But the Sudanese refugees and asylum-seekers who fled civil conflict in their homeland for Egypt will not soon forget what happened there. The park has taken on iconic significance, symbolizing the no-man’s land in which they find themselves, caught between the impossibility of returning to Sudan, remaining in Egypt, or moving onward to permanent asylum in another country. It was not by accident that the park was chosen as the site for the sit-in, which began September 29th. The park had long served as the de facto waiting room for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), located around the corner, from whom the refugees were seeking assistance. Ever since refugees staged an aggressive protest directly in front of UNHCR in August 2004, they had been prevented from coming closer to the office than this site a block away. Egyptian police enforced the restriction and refugees with appointments were escorted to the UNHCR office from the holding area of the park.

The park has also taken on other mythic qualities in Cairo’s Sudanese community. They refer to the sit-in protest there as a “refugee camp.” In part this likely reflects semantic habit: wherever many refugees are gathered in one place, it usually is a camp. But this term-of-art also reveals a desire for the protection that these urban refugees lack. They made the park into the camp they always wanted and never had.

This may seem surprising at first. We often hear about the detrimental effects of extended camp-stays for refugees, all of which are true. It is easy to gloss over the important protection function they can serve in the short-term, however. And it is difficult to convince refugees struggling to eke out an existence in Cairo that camps are bad, despite that being the objective of the week-long course on “Refugee Camps and Warehousing” at the American University of Cairo – my reason for being in Egypt. Most of the students in the course were Sudanese refugees. In their estimation, camps could not be worse than the hardships they face in Egypt: trying to make it on their own in urban slums, with limited legal status, little assistance from aid agencies, few opportunities to work legally or for children to attend school, and frequent harassment and discrimination by the local population and officials.

While it is a little hard to imagine, these refugees long for the security, social services and educational opportunities that they associate with refugee camps. They lament the fact that, unlike many refugee-hosting countries, Egypt has decided against establishing camps. Indeed, the sit-in did mimic a camp in the sense that the protesters were provided with food and financial assistance from UNHCR. A lively discussion erupted in class between those refugees who had once been in camps elsewhere in Africa and those who never had. One could only conclude after hearing both sides that wherever one is a refugee is an unenviable place to be.

Normally in Egypt, UNHCR provides food and financial assistance to only those refugees it has officially recognized – some 24,000 of the estimated 500,000 living there. And in June 2004, the agency ceased interviewing new cases to determine their refugee status and potential referral for resettlement in another country. This was the primary impetus for the refugees’ protest. Since a peace agreement was signed last year between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the rebel factions in the south, it is thought that the refugees can soon return home. The feasibility of returning to southern Sudan after so little time has elapsed since the conflict officially ended is debatable. Many areas are still mined and the infrastructure and basic conditions for life have been decimated. Still less apparent is why this unofficial policy of encouraging repatriation through neglect should be applied to those refugees from Darfur, where the conflict still rages. At a minimum, it would seem a differentiated approach should be taken towards the community of some 2,500 Darfurian refugees in Cairo with no imminent prospects of returning home.  

It is not surprising that tensions among the refugee community in Cairo reached the boiling point that was witnessed in the closing days of 2005. These refugees seem to be off the radar screen or low on the priority list of policy-makers in the capitals and headquarters of refugee protection entities. They also seem to suffer from inhabiting a jurisdictional gray area for many of the bureaucracies charged with their welfare. Is Egypt in the Middle East or East Africa, or both? Where does it fall in the administrative structures of UNHCR, the foreign ministries of resettlement countries, and international NGOs? If it cuts across jurisdictional lines, are the relevant desk officers and bureaus talking to one another? This issue is complicated by the fact that the refugees are sub-Saharan, while the country they fled to is not. The refugees might be very justified in feeling that they have gotten lost in a bureaucratic no-man’s land. It is of little wonder then that they wanted to create their own “camp” to raise their visibility – one of the few positive aspects of refugee camps on which most can agree.  

Local churches in Cairo have stepped in to fill the humanitarian assistance gap in the absence of large international aid agencies. All Saints Episcopal Cathedral is one of the main responders through its “Refuge Egypt” program. For those refugees most in need, food, clothing and emergency financial assistance is provided. Refuge Egypt also comprises a health clinic, primary school, vocational training programs, micro-enterprise, adult literacy and language classes, mental health counseling and legal aid. What is more, the Cathedral provides a safe, welcoming place for refugees to gather in community at the café in its courtyard. Private funding supports these programs. Lilian Kamau, the Development Officer at All Saints, noted that the suspension of UNHCR interviews in 2004 had a strong impact on All Saints and the other local churches that assist refugees. These service providers have witnessed refugees growing more desperate and presenting with greater needs.

Those who were involved in the sit-in at Mustafa Mahmoud are particularly destitute now. False hope had been raised among protesters that their actions would lead to immediate relief and permanent solutions being found for them. Many participants gave up their homes and belongings as they headed to the park, expecting to be immediately transferred elsewhere in response to their demands. Reports abound of manipulation and coercion of participants by the protest’s organizers. Refugee advocates in Cairo had apparently warned the refugee leaders not to pursue the course of action they did, correctly predicting the outcome.
 
But the refugees were and are at a loss for how to assert their rights and attract the attention of policy-makers short of such radical measures. While some may have been coerced, others went to the protest saying they were “prepared to die” if their demands were not met. Following the events of December 30th, an air of despondency and desperation hangs over the refugee community in Cairo. Those who were arrested at the protest have been re-interviewed, released from detention, and (thanks to the intervention of UNHCR) not deported. But harassment and discrimination have only increased, as the level of anti-refugee sentiment in Egypt spiked in response to the protest. The temporary “camp” they had established for themselves is gone, and their hopes for durable solutions seem more frustrated than ever. Of all the things the park has come to symbolize, the phrase “Remember Mustafa Mahmoud,” when uttered on the streets of Cairo, has become shorthand for “Refugees go home!”