In the year 2000, Joanne M. Oplustil, CAMBA’s Executive Director, was invited by the United States Committee for Refugees ( now United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants{USCRI}) to be part of a nine-person delegation for a 12-day visit to about six large refugee camps in East Africa. USCRI is a volunteer agency that subcontracts with CAMBA to resettle refugees in New York. USCRI also monitors little-known refugee situations in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. In 2000, more than a million and a half Eritreans, Ethiopians, Somalis and Sudanese fled their home countries across international borders in fear for their lives. They are surviving in a number of United Nations-administered refugee camps in remote areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, the Sudan and Eritrea. These camps are typically located within fifty miles of a border. The nine-person delegation was to visit a number of these camps to see conditions there for themselves.
The delegation arrived in Asmara, Eritrea on May 1, 2000 and met the Director of the United States Agency for International Development, the United States Ambassador to Eritrea, the Director of the Eritrean Refugee Relief Commission and the Eritrean Deputy Foreign Minister. We were briefed on the situation within the refugee camps where internally displaced Eritreans and Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia were living. The delegation spent more than a week traveling through Eritrea via Massawa, Mendefera, Senafu and Barentu to visit refugee camps.
Once in Gambella, Ethiopia, the tone and itinerary of the trip changed. Due to pilot error, the delegation was detained by the Ethiopian Military for four days and was not able to visit the refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya.
On May 13th, 2000 Ethiopia began bombing Eritrea again. Through our partnership with USCRI, CAMBA continues to monitor the conditions for refugees in East Africa and to resettle African refugees locally, reuniting them with family members in the United States through the United States Refugee Program.