Box 6: “Returnees” from the crisis in the Central Africa Republic During 2014, thousands of people of West African descent have returned to their countries of origin fleeing the crisis in the Central African Republic. Several countries of the region, including Senegal, Niger and Mali, sent military or chartered planes to both Bangui and Yaoundé (Cameroon) to rescue their nationals from a very dangerous situation. IOM also organised some flights.183 Immigration or consular officials conducted a rough triage of a claim to nationality – but in the circumstances where many individuals had lost their documents as they fled the violence the identification of nationals could only be approximate. While most of those who have been assisted to “return” to their country “of origin” have found family members with whom they have reunited, even if they do not have relevant papers, some have not. The status of those who have found family members may end up being problematic in the long run, since their nationality status is not always clear even if a family link is present. However, for the time being, they have been accepted as having a right to stay, and given some assistance by the countries to which they have “returned”: for example, both the Senegalese and Nigerien authorities have given instructions to schools to accept the children of those who have fled the Central African Republic, even if they do not have the paperwork usually required (an extrait de naissance less than 3 months old).184 But others have found themselves stranded without any documentation. The Nigerien government sent chartered flights in February 2013 to both Bangui and Yaoundé to collect several hundred of its nationals fleeing the CAR violence. A small group of 11 -- including a mother and two daughters, and eight teenage boys or young men (two of them brothers) -- were as of May 2014 being accommodated by the Nigerien state in a community centre in Niamey, in the most basic accommodation, with a small subvention from the state to allow them to survive. None of them had any identity documentation from any country. Though all of them claimed to have Nigerien fathers, they had been unable to trace any family after visiting the region where they believed their fathers had come from (Maradi or Agadez). The Nigerien Ministry of Foreign Affairs had written to UNHCR and IOM to state that, after investigation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it did not recognise them as Nigerien nationals, asking the UN agencies to assist them.185 However, most of them did not wish to remain in Niger as refugees, after failing to find any connections there, but rather to connect to other family members who had remained in Cameroon, or, for example, to extended family members who lived in Nigeria. Several of the young men had mothers who were also not Central African – Cameroonian or Congolese – but had no proof of that connection either. Central African Republic law does not give CAR nationality to a child born in the country of two foreign parents, so recognition of any nationality would depend on establishing a connection to the state of their mother. However, where the family members with which they wished to be reunited were in yet another country, there is in effect no way of establishing documents to enable them to make that journey legally. At least one young man had reportedly simply crossed the border into Nigeria from Niger on his own initiative, to join family there without any papers.186 Similar small groups of people from the Central African Republic who have not been able to show a connection to the country that rescued them exist in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal (and no doubt other countries of the region).187 In the case of Guinea, no flights were sent by the Guinean government, but some were accepted into the flights sent by the Senegalese, Malian or Nigerien authorities: IOM had been seeking to assist some of these to establish Guinean papers for the next stage of the journey.188 183 184 “IOM Begins Airlift of Stranded Migrants from Central African Republic”, IOM, 10 January 2014. Interviews with IOM and government officials in Dakar and Niamey, May 2014. 56