Over 50,000 Eritreans have returned from the Sudan, UN refugee agency reports

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today reported that the number of Eritreans repatriating from the Sudan has passed the 50,000 mark.

The year-old operation reached this milestone last weekend, when the 91st convoy in the effort carried 960 Eritreans from the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala to Tesseney in western Eritrea, according to UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski. The agency hopes to help an additional 3,000 Eritreans to return home before the heavy rain season begins in late July.

Meanwhile, a tripartite meeting held in Geneva late last week between the governments of Sudan, Eritrea and UNHCR agreed to begin implementing a plan of action designed to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Eritrean refugees, including those who fled their country during the decades-long war of independence, which ended in June 1991, as well as well as those who escaped the recent border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Refugee status for both groups will formally end at the end of this year.

Currently, UNHCR is assisting more than 164,000 Eritrean refugees living in camps in eastern the Sudan. Hundreds of thousands more are estimated to be in Sudanese urban centres across.