Reuters/Duekoue, Ivory Coast
The thousands of refugees packed into this churchyard in western Ivory Coast came here to escape death - but it is catching up with them as dozens now succumb to diseases such as cholera. Chased from their homes by gunmen during the power struggle between Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, 27,000 refugees are still sheltering in a Catholic mission. The crisis eased with last month’s arrest of Gbagbo, who had refused to quit despite losing a November 28 election. But most of those who fled are still too terrified to return home - and many have nothing to go back to in their torched villages. “For us, this war is not finished. There is no security,” said cocoa farmer Michel Tieoula, 51, who fled his village with his two wives and 11 children after a December 24 gunbattle. “Even as I speak, I cannot set foot outside here.” Such fears underscore the huge challenge Ouattara now faces as president in healing a nation divided by disputes over land and ethnicity that were reignited by November’s vote. Once a beacon of stability in a troubled region, Ivory Coast is counting the cost of a crisis that killed at least 3,000, uprooted over a million and wrecked the economy. The hilly, forested area around Duekoue was the scene of some of the worst violence, as a long-running land dispute between the local Guere tribe and migrants from other regions or states - particularly members of Ouattara’s Dioula tribe - degenerated into warfare. The UN mission is investigating reports that up to 800 members of the Guere tribe were killed by forces claiming allegiance to Ouattara as they advanced during April. While Ouattara is not accused of ordering killings during the five-month crisis, evidence that soldiers loyal to him carried out atrocities could complicate efforts to try Gbagbo for war crimes. Ouattara has asked the prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the most serious crimes committed during the crisis, according to a letter published on the ICC website. As on most days in this camp of makeshift tents, densely packed families and crying babies, Wednesday saw a funeral. Kaah Jul Latoss’s older brother had died of cholera earlier that morning, after complaining of abdominal pains. Women wailed and wept as his blanket-wrapped body was carried out of the tent and across the camp and put into an old car. “He was only 49. We’re in a dirty environment. There’s a lot of us and everyone’s sick,” a grieving Latoss said. Father Cyprien Ahura, who runs the church, estimates at least 40 people have died of disease since the camp opened. Even as normal life slowly resumes in parts of the main city Abidjan and across the country, aid workers say Duekoue has become Africa’s latest forgotten emergency. Thousands live in cramped squalor in the camp, protected by coils of razor wire and armed UN peacekeepers. Children with bald patches from fungal infections scurry through a gutter running with dirty dishwater. Smoke billows at lunchtime as hundreds of women stir pots over twig fires. “Families ... don’t have enough shelter,” Save the Children spokeswoman Annie Bodmer-Roy said at the camp. “Some have plastic sheeting, some don’t. When it rains they have to crowd into the church. One girl has to sleep sitting down, next to people she doesn’t know. We’re very afraid of children getting sick because of ... the rainy season.” Ouattara’s inauguration tomorrow aims to draw a line under the crisis, but many Guere fear forces loyal to him will continue to persecute them unless he disbands the rebel army that helped him take power, and which now controls the streets. Duekoue is surrounded by the burnt out husks of villages destroyed by militias, tin roofs collapsing in on burnt bricks. A generation has been traumatised by war. Thirteen-year-old Ariale Glaiso fled her village in January. “We heard shooting and people said it was between the Guere and the Dioula,” she said, recounting how they had to hide in the bush before reaching the camp. “I want peace to come back, so we can go back to our village. I want to go back to school.”