over. The government has
said it will provide transport and seeds and tools so that her family can
make a new start. But with nearly half a million people sitting in camps
like Lomanada II and millions of others displaced in cities like Luanda,
the repatriation process is likely to be long and slow.

Nicole Itano is a freelance reporter based in Johannesburg. She has
traveled extensively around Southern Africa and writes frequently for The
Christian Science Monitor and The Sydney Morning Herald.

For more information:

The Global IDP Project of the Norwegian Refugee Council: -
http://www.idpproject.org/

University of Pennsylvania African Studies Department, Angola page: -
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Country_Specific/Angola.html

Official Web site of the Republic of Angola, virtual tour: -
http://www.angola.org/referenc/history/virtualtour.html



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