SOMALIA-POPULATION: UNHCR Prepares For Voluntary Repatriation

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 15 1996 (IPS) - A group of Somali refugee representatives are on a fact-finding mission to northwest Somalia for a planned United Nations programme to promote the voluntary repatriation of some 275,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia.

In a statement faxed to IPS Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the group crossed Ethiopia’s border town of Teferi Ber on Saturday and entered Somalia.

The group is looking at 10 potential areas which have enjoyed relative peace and stability over the past 19 months. The representatives are expected to return to Ethiopia this week to report to the refugees.

“The visit is going very well and we are hopeful that the repatriation movement will go on as planned,” said Kyaw Zin Hla, head of UNHCR’s office in northwest Somalia.

Similar refugee visits to Somalia are to be scheduled shortly, according to the UNHCR.

Before the end of the year, UNHCR said it will organise a pilot repatriation project involving 10,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia. A programme to bring home 100,000 Somali refugees is planned for next year.

More than 900,000 Somali refugees fled their country following a civil war that led to the overthrow of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991, and to escape the famine which hit the country.

“Somali refugees in large numbers began to return to Somalia spontaneously beginning in 1992, but there still are 275,000 of them in Ethiopia, 126,000 in Kenya, 20,000 in Djibouti and 5,000 in Yemen,” said Hla.

“But plans to organise repatriation from Ethiopia have repeatedly been put on hold following outbreaks of violence in the northwest, where most of the Somali refugees in Ethiopia originated from,” he said.

In Kenya, UNHCR has repatriated Somali refugees by land, air and sea into relatively peaceful areas of Somalia during the past several years.

This exercise recently stopped following renewed factional fighting in the capital Mogadishu.

The fighting intensified after the death of Somalia’s leading warlord Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aideed earlier this month. His son and successor, 35-year-old former U.S. Marine corporal Hussein Aideed, pledged to be tough with his father’s adversaries.

During the past two months, indiscriminate shelling in Mogadishu has resulted in civilians being killed, including Somali Red Cross workers. “Three Red Crescent workers have been killed and over 20 wounded from indiscriminate shelling since June,” said Fred Grimm, head of the Red Cross delegation for Somalia.

“We urgently appeal to all sides to ensure that hospitals, clinics, and civilians in general are spared from the effects of the fighting,” he said.

Since late June, over 2000 people have been wounded and over 200 reported killed in the fighting in Mogadishu. “The fighting has also caused hundreds of families to flee for safety to surrounding areas of the city and elsewhere,” said Grimm.

On the Kenya border, the World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed relief food to more than 11,000 villagers in the Middle Juba Valley districts of Bu’aale and Sakow, to prevent further movements of Somalis towards the Kenya border due to hunger and insecurity.

“We hope that increased food availability in the Juba Valley, together with other relief interventions, will stem the flow of people moving towards Kenya, and will attract displaced populations in the border area back to their homes,” said Brenda Barton of the WFP office here.

The Juba Valley is one of the most vulnerable areas of Somalia and there are major food shortages due to banditry and clan fighting, coupled with floods and drought.

Relief assistance to the Juba Valley has been extremely problematic for WFP and other agencies, because of fighting and banditry in and around Kismayo, the main town in the area, and in parts of the Juba Valley.

Relief operations to the area have been severely hampered by the many different sub-clans who operate independently, and who control various road checkpoints. Bad roads, which in many places have been completely washed away due to floods, compound the difficulty in delivering relief assistance.

UNHCR says it has spent 13.8 million U.S. dollars on rehabilitation and integration projects in northwest Somalia since 1992, including the construction of schools, repair of water facilities and rehabilitation of hospitals.

“Returnees and local residents benefit from these projects. A large part of the amount was spent on clearance of land mines, particularly around Hargeisa, the country’s second largest city,” Hla said.

Since January 1995, peace and order has been restored in large parts of Somalia’s northwest region, allowing aid agencies to operate in the area.