6500 Sudanese refugees to return home from Uganda by December

Sept 8, 2006 (KAMPALA) — Over 6,500 Sudanese refugees in Uganda are to be repatriated by the end of this year, a statement from the UN Refugee agency said here on Friday.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Kampala, 6,800 refugees from the northern Uganda districts of Arua, Moyo and Hoima will be repatriated between September and December 2006.

A total of 4,543 Sudanese refugees from Arua and Moyo have already returned to southern Sudan since early this year.

Montserrat Feixas Vihe, the UNHCR deputy country representative told a meeting of diplomats, donors and government officials this week that since the beginning of this year 27,041 Sudanese had so far registered to get repatriation, out of the 172,310 living in refugee settlements in Uganda.

She said the refugee agency would facilitate the voluntary return of 15,000 refugees next year, of which 10,000 were organized and 5,000 were spontaneous movements.

The repatriation operations followed the signing in late March of a Tri-partite Voluntary Repatriation Agreement between UNHCR, Sudan and Uganda after the government of Sudan and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army ended the civil war last year.

There are still 350,000 Sudanese refugees in neighboring countries and some four million internally displaced inside Sudan.

(Xinhua/ST)