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Refugees Cope With Absurd Conditions

The Egyptian police moved on the camp of about 2,000 Sudanese in the middle of Cairo early last Friday morning. With fists and truncheons flailing, and many of the Sudanese fighting back, United Nations officials estimate that 11 children were among the at least 30 dead. The United Nation`s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says there are about 9 million refugees and asylum seekers in the world. However, in 2004, the last year for which full numbers are available, less than 30,000 people were resettled.

Finger-pointing has been rampant ever since Friday`s tragic events. A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said the raid on the camp was carried out at the UNHCR`s request. At least 1,500 Sudanese who were arrested in Friday`s raids and later released have gathered at a downtown Catholic Church. None of the people there know what`s next for them. They have little money and no homes to which they can go.

"Resettlement for sure has become more difficult,`` says Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Cairo. "They don`t see the pressing need any more." Refugees say the agency stopped hearing independent asylum applications over a year ago, and U.N. officials when asked confirmed this. Slots for Sudanese refugees seeking to go to Europe and the U.S. have been reduced, with Western governments seeing less urgent need than before the recent peace deal signed in Sudan.