Central African Republic: UN agency helps refugees repatriate from DR of Congo

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is assisting Central African Republic (CAR) refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to return home and settle back into their communities after two years of exile, the agency said today.

UNHCR said the operation kicked off yesterday with 275 refugees from Mole camp, 34 kilometres from the city of Zongo in the DRC’s Equateur Province. The returnees were ferried by UNHCR boats across the Ubangui River to Bangui, the CAR capital.

By the end of the eight-day return operation, nearly all Mole camp’s population of 2,800 CAR refugees are expected to have repatriated, UNHCR said. So far, more than 2,600 have expressed their desire to relocate this week, but most will return to destroyed homes and need help settling back in.

UNHCR is providing each refugee family with a reintegration package that includes kitchen sets, jerry cans, blankets and mats, as well as agricultural tools, seeds and fishing nets. In addition, they are given three-month World Food Programme (WFP) food rations upon arrival.

Mole camp refugees, mostly relatives of the mutineers of the failed coup of May 2001, have been eager to return since mid-March, following the change in regime in Bangui. They are the remainder of the some 26,000 Bangui residents who had sought refugee in the DRC.