UN refugee agency brings group of Somalis home from Ethiopian camp

The United Nations refugee agency said today it had returned a group of Somalis to their homeland from a camp in Ethiopia as part of a voluntary repatriation programme.

A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva said the convoy of 205 Somalis had arrived back in Somaliland after a five-hour journey.

The group may be the last to leave the refugee camp of Hartisheik in eastern Ethiopia before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins this weekend. Another 1,700 refugees are expected to return to Somaliland, in Somalia’s northwest, by December.

Their departure means the Hartisheik camp, once the world’s biggest, is near closure – 15 years after it was set up for refugees fleeing Somaliland’s war of secession with the rest of Somalia.

In the early 1990s, more than 600,000 refugees were estimated to be living in the camp, which lies in harsh, semi-desert territory near the border between Ethiopia and Somalia.

This week’s returning refugees were given a repatriation grant of 320 birr ($40) and food supplies to help with their return to Burao and Berbera, which are just outside the Somaliland regional capital of Hargeisa. The UNHCR’s spokesperson said refugees have been returning to Somaliland since the late 1990s, when the situation there improved.

Once the 1,700 others return to Somaliland, a group of 600 remaining refugees in Hartisheik will be transferred to other sites in Ethiopia. They are believed to be mainly from southern Somalia, which remains unsafe, according to the UNHCR. Hartisheik will then be closed.