Repatriation of Liberian refugees picking up pace – UN

With 340,000 Liberian refugees across West Africa expected to return home over the next three years, 150,000 of them in 2005 alone, repatriation is picking up pace, with Côte d’Ivoire joining in the repatriation movement for the first time since it began last October, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

Yesterday, 47 Liberians were flown home, the first of 5,000 settled in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city, who said they feared for their safety due to the heightened crisis in the host country and wished to return to their homeland, where a ceasefire and peace process is taking hold after 14 years of vicious civil war.

Tomorrow, a ship chartered by the International Organization for Migration is scheduled to repatriate 350 Liberians from Ghana.

In western Côte d’Ivoire, 500 Liberians have asked the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help them return. But the vast majority of Liberians in Côte d’Ivoire are originally from Grand Gedeh, Maryland and Nimba counties, which are yet to be declared safe, preventing UNHCR from assisting them home at the moment.

UNHCR has helped some 4,300 Liberian refugees return home since repatriation started on 1 October.

Further south, in Angola, another war-wracked country where the peace process has been underway for more than two years, UNHCR is winding down its second season of bringing home refugees and looking ahead to possibly completing its voluntary repatriation programme for camp-based Angolans next year.

Despite a devastated infrastructure, including destroyed roads and bridges and the ever-present danger of landmines, more than 281,000 Angolans, out of an estimated 441,000, have returned home since peace accords between the Government and rebels were signed in April 2002. Some 172,000 of them were assisted by UNHCR and its partners. Others returned by their own means.

This year nearly 51,000 Angolans returned home with UNHCR assistance from Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Namibia, Botswana, the Republic of Congo and South Africa. An additional 12,000 who returned on their own were assisted at one of the 12 reception centres run by UNHCR and its partners.

UNHCR has agreed with Angola and the major asylum countries of Zambia, DRC and Namibia to try to complete the return next year of 53,000 refugees remaining in camps and settlements. Estimates of refugees who have settled in other countries in the region vary widely, ranging from 83,000 to around 200,000.