POPULATION: UNHCR Appeals for Funds to Resettle Somalis

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Apr 3 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR) appealed Friday for 24 million U.S. Dollars to finance the repatriation and resettlement this year of more than 400,000 Somalis scattered in African and Middle Eastern nations.

According to the UNHCR, the majority of refugees, who fled civil war in Somalia since 1989, are in Ethiopia (240,000 as of 1 January, 1998) and Kenya (134,000). Smaller groups are in Djibouti, Yemen and Libya.

“The programme is in a crucial phase,” said UNHCR’s Regional Director Albert-Alain Peters. “Thousands of Somali refugees have decided to return home, mainly to the northwest of the country, and we need to be able to give the same opportunity to many others.”

In a statement faxed to IPS on Friday, the UNHCR said the authorities in Hargeisa, the main town in north-western Somalia, had agreed on a cumulative target of 100,000 returns for 1997 and 1998.

In order to give so many people the chance to restart their lives in the northwest, UNHCR says, it will expand its reintegration programmes, which in 1997 concentrated on the Hargeisa and Boroma areas, to other areas in the northwest.

Northwest Somalia is Somaliland, a self-declared republic that broke away from Somalia in 1991, soon after the overthrow of then president Siad Barre by clan-based rebels.

Somaliland, which has not been recognised by any other states or by the United Nations, covers the area that used to be British Somaliland before joining Italian and French Somaliland to form independent Somalia in 1960. It has suffered much less than the south from the clan warfare that followed Barre’s ouster.

UNHCR says its pilot repatriation operation brought back over 11,000 people to the northwest in 1997, mainly from the Hartishek camps in Ethiopia. Another 8,000 refugees have been helped to return so far this year.

UNHCR says it expects 60,000 Somalis to return this year to the northwest from Ethiopia, and another 16,500 from other countries.

“In some areas of Somalia the situation is very encouraging,” Peters added. “This is why people are registering to return. We give our full support to reintegration where people are asking for it. If we do so now, we have the chance to make their return a success.”

Friday’s appeal came as more than 700 Somali refugees returned home after spending seven years in exile in Kenya.

The first batch, numbering 121, flew to Somalia’s north-eastern port city of Bossasso on board a UNHCR-chartered Hercules C-130 aircraft on Mar 28. The others were flown home, over a period of five days, from the Daadab refugee camps in Kenya, on the border with Somalia.

Since 1992 more than 115,000 Somali refugees have been repatriated from Kenya, according to the latest figure provided by the UNHCR. Kenya still some 178,000 refugees — down from a total of 420,000 in 1992.

Kenya also hosts refugees from Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire.

Ten refugee camps across Kenya have been closed, and only three remain, including one near Dadaab in North-eastern province and another at Kakuma, south of the Sudanese border. The third one, near the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, some 500 kilometres southeast of here, will be closed in April following the repatriation of its 1,400 refugees to Somalia’s Bajunis Island, UNHCR says.

However, Peters said other parts of Somalia, especially in the south, are not yet suitable for repatriations. “Prospects for returns from Kenya to southern Somalia have dimmed after the heavy rainfall and flooding there since October. Renewed fighting was also reported in Kismayo area,” he said.

Similar concern had also been raised this week by the UN Representative in Somalia, Dominic Langenbacher, who said inter- clan clashes in the southern port city of Kismayo and a rise in banditry and insecurity in the capital, Mogadishu, would only compound the suffering of the Somali people.

Aid workers operating in Kismayo, which is near the Kenyan border, confirmed that fierce fighting between rival clans — firing heavy machine-guns and anti-tank rockets — had left 33 people dead and more than 100 wounded this week.

Langenbacher has called upon the factional and clan leaders in the region to resolve their differences by peaceful means. “Otherwise the hostilities and the theft of humanitarian supplies will threaten the health and the lives of innocent civilians and prevent the United Nations from assisting those most at risk,” he said.

Peters agreed. “This precarious situation continues to push Somalis to head north from southern and central parts of the country, and to set off from the Bossasso area by boat, sometimes with tragic consequences,” he said.