UN refugee agency moves supplies from Liberia to Mauritania for aid operation
The United Nations refugee agency has succeeded in dispatching a truck convoy from Liberia to Mauritania in a 25-day journey aimed at redeploying resources as part of a broader cost-saving effort that will benefit thousands of people.
The United Nations refugee agency has succeeded in dispatching a truck convoy from Liberia to Mauritania in a 25-day journey aimed at redeploying resources as part of a broader cost-saving effort that will benefit thousands of people.
“This was an extraordinary achievement. The redeployment was done under extreme conditions and it succeeded thanks to the perseverance of the convoy members,” said Ursula Aboubacar, Deputy Director of UNHCR's Middle East and North Africa Bureau.
The 20 trucks from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which arrived in southern Mauritania on Monday, will be used to support the voluntary repatriation and reintegration of Mauritanian refugees from Senegal and Mali.
The vehicles driven by staff from UNHCR's partner GTZ, the German aid agency, carried 2,000 buckets, 1,600 kitchen sets, 4,500 plates, 9,600 bars of soaps, 3,125 blankets, 3,920 jerry cans, 20 bales of fabric, 3,600 items of women's clothing and numerous mosquito nets.
The convoy was sent to Mauritania as part of UNHCR efforts to maximize the use of existing resources and minimize the cost of the new operation. The UN agency is looking at ways to redeploy as many assets as possible from other programmes currently phasing down in West Africa. It wound up the Liberia assisted repatriation programme at the end of June this year after helping more than 100,000 refugees go back home since late 2005.
The resources from Liberia will be badly needed by UNHCR, which said it is facing funding shortages for the Mauritania operation. The agency launched a $7 million appeal at the end of August to fund the voluntary repatriation of 24,000 Mauritanian refugees, mainly from Senegal and Mali.
“This return will help resolve one of the most protracted refugee situations in Africa and represents the only durable solution in the Middle East and North Africa region at present. Some of the Mauritanian refugees have spent more than two decades in exile,” UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The 17-month operation, which faces some major logistical challenges, is scheduled to start this month,” she said, while adding that “with only $500,000 received so far, we fear serious delays.”
More than 60,000 Mauritanians fled to Senegal and Mali in April 1989 when a long-standing border dispute between the two countries escalated into ethnic violence.