Great Lakes Refugee Crisis - Emergency Relief

Emergency Relief

In the first week of July, deaths among the refugee community were occurring at a rate of 600 per week, and two weeks later had reached 2000 per week as the refugee population increased and the health situation worsened. Mortality rates reached a height during a 24-hour period in late July when the death toll near Goma from cholera, diarrhea and other diseases was 7000. Over 50,000 people died, mainly from a cholera epidemic that swept through the camps. The refugees near Goma were located at Mugunga on a plain of volcanic rock, which was so hard that the French troops and aid workers were unable to dig graves for the bodies that began to line roads. The situation led the UN Representative to Rwanda Shahryar Khan to call the camps a "revision of hell".

The international media coverage of the plight of the refugees eventually led U.S. President Bill Clinton to call it the "world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a generation" and large amounts of relief was mobilized. Attention quickly focused on the refugees around Goma. Over 200 aid organizations rushed into Goma to start an emergency relief operation comparable to that seen in the Yugoslav wars. Until December, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) received over $1 million monthly. The resources dedicated to the refugees led to a rapid drop in the mortality rate in late 1994. The American military formed an emergency logistical operation, based out of Entebbe International Airport in Uganda, to ferry supplies and relief personnel to the crisis regions. While several humanitarian organizations expressed concern about mixing the military in humanitarian operations, it quickly became clear that only the military could create large centralized logistical support with the speed and scale needed to alleviate a massive humanitarian emergency.

The humanitarian situation was not as acute in the other nations bordering Rwanda, though still very challenging. Tanzania had a number of refugee camps that had been created for the civilians fleeing the onset of the Burundian Civil War. Most of these Burundians had returned to their home country by 1994 so Tanzania had the infrastructure to handle the initial influx of Rwandan refugees. However, facilities there were also eventually overwhelmed by the sheer number of people fleeing across the border, requiring emergency humanitarian intervention.