IOM resumes repatriation of Southern Sudanese from Ethiopia

February 22, 2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — Voluntary repatriation of Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia will resume tomorrow with 600 refugees departing by road for Sudan’s Blue Nile State, the IOM said on Friday.

The operation had been temporarily put on hold to allow for roads to dry out or be repaired in the aftermath of the rainy season.

In coordination with the UN refugees body, UNHCR, and the Ethiopian government’s Administration for Refugee/Returnee Affairs (ARRA), IOM will be taking the refugees from the Bonga camp in Ethiopia’s Gambella region in the south west of the country to Chali County in Blue Nile State.

Nearly half of those returning have lived in the camp for more than 15 years.

More than 23,000 Sudanese refugees have been helped to return to their former homes in Sudan by IOM and its partners since March 2006 with the first departure of 502 Uduk returnees from Bonga refugee camp to Kurmuk. The returns had been gathering pace before the onset of the latest rainy season with nearly 1,900 refugees being repatriated in December 2007 alone.

However, plans by IOM and its partners to assist 27,000 refugees in 2008 from Bonga, and Dimma, Fugnido and Sherkole camps could be jeopardized without additional resources, human and financial.

IOM has been mandated to transport the refugees across the border and to carry out their pre-departure medical screening. In addition to identifying and registering refugees wanting to return, UNHCR is providing the escort in partnership with Ethiopian government. The UN’s World Food Programme provides reintegration packages for returnees once they have crossed the Ethiopian-Sudanese border at Kumruk.

(ST)