Somali women are resorting to extreme measures to leave their war-ravaged country to find a new beginning by using Egypt as a stepping-stone to Europe and America. After Cairo tightened immigration laws in 2008, women have begun paying Somali diplomats to bring them into Egypt. Women pay up to $1000 to be brought in as members of the diplomat’s family. As a diplomatic passport is used, the women and their children do not need identification when entering the country.

“I am seeing many cases like this,” says Abdullah Osman, head of the Somali Development Organization (SODO) in Cairo. “She [women] must sell a car or farmland to raise the money [to get to Egypt],” he added. For the women, finding the money to come to Egypt for a single mother in Somalia can be a difficult task.

Often the women flee with their children after their husband has been kidnapped or killed in fighting. “The women say their husband went out to find food for the children, but they never came back,” adds Osman.

An effective government has not controlled the whole of Somalia since 1991, when President Barre was forced out of government by clans from the north and south of the country. Somalia has been steeped in civil war, creating instability, and has led many with means to seek a better life elsewhere.

Current President of Somalia, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, told Germany’s Spiegel Online in 2007 that “Somalia is breaking up into several regions, where local interest groups have grabbed power for themselves and can operate without any kind of control.”

While the motivation to escape danger in Somalia is powerful, many find life in Egypt far from easy. Once they arrive in Cairo, the women must apply for refugee status with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR gives them a blue card, and the Egyptian government can then grant a residency permit. This process takes about six months.

Without a residency permit women cannot send their children to schools, use a hospital or work. Osman identified the refugee’s main problem as being livelihood. “Assistance they receive is very little and does not cover all of the rent and food.” In the first month of arrival, before qualifying for assistance, refugees must survive on their own savings.

Schooling presents another problem, as refugee children are not allowed to attend government schools, and so mothers are forced to pay high fees for private schools. This is despite the fact that Egypt is a signatory of the 1951 United Nations Convention for the refugees, whereby education cannot be denied to refugees. Egypt is also a signatory of the 1967 UN refugee protocol that further guarantees rights.

Mothers with large families are often not able to afford the costs of sending all of their children to school. This creates another barrier refugees face, learning Egyptian Arabic, where children attending school would be able to do.

Egypt is now a transit point for refugees looking to emigrate to Europe or America. “The mothers that come to me say they wanted to escape [Somalia] to give their children a better life, but they say that the life of the children is no better in Egypt,” Osman concluded.

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Bikya Masr

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