THNAL BEK, Cambodia — Refugees clustered around cooking fires at a schoolhouse here as Cambodia and Thailand prepared for the possibility of further violence after a fourth day of shelling on Monday at their disputed border.
In the middl 19th century republican refugees clustered around Victor Hugo, who lived in exile in Jersey, for four years, until he published a letter protesting against a visit Queen Victoria had made to the island, and had to move to Guernsey where he wrote "Les Miserables".
In effect, the refugees, clustered in camps just beyond Rwanda's borders, constitute a rump state; the government, the army, and the militias that presided over the genocide remain intact and in arms around the camps, reminding Rwanda by both their absence and their presence that the fight is not over.
21, www.protectionclusterphilippines.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/October-Mindanao-Displacement-Dashboard.pdf, accessed 11 December 2015; and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Protection Cluster, 'Monthly Mindanao Displacement Dashboard', October 2014, Issue no. 9, unhcr.ph/_cms/wp-content/uploads/UNHCR-October-2014-Mindanao-Displacement-Dashboard.pdf, accessed 11 December 2015.
The scenery is spectacular, yet it is overshadowed by the clusters of refugee tents scattered across the picture, a subtle reminder of the conflict raging just across the border that has killed over 150,000 people and displaced 9.1 million more.
At first glance, it looked empty, but large clusters of refugees camped under eucalyptus trees at one edge and a green tarpaulin at another soon came into focus.
Perhaps a million of them are clustered in refugee camps in Darfur, and some 180,000 have crossed into Chad, with tens of thousands more hoping to follow them.
Weaving through the tall and thick foliage, to a soundtrack of crackling crickets, you can hear the voices of different clusters of refugees, and step across the detritus of migrants past.
Food must he lifted as far as possible into the countryside, in small consignments, so as not to attract great clusters of refugees; and it must be kept as far as possible out of the hands of government agents, who will eat it themselves, or use it as a political lever, if they can.
The first stage included a random selection of 40 clusters (villages) weighted by refugee and host population estimates from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registration lists of January 2010 and from Djohong District government officials, respectively.
