Food is scarce, so is clean water. Malnourished children in dirty clothes seem to fill every corner of the camps and their number continues to increase, despite the impossibility of the situation. Privacy has become an alien concept and as a result women, apart from children, suffer most.
Many women live in barracks full of men with no special place to attend to their female needs.
Husbands and wives are under great psychological strain because lack of privacy has prevented them from fulfilling their sexual needs in a discreet manner. To an outsider, such living conditions are unacceptable, even inhumane. This brief conversation took place outside a shack at Haliwen camp in Atambua. It seems that Andjaba, who was heading a United Nations Security Council mission to Kupang and Atambua, did not anticipate such an answer. AFP news agency reported Andjaba as saying on Sunday that the refugees had complained about security, saying they did not have free choices about their future, and that security in the camps was uncertain.