In early 2011, because of the continuous warfare that had plagued the Middle East and Subsaharan Africa, the refugee crisis in WesternEurope had reached peak levels. The countries of the EU had their assistance networks utterly oversaturated, as there were simply too many refugees to handle for the governments and the ONGs aiding them; the situation caused many instances of food and water shortages, epidemic outbursts caused by overcrowded refugee shelters and poor hygiene, as well as serious civil and social unrest. In an attempt to put a definitive solution to the humanitarian disaster, the UNHCR proposed and started Project HAVEN-1, completed in November 2011.
HAVEN-1 was created as a revolutionary way to provide assistance to the masses of refugees coming from Africa and the ME. It consisted of a massive off-shore facility built in the Eastern Mediterranean, approximately 120 kms north of the Egyptian coast. Administered directly by the UNHCR, the facility was equipped with hospitals, shelters, hydroponic greenhouses and farms, hangars, security stations, and other elements which made it completely self-sufficient and capable of sustaining a population of circa 3 million people. Immediately, the bulk of the refugees present in EU countries were brought on board of HAVEN-1, and the ones still en route were mostly redirected on the facility.
The UNHCR administration of HAVEN-1 went smoothly for the whole of 2012, and it appeared that the project was significantly relieving the gravity of the refugee crisis. However, starting from early 2013 concerns began to arose around various aspects of HAVEN-1: foremostly, the project had been a massive drain for UNHCR resources, and the organization was forced to cut funding dedicated to the facility; secondly, a growing number of international reports signaled the widespread presence of corruption among the HAVEN-1 staff, which in various instances engaged in illegal activities with criminal elements present in the refugees hosted on the facility. Lastly, in many occasions the security staff of HAVEN-1 had enforced martial law, mostly responding to tensions between different ethnic and religious groups of refugees.
In Summer of 2013, widespread rioting began across the facility; in August of the same year, the situation evolved into an armed insurrection of refugees against the UN and UNHCR staff. The insurrection had initially dismissed as another riot and was met with repression; in barely a week, the UNHCR had lost control of most of the facility. The UN staff was killed, taken hostage or escaped; on August, 23rd, after all external communication from HAVEN-1 had been silent for three days, a laconic statement was released on all HAVEN-1 comms channels, declaring the foundation of Haolam Haba.
Haolam Haba presented itself as a sovereign country, with Mulugeta Eshete (a former Ethiopian refugee) as head of state, and demanded to be accepted into the UN; diplomatic talks lasted for over a month, but in the end, the Nation of Refugees was granted a special membership of the UN. The representatives of HH vowed in front of the UN council to freely welcome and assist any refugee in need of shelter, only independendently and without interference from the UN or other countries. Among many segments of international public opinion, HH was seen positively, as the first example of refugees standing up to help themselves rather than depend on external aid.
The other side of the matter soon became apparent when HH started providing services identical in nature to those offered by PMCs (however at lower prices) to militias, insurgent groups and other armed organizations in Africa and the Middle East, as well as participating in the trade of weapons in the same regions. When faced with protest, the Haolam Haba representatives replied that they were doing nothing illegal, and that the military operations were simply a way of funding the newborn country; after all, the money obtained this way did go towards the assistance of refugees and HH's "army of refugees" were just another PMC operating in the area. Since then HH has continued operating as something between a country and a PMC, expanding its ranks with the steady flow of refugees coming from the wartorn areas of the world.
