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UN:
UN AGENCY RESUMES REPATRIATION OF SUDANESE REFUGEE FROM ETHIOPIAN CAMP:
17/12/07 (MaximsNews Network)
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UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network /
- 17 December 2007 --The
United Nations refugee agency has resumed its repatriation of Sudanese from a
camp in western Ethiopia after the operation had been suspended for six months
because of poor weather and road conditions.
A convoy
of buses and trucks carrying 610 refugees left Ethiopia’s Bonga camp for
Sudan’s Blue Nile state, about 820 kilometres away, the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) reported. As many as two-thirds of the group were aged
under 18 and probably born and raised in Ethiopia.
The
journey is expected to take three days, and the refugees will stay at UNHCR
transit centres each night. During the rainy season, which began in May, the
roads from Bonga – which is currently home to about 7,000 people – into
Sudan had been impassable.
Ilunga
Ngandu, UNHCR regional liaison representative for Africa, said the agency
expects to repatriate about 30,000 Sudanese refugees between now and the end of
next year, which could allow officials to close at least two of the four
Ethiopian camps sheltering Sudanese refugees.
To help
with their reintegration into their former communities, returnees receive a
package of blankets, jerry cans, sleeping mats, a water filter and a sanitary
kit for women, as well as plastic sheeting, mosquito nets, plastic buckets,
kitchen utensils and soap. When they reach their destinations in Sudan, they
also receive three months of food, seeds and tools from the World Food Programme
(WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In a
related development, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) is calling for an urgent injection of $3 million to prevent cutbacks in
food distribution by March to refugees living in Ethiopia.
WFP
provides monthly food rations to some 80,000 refugees in Ethiopia, about half of
them originally from Sudan. But UN agencies say that a poor rainy season and the
impact of desert locusts in much of the country is threatening food security.
Labels: United
Nations, U.N.,
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