UN refugee agency announces plans to repatriate nearly 500,000 Angolans next year

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced plans to start an organized voluntary repatriation for close to half a million Angolan refugees in southern Africa next year.

An agency team was now in the region, preparing the ground for reintegration and future repatriation, a UN spokesman reported in New York.

Despite the fact that the agency had not reported large numbers of returns to Angola so far, it predicted that as part of the reintegration plan, up to 80,000 people will go back spontaneously this year, mostly in time for the September-October planting season, the spokesman said.

The Angolans, driven from their country over recent decades by conflict and other threats, are currently living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia and Namibia, among other countries of the region, according to UNHCR.