Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

An Eritrean Afar who moved to Canada, a Canadian academic and a busy Canadian lawyer make an unusual team, but they have joined hands to help a people who are among the most helpless in the world.



These are the Afars, an old nomadic people living in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea. Some people say the continent Africa got its name from the Afars.



This “Afar Triangle” includes a desert that is Africa’s lowest point and one of the lowest on earth. The Afars are a poor people and their major challenge is to try to survive. They are at the mercy - or lack of it - of the host country. They enjoy few rights. They also live in a desert where temperatures reach 50 degrees. National Geographic Magazine called it one of the world’s cruelest places. The Afars occupy the most strategic and resource-rich area in the triangle.



Here the Afars have lived for 2,000 years, mostly as nomads with few rights or even knowledge of their rights. The horn of Africa is also a region of conflict that squeezes them in the middle and results in their persecution. Some 1,400,000 Afars live in Ethiopia, 300,000 in Djibouti and 300,000 in Eritrea.



Ahmed Youssouf Mohamed came to Canada in 1987 as a teenage refugee when Eritrea was under Ethiopian control. His father had been a member of parliament in Ethiopia representing Red Sea Afar people and territory known earlier as Dankalia. Mohamed is trying to raise funds to help them and also to raise awareness about their plight.



Mohamed lives in Ottawa and his family and business keep him busy. But his polite and shy nature cannot hide his burning passion to help his people. Lacking in education, Afars do not think of migrating. There are fewer than 1,000 Afars in Canada. So Mohamed has made it his life’s mission to try to help. In Ethiopia and Djibouti this means providing them with clean water, sanitation, education and health care. But in Eritrea, the Afars are facing persecution from a government that has been described as ruthless. Mohamed wants to raise awareness about their plight and hopes world pressure will force Eritrea to respect their rights.



I met Mohamed through Warren Creates. He was among the lawyers who represented refugee claimants before me during my ten years as a refugee judge as a Member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the country’s largest quasi-judicial administrative tribunal. Creates impressed me as a lawyer who prepared his cases thoroughly and represented his clients with passion. He told me when I was retiring that I was among the most competent refugee judges he had dealt with.



So when Creates called me one day to say he wanted to introduce me to a friend, I accepted. He introduced Mohamed, who told me about his people. Creates and Mohamed began inviting me to their annual fundraising dinners which cost $100 for an evening of food and Afar dances but where auctions raise substantial amounts. These dinners included people from all walks of life keen to help. These fundraising dinners started in 2007.



In addition to Creates, Mohamed secured the cooperation of Professor Joseph Magnet of the University of Ottawa, who is one of Canada’s foremost constitutional experts and an advocate for indigenous and minority rights.



While Can Go Afar raises about $50,000 to $70,000 a year to help the Afar people, Mohamed also heads a mission in Canada, the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization, which advocates for the rights and dignity of the Red Sea Afar people. Their mission is to publicize and try to prevent human rights abuses in Eritrea and to seek autonomy for an Afar province within Eritrea (http://www.rsadomission.com/).



The Afars in Ethiopia enjoy autonomy and the Afar Pastoralist Development Association helps them through mobile workers, mobile schools, training in health, women’s extension workers, combating female genital mutilation, water filtration systems, skill training, etc. It also assists Afars in Djibouti and Eritrean Afars living in refugee camps. It receives about $4-5 million a year in donations, including from Canada, that it disperses to help the Afars.



Before Eritrea’s independence Red Sea Afars enjoyed autonomy, preserved their way of life and maintained close contact with their kin in Djibouti and Ethiopia. Eritrea’s independence resulted in their losing their rights, including the right to their land and resources, assembly, political opinion, mobility and autonomy. The regional Afar parliament in Assab, Eritrea was dissolved and the cultural and political elite were targeted. Ahmed’s brother Ali Youssouf Mohamed, a member of Parliament, was among those who were detained and executed in 2000 without cause or a judicial process.



Professor Magnet, Creates and Mohamed have filed human rights complaints with the United Nations and have now filed an ethnic cleansing charge against Eritrea with the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Sheila Keetharuth. Theirs is a daunting task but they are pursuing it doggedly.



— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, Order of Ontario and the Queen’s Diamond and Golden Jubilee Medals