Itang, also spelled Etang, is a town in the Gambela Region in western Ethiopia. Within Gambela, Itang belongs to Itang woreda which forms a special woreda.
The town's importance can be traced to Article IV of the treaty signed by Emperor Menelik and the British minister, Harrington, in May 1902, which defined the boundary between Ethiopia and Sudan and designated the Itang area as a British trading enclave. According to the 1994 national census, its total population was 2,106.
Map of Ethiopia with Gambela Region Highlighted
The Refugee Crisis in the Late 20th Century
In the late 1980s, the Itang area became a focal point for a significant humanitarian crisis due to the influx of refugees fleeing the Second Sudanese Civil War. The Second Civil War, between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) lasted until 2005. It was basically an extension of the First Sudanese Civil War and it lasted for twenty-two long years with a human live cost estimated at two million! In mid 1988 we were informed that there was a significant movement of Dinka and Nuer refugees and their livestock mainly from the Upper Nile and the provinces of Bahr and Ghazal and that they were crossing into Ethiopia.
So far this year, more than 40,000 young refugees fleeing civil war in southern Sudan have flooded across the border into the Gambela region of southwestern Ethiopia. The boys, primarily from the Dinka tribe of cattle herders, have been arriving at the rate of about 11,000 a month, swelling the population of four refugee camps to 280,000, about twice capacity. “Only the fittest were making it, and when they reached the camps many were ready to die,” said Alain Peters, director of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees in Ethiopia.
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The young boys, traveling without clothing or supplies, walk east toward the mixed acacia and tall grass of Ethiopia’s lowlands, about 600 miles west of Addis Ababa.
In March, young refugees suffering from malnutrition and intestinal ailments were dying at the rate of six a day there. A measles epidemic in one camp killed more than 100 in December. But more food and medicine are now being delivered to the camps, and for the first time the death toll has begun to fall, to about one person a day.
Many of the refugees were too young to care for themselves. In Fugnido, for example, more than half the refugees were under 15. Women accounted for only 3% of the population.
Challenges and Humanitarian Response
The Ethiopian Red Cross Society, a local agency closely affiliated with the Ethiopian government, and the government’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission had been working in Itang since they opened to refugees several years ago. But the sudden influx of refugees took them by surprise.
A U.N. medical team that visited in March described “an extreme state of lack of preparedness.” The feeding program was inadequate, and obtaining emergency food had been hard because the roads are in poor shape and the nearest port is more than 1,000 miles away. The refugees got their drinking water from a nearby river.
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However, the situation has improved in recent weeks as more food and medicine have arrived, relief officials say. The U.N. Agency for International Development and UNICEF, have provided instant milk and other assistance.
Although most relief officials say the Gambela refugee camps in Ethiopia need much more assistance, the Ethiopian government has turned down offers of help from several relief agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontieres-Belgium and Action Internationale Contre la Faim.
The government has told the agencies that it would be pleased to receive relief food, supplies and trucks from international organizations but that foreign representatives of the agencies will not be allowed to work in the camps.
Several dozen relief workers from those three organizations have been idle since the government ordered international relief workers out of the war-torn north in April. Yet the government has denied them permission to work in the Gambela area, in the southwest.
“It’s a pretty pathetic situation,” says a Western diplomat. “Right here in Addis Ababa, we have the best team of experts you could find anywhere in the world to deal with a relief emergency. But very little of that capacity has been tapped.”
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The Role of the SPLA
Years later I learnt that Itang was the site of the founding of the SPLA in 1983 by Garang, a graduate in economics from the University of Iowa. Other founders of the SPLA were Salva Kiir Mayardit, Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and William Nyuon. The regime of Mengistu allowed the SPLA the management of refugee camps and gave them logistical support.
In fact, their guns were almost an extension of their bodies so leaving them aside was mainly for our own safety! They agreed and we soon had gun stacks all over the place!
Sudanese Civil War
Regarding the blood samples, we found a small percentage of animals positive for T. [1] The war lasted seventeen years (1955 to 1972) and about half a million people perished. It demanded regional autonomy for the South that the British decolonization failed to implement.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1902 | Itang designated as a British trading enclave. |
| 1983 | Founding of the SPLA in Itang. |
| Late 1980s | Large influx of refugees due to the Second Sudanese Civil War. |
Refugees are good for the local economy | Apurva Sanghi | TEDxKakumaCamp
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