Angolan refugee returns gain momentum – UN agency

More than 5,300 Angolan refugees have gone home from neighbouring countries in the past month as repatriation efforts gain momentum among the 400,000 Angolans who fled their country’s decades-long civil war, the United Nations refugee agency said today.

More than 30,000 of the 45,000 refugees in Meheba camp in neighbouring Zambia, home to more than 200,000 Angolan refugees, have registered to return home in convoys that should transport up to 1,000 returnees each week, and more are queuing to sign up, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing in Geneva.

Next week, UNHCR and Zambian officials will meet to plan a return programme from three other camps in the western part of the country. The latest repatriation movement, organized jointly by UNHCR, the International Organisation for Migration and the governments of Angola’s neighbours, began of 20 June.

Two convoys of refugees also returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo this week.

Returnees spend the first few days back in Angola in reception centres, where they receive mine awareness training and information on HIV/AIDS. Before leaving the centre, they receive some food, a construction kit to help them set up their homes and basic domestic supplies. Later in the year, they will also receive seeds and farming tools in their home communities.

In October 2002, UNHCR launched an appeal for $29.4 million to aid the return of more than 200,000 Angolans over a two-year period (2003/2004) and to date has received just over $15 million of the requested funds.