Please note: In the german and french version of this website one can also find videos, articles and information about the situation in Choucha and the struggles of the people having to live in this camp. In addition, we want to refer to the following four websites which also inform about Choucha:

Solidarity with Fighting Refugees in Choucha/Tunisia This webiste has been installed on occasion of the refugee protests in the end of january 2013. It informs mainly in english about the newest developments.

Facebook Choucha-Solidarity. Numerous pictures, videos and short reports about the protests in the end of january 2013 you can also find on the facebook solidarity website (mailnly in english, french and arabic).

Residents from the closed Choucha refugee camp are fighting for resettlement, not ‘local integration’. Isabelle Merminod and Timothy Baster report.

‘Are human rights just for Tunisians or for everyone? They cut off everything: electricity, water, everything,’ cried Hadi. On 30 June, the Tunisian army, which guards the Choucha refugee camp on the Tunisia/Libya border, emptied the water tanks and shut down all services. But around 400 people are refusing to leave. Half of them are recognized refugees; the other half had their refugee applications refused; they are now hoping for a deal on residence permits from the Tunisian government.

Zarzis — Two years after fleeing the civil war in Libya, hundreds of sub-Saharan African and Arab refugees, most of them ex-migrant workers in Libya, are still holed up in a camp on the Tunisian side of the border.

Choucha camp, 5km inside Tunisia, is run by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and at one time had nearly 20,000 residents, around half of them were Bangladeshis who had been working in Libya when the war started and fled to Tunisia on the way home. Several thousand residents though were from East Africa, and had no wish to return home. In 2011 and 2012 UNHCR processed 3,543 asylum claims in Choucha; of these, 3,009 persons were recognized as refugees.

Thousands of people who fled the fighting in Libya have spent weeks living in tents in neighbouring Tunisia – unable to return to their homes.But after local residents attacked, burned, and looted the Chucha refugee camp in southern Tunisia, many are once again struggling to find another safe haven. The arson attack was reportedly made after the refugees staged a protest calling for resettlement to Europe. They had blocked the main road to the border with Libya, angering the Tunisians.

Al Jazeera's James Bays reports from the Chucha camp

Tom Kington // Guardian.co.uk

More than 1,000 migrants who fled fighting in Libya have been left without shelter in the Tunisian desert after locals burned and looted a refugee camp near the border, witnesses have claimed. At least five people were wounded when Tunisian soldiers opened fire on migrants fleeing Tuesday's attack on the UN-managed Choucha camp near the main crossing with Libya at Ras Ajdir, said Alganesc Fessaha, an Eritrean doctor who treated the victims.

Doctors without Borders

BEN GARDANE/GENEVA, May 25, 2011 – In the midst of escalating violence in a refugee camp on the Tunisia-Libya border, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today expressed alarm over the deteriorating living conditions encountered by refugees stranded in temporary camps and exposed to violence.

Several killed in fire in tent city in the desert. Thousands of sub-Saharan refugees and migrants trapped in Choucha camp near Libyan border – many flee back to Libya

Choucha is one of four camps situated at the open Tunisian-Libyan border between Ben Guerdane und Ras Jdir. It was set up by the UNHCR, Red Cross and Red Crescent on 24/02/11, shortly after the fighting in Libya had started. At the time mainly Egyptians and Bangladeshis arrived. Here, in a desert-like area, between 4,000 and 5,000 mainly sub-Saharan and East African refugees from 30 countries now have to live in tents if they want to apply for protection with the UNHCR.