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First Sudanese Refugees from Ethiopia Return Home

Some 500 refugees left an Ethiopian camp today in the first repatriation convoy to Sudan from Ethiopia under United Nations agreements that eventually aim to bring home the vast majority of the nearly 360,000 Sudanese who fled two decades of civil war in the south of Africa's largest country.

The convoy will travel more than 800 kilometres and is expected to arrive in the Blue Nile region of south Sudan on Sunday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (<"http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home">UNHCR) spokespman Ron Redmond told a <"http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/news/opendoc.htm?tbl=NEWS&id=442d001125">news briefing in Geneva. Three more convoys are scheduled for April.

Some 79,000 south Sudanese live in five camps in western Ethiopia - Bonga, Dimma, Fugnido, Sherkole and Yarenja. Most of them arrived in Ethiopia in 1983 and in the 1990s.

UNHCR, Ethiopia and Sudan signed a tripartite agreement last month paving the way for the repatriation. There are some 358,000 south Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries, and 4 million internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Earlier this month, UNHCR suspended repatriation operations in southern Sudan after a recent spate of armed attacks.

On Monday UNHCR signed a similar agreement with Sudan and Uganda, covering 170,000 southern Sudanese in northern Uganda.

Since a peace accord ended the war between the Government and southern rebels in January, 2005, UNHCR, along with other UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), has been working in Sudan to prepare for the returning refugees and IDPs. It has built or rebuilt schools, hospitals, vocational training centres and water points to help entire communities, not just the returnees themselves.

A separate, still unresolved conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region has sent 200,000 Sudanese fleeing into eastern Chad, and internally displaced some 2 million more.

Source: United Nations News Centre

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