Repatriation of Eritrean refugees in Sudan to resume: UNHCR

ASMARA, Oct 4 (AFP) — The voluntary repatriation of some 27,000 Eritrean refugees living in Sudan should resume soon, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) deputy representative in Eritrea Cristian Koch-Castro said on Monday.

“The repatriation should resume in the coming weeks, if not days,” Koch-Castro told AFP in Asmara. “We want to end the repatriation in December 2004.”

The repatriation was suspended during the rainy season between June and September because during this period “the trucks get bogged down,” added UNHCR’s spokeswoman Georgina Waters.

“Among the 35,000 refugees in Sudan, who are supposed to be repatriated in 2004, 8,000 have already returned,” she said.

Since 2001, some 120,000 Eritrean refugees living in Sudan have been repatriated, she added.

Most of them had fled Eritrea in the middle of the 1960s after the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie annexed the country in 1962, UNHCR said.

“In 2003, we repatriated 9,500 refugees from Sudan to Eritrea and although the border between Eritrea and Sudan has been closed, a humanitarian corridor has been opened,” Waters said.

The UNHCR also looks after 5,000 refugees in Eritrea, among them some 4,000 Somalis, 600 Sudanese and 400 Ethiopians, she added.