Chad: UN finds new site for thousands of refugees from Central African Republic

The United Nations has started transferring to better sites in southern Chad thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) who fled escalating violence in their own country.

So far over 1,500 of some 6,000 refugees have been moved to a new site at Dosseye, some 30 kilometres from Goré, the main town in southern Chad, where they have better access to water, a health centre, security and a school – and space for each family to cultivate land, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman William Spindler told a news briefing in Geneva today.

The rest are expected to move over the next few days to the site, which can host up to 10,000 people, as will any new arrivals from CAR.

The refugees were living at a site at Amboko on agricultural land belonging to local people as a provisional measure. Most of them arrived between June and December 2005.

There are about 45,000 CAR refugees in Chad, which also shelters some 220,000 refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region along its eastern border.