Between Life and Death: A geopolitical analysis of the protracted situation of Sudanese refugees in Egypt
Migration patterns between Sudan and Egypt date back to the nineteenth century, when both countries were jointly under British rule. After independence, they continued to share bilateral treaties fostering cooperation in sectors of employment, education, health and residence. However, from late 1980s onwards, the deteriorating economic and political situation in Sudan forced people to flee to Egypt in large numbers, increasing animosity in the perception of Sudanese refugees as imposing a burden on the Egypt administrative system. Today, the treatment of Sudanese refugees by the government and the population has been hostile, with reports of abuse and police assault erupting regularly. By viewing the refugees as 'temporary', they are deprived of access to legal employment and basic facilities such as education and health care. By further exploring the nature of the situation, this piece finds the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Halayeb Triangle to be underlying geopolitical causes for such animosity.
A Policy of No Policy?
The Egyptian state, while having signed the 1951 Convention, has placed reservations on Articles that provide the right of access to public services to refugees. In 2005, while justifying the move, the Head of the Department of Refugee Affairs in Egypt quoted that a “real integration” of the refugees within its borders would not be possible due to the lack of means available to the Egyptian government. By repeatedly stressing the temporality of refugees within its borders, the Egyptian government adopts a ‘policy of no policy’; not driving out the refugees by force, but also not integrating them into their society. This is visible in the provision of settlement of refugees within its country; Egypt has no domestic asylum law that regulates the same. By entirely burdening the UNHCR with the responsibility of registering and providing asylum to refugees, the Egyptian state successfully shrugs off its responsibility. While on paper, the Egyptian government has provided access to healthcare and education to refugees, they still have to face significant obstacles of corruption, misdiagnosis as well as discrimination on racial grounds, eventually resulting in a lack of access to rights. While Sudanese refugees are provided with temporary residence permits, there is no mechanism for providing them with opportunities for employment. Since the Egyptian government does not view local integration as a durable solution, it focuses on creating conditions that essentially force the ‘voluntary’ repatriation of the Sudanese back to their country.
Geopolitics of Discrimination
Since the allegation that Sudan had attempted the assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak in the 1980s, a growing animosity towards the Sudanese nationals permeated not only in the behaviour of the Egyptian state, but also in the local population of the country. They are regularly subjected to scrutiny and assault by authorities, and the local population use racial slurs while referring to them. In October 2020, while Sudanese refugees took to the streets to peacefully protest against the killing of a 12-year-old boy by an Egyptian man, the Egyptian police brutally assaulted and arbitrarily detained them while shouting xenophobic slurs. In January 2022, the Egyptian police once again arbitrarily detained a few Sudanese migrants and transferred them to a security facility where they were brutally beaten.
This hostile treatment of Sudanese refugees rather conspicuously comes at a time when geopolitical and economic relations between the two countries have been at a standstill, particularly with respect to Sudan’s shifting position on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt has adopted a stance against the project as it encroaches upon the distributed share of the Nile River water; it proposed a mechanism through which the United States would regulate the operation. However, after nearly four months of negotiations, Sudan sided with Ethiopia and refused to sign the agreement in February 2020. While the issue was referred for international arbitration to the Arab League, Sudan, in March 2020, rejected the resolution that supported Egypt. Since then, Egypt-Sudan relations have been considerably low, and this can be an explanation for Egypt’s recent aggressive crackdown against the Sudanese refugees.
This situation has been further exacerbated as a result of the decades-old point of contention between the two countries; that of the Halayeb triangle. The Halayeb triangle contains major reserves of mineral wealth, manganese and gold reserves and has been under dispute between Egypt and Sudan since the 1990s. While initially under Sudanese control, the Egyptian government undertook a military intervention in 1994 and seized control of the territory. Since then, Egypt and Sudan have had strained relations pertaining to this border-dispute issue. In January 2014, the Egyptian Defence Minister announced plans to develop Halayeb as a city. As a result of the same, Egypt has been increasingly militarising its borders to create a narrative that views Sudanese within its country as the ‘other’ trying to encroach upon its land.
Prospective for Peace?
While Egypt has signed international treaties upholding its commitment to refugee integration, the on-ground reality and its policy of no policy speak otherwise. It is, therefore, crucial that the Egyptian government be held accountable and must be expected to consolidate a policy-based approach that provides a life of dignity and rights to the refugees. Firstly, Egypt must lift its reservation on Articles providing fundamental rights to refugees in the 1951 Convention. This paper also highlights that Egypt has entirely burdened the UNHCR with responsibilities that it should be undertaking. In order to alleviate suffering, it is imperative that Egypt set up a committee in collaboration with the UNHCR to ensure the welfare of refugees within its country. Lastly, in order to truly integrate Sudanese within its society, Egypt must stop assaulting and deeming Sudanese as militants. While this paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the research problem, it does not cover in-depth the activities undertaken by UNHCR in Egypt. There lies the immense scope for exploring the role of the UNHCR in Sudanese refugee integration within Egypt.