Eritrean refugees leave Sudan for home with UN refugee chief
TESENEY, Eritrea, Nov 13 (AFP) — About 1,000 Eritrean refugees, escorted by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, crossed the Sudanese frontier Thursday in a voluntary return home sponsored by the United Nations.
“There is still a substantial number of (Eritrean) refugees in Sudan,” Lubbers, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, said, declaring himself satisfied with the way the return had been conducted.
“There is still work to be do… It is quite an effort to build up your life again,” he said, arriving at the border village of Teseney at the head of the convoy.
“Repatriation is part of building peace.”
By the middle of the 1980s half a million Eritreans were living in Sudan. Most of them had fled their homeland in the 1960s after Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie had annexed their country in 1962, according to the United Nations.
Since July 2000 about 104,000 have gone home. About 36,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan indicated they wanted to be repatriated by signing up before the end of 2002.
The UN decided that after that date they could no longer claim refugee status as the reasons for their exile were no longer valid.
Even so about 100,000 want to keep their refugee status, according to the UNHCR.
“From our experience, we know the first priority of people is to go back to where they came from,” said Lubbers, making his first visit to Eritrea.
His African tour took him to Burundi, Tanzania and Sudan before Eritrea.
“I left Eritrea 35 years ago. In Sudan I got married and I got 11 children, I was running a restaurant,” said Omar Hussein Jaffa, 50, one of those volunteering to go home, seated on a straw mat.
“I was happy there, I had a house and a restaurant, but I decided to come back to my country because it is where I belong.”
After spending the night at Teseny he was to move on to a region in Eritrea of his choice.
In the village, most of whose inhabitants are refugees who returned home two years ago, Lubbers met a group of elders and told them: “I hope that the other Eritreans that are still back in Sudan will come back as well.”