ETHIOPIA, 26 February 2014 (ICMC) - Although I have been working at the Mai Aini camp in Ethiopia for the past year, I never ceased to be amazed by the sight of hundreds of children running around, playing games, washing clothes and cooking meals with hardly any adults in sight.

Placed within the hot and dusty hills of Ethopia’s northern Tigray region, The Mai Aini camp offers quite a contrast of the Iowa farmland of my youth. Despite a devastating border conflict with Eritrea from 1998-2000, Ethiopia now hosts tens of thousands of persons fleeing the very country it once fought against; approximately 1,000 of them are unaccompanied children.

The children flee Eritrea for various reasons: including mandatory and possibly indefinite military service upon turning 18 (or earlier, should they drop out of school or fail their exams), the threat of forced marriage, family struggles, and a lack of access to education or medical services.

The children and teenagers make their way across the heavily-militarized border between Ethiopia and Eritrea on foot, and despite ending up only a few hundred kilometres from their homes, find themselves worlds apart from their families and friends in Eritrea. Regardless of what initially brought them to Ethiopia, returning to their home country is not possible due to a “shoot to kill” policy maintained by the Eritrean army along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border, the risk of arrest for having fled the country, or indefinite military service. There is no telephone network between the two countries, making any communication with their families nearly impossible. Further complicating matters, opportunities for family tracing or reunification with relatives in Eritrea are extremely limited, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other organizations are restricted from operating in the areas of Eritrea where most of the children come from.

Once in Ethiopia, most unaccompanied boys and girls are placed into a group care arrangement in Mai Aini camp; groups of eight children of a similar age and gender typically share a small, one-room house. The children are visited daily by a designated social worker who provides them with informal counselling, monitors their school attendance and performance, and distributes necessities such as clothing and shoes. The children are given injera, a flatbread which serves as a staple food for most Ethiopians and Eritreans, but are responsible for preparing their own meals, washing their clothes, and most other household responsibilities. In addition to primary and secondary schools, there are many outlets available for the children to keep themselves engaged including child-friendly spaces with age-appropriate games, an activity centre offering basketball, football, and volleyball games, as well as a library, and music, dance, and acting classes provided by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and their implementing partners.

Nonetheless, unaccompanied children in Mai Aini and other camps often find themselves isolated and at times hopeless. Due to the sheer number of children and a limited number of available foster families to be found in a predominantly single male population, they reside unsupervised during the nights and weekends while their social workers are off duty.

Children unable to trace or contact their families express feelings of loneliness and worry about the future, often with a sense of desperation to be able to build a life anywhere outside of the camps.

In my role as a deployee, I conduct Best Interest Determinations (BIDs), a process where I interview unaccompanied and separated children, relatives, and others close to the child in order to identify short and long-term care arrangements based on the principle of ensuring the best interest of the child. The process can yield various results for each child depending on their individual circumstances, but efforts are made to prioritize the most vulnerable children, whether because they are orphaned, have protection or medical concerns, or have spent many years as an unaccompanied child with no prospects of family reunification.

My work took on a new meaning in December 2013, while en route to the United States to visit my family. While checking in at the airport in Addis Ababa, I unexpectedly met 5 children who I had conducted BID’s for when I first started working at Mai Aini. They were on their way to the U.S. to be resettled through the Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Foster Care program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. As it turned out, we were on the same flight, which gave me several hours to provide an impromptu cultural orientation to life in the U.S. The children had many questions, such as “How far will I have to walk to my school?” and “Is Boston close to Fargo?”

Yet beyond their intense curiosity, they had a sense of excitement and optimism regarding their futures that I had never seen in my earlier conversations with them in Mai Aini. They spoke of their aspirations in completing their education and having the opportunity to trace their families. And personally, being able to see some of the children I first spoke to in their group care homes beginning a new journey has helped provide me with a renewed sense of motivation and fulfilment that I will carry with me throughout my work.

Jason Bell got his start working with refugees as a resettlement case manager for Lutheran Social Services in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota. His later experience with UNHCR in Kenya, the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Malawi, and finally his time as a Refugee Children's Services Specialist with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington DC left him well prepared for a position with ICMC. He began working for ICMC’s Resettlement Deployment Scheme in November 2011, first as a Resettlement Expert in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya and currently as a Best Interest Determination (BID) Specialist in Shire, Ethiopia.

The stories and opinions shared in this essay are of a personal nature and are not reflective of the views of either UNHCR or ICMC.

Written by Jason Bell with editing from Caitlin Hannahan

Photo caption: Ethiopia / Eritrean refugees / Mai Ayni refugee camp / The camp hosts around 3,000 people and was set up by UNHCR in May 2008. / UNHCR / F. Courbet / December 2008